As I said in my earlier posts, I knew a little about albinism because of my involvement in a discussion group for adoptive parents of Chinese children with special needs (our Sofie had a congenital heart defect, hence my membership in the group). There were many adoptive families in the group with children with albinism, and I’d caught enough bits and pieces of their discussions to know that people with it have low vision and needed to be careful in the sun. Once we got home from Haiti, I asked for pictures of the baby, but weeks went by and no pictures came. My husband and I prayed about what to do, and in the meantime, we finally got a single photo, taken from an odd angle, that showed a baby girl with a shock of bright orange hair, sitting in a playpen. We immediately noticed that she seemed to bear a resemblance to one of our biological twins, and we laughed that we could find a child as pale as he is (and he is PALE!) all the way in Haiti. :)

On Thanksgiving weekend 2005, while visiting my in-laws, we officially accepted Cora’s referral. We still didn’t really have a good sense for what she looked like and her medical/developmental records were scant, but we felt good about adding her to our family and moved ahead with things. That same weekend, we got several new pictures, showing a baby with a huge orange afro. (She now sports a lovely strawberry blonde shade).

In late April/early May of 2006, we flew to Haiti a second time to visit our children and had the opportunity to finally meet Cora in person. In front of the main orphanage, we were handed a SCREAMING, red-faced, scabies-covered baby girl with a giant umbilical hernia. I tried to keep my fears at bay and told myself that once we could get her back to the hotel and check her out (and she could settle down), things would be OK. In the van on the way to the hotel, she clung to me for dear life, patted my back and eventually fell asleep.

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