Yesterday morning, I took Lulu (8, Haiti) and Maizie (5, China) with me to run some errands. Number one on my “to do” list was delivering a packet of pictures and a letter to my friend J, who was leaving for Haiti the next morning and would be seeing Lulu and Jackson’s birthmom. On the way, I explained to Lulu that J would be delivering the envelope to her birthmother and told her a bit of what I’d said in the letter. Lulu got very excited and began to ask if she could “go to Haiti tomorrow,” and after a brief explanation about why that wasn’t possible, she asked when we would be able to visit. I told her, as I have every time she asks, that we will visit when she is a... more

In part two, I discussed the many sources of knowledge and support to which we turned as we made the decision about adopting a child with special needs. Even though Cora has been home with us for more than six months now, I am amazed at the help that seems to bubble up continuously to help us stay on the right path. We have a wonderful physical therapist and a fabulous occupational therapist, a super TVI/COMS (teacher of the visually impaired/certified orientation and mobility specialist), and a skilled family support specialist who are all a part of Cora’s care and growth. (I might add that she also... more

As I wrote in part one, fear was the biggest obstacle to our feeling open to adopting a child with special needs, but we quickly learned that knowledge was power. The more knowledge we acquired, the less scary it seemed. Here are the steps we took to educate ourselves and to get up and over the fear hurdle. In our case, they’re specific to vision impairment and albinism, but the same basic steps can apply to any sort of special need.

1. Use the Internet to research

When we first learned about an available six-month-old baby girl with albinism in Haiti, I started to research... more

Before we adopted any children with special needs, I used to wonder what made families who did adopt them tick. I imagined they simply had bigger hearts than I did and were better people, or they were ignorant or even just gluttons for punishment. I’d read and hear people talk about the blessings of rearing children with disabilities but chalked it up to something people just “say,” because really, what else could they say? They had to try to put a positive spin on it, right?

I just didn’t get it.

Looking back, our hesitation about adopting a child with special needs boiled down to one word: fear. We were afraid. Afraid of the medical costs, the delays,... more

Anyway, this was darn frustrating to me. It’s unbelievable to me that someone who works in the Social Security office doesn’t know about the Child Citizenship Act. But even more than frustrating, it’s scary. Just because we know a child is a citizen doesn’t mean everyone will, and it’s important that we secure that tangible proof for each child.

For the last couple of years, issuance of the Certificate of Citizenship has become automatic for children entering the country on an IR-3 visa. As I’ve written about before, many Certificates are issued in the child’s original name, or version of the adoptive name not necessarily chosen by the family. Even though it’s maddening to have... more

Yesterday, I traveled as planned to our nearest Social Security office to apply for Social Security cards for our four newest children and to request a name change for our first adopted child, Maizie, whom we brought home from China in December of 2002.

When the woman behind the desk asked for proof of Maizie’s citizenship, I had her Maizie’s Certificate of Citizenship, which she unceremoniously refused. It turned out that the USCIS office who issued the Certificate had not filled in the certification portion at the bottom (it was signed and sealed, but with no dates or other information filled in), but I had never noticed. How I will get this fixed remains to be seen, but that’s... more

Photo: Lulu, just prior to adoption

Jackson, while still more of the strong, silent type, is also doing incredibly well. He doesn’t talk as much as Cora but is plugging right along, and we’ve discovered that he is a big tease. He flashes his dimpled grin at us while simultaneously doing something he knows he shouldn’t, and all we can do is giggle. It’s hopeless. He gets along really well with Cora and is highly protective of her. If she falls or bonks her head, he’s the first one on the scene to offer hugs and kisses. I love... more

Photo: Cora, 9 months, prior to adoption

Lulu, on the other hand, did fairly well. In the beginning, she averaged about one screaming/crying fit per day, and they gradually tapered off over time. There were periods when she was obviously sad, angry or confused, but she handled them incredibly well and we were able to talk through most of them. (This is a major reason I’m such a huge advocate of studying your child’s language while you’re waiting, if you’re adopting internationally). Lulu was generally open to new foods,... more

Photo: Jackson, 16 months, just prior to adoption

I realized earlier in the week that today marks the six-month anniversary of our Haitian kids coming into our family. Whenever I reflect on our adoptions, I always feel in many ways like it’s been such a short time since the new child/ren joined our family, but in other ways it seems like they’ve always been with us.

Since we had visited our children in Haiti twice during the wait (once in October 2005 and again in April/May 2006), so we elected to have them escorted home... more

I’m betting that if you find some Joe Schmo on the street and ask him to tell you the first ten words he thinks of when you give him the word “adoption,” he’s bound to throw in words like “expensive” and “complicated” and even “dangerous.” He might tell you a story about a friend of a friend whose child was “taken back” by a birthparent or about his adopted cousin who ended up in jail (and of course, those two facts must be related.)

Yes, there are some difficult and awful adoption subjects (baby trafficking, disruption, Reactive Attachment Disorder,... more