Our family is very excited to be in the process of bringing home our next child, another daughter, our Clara Rose, who will become the baby of our family. It would be misleading not to mention, that like most people who are adding a new child, whether by birth, adoption, or step kids through marriage, we are a little nervous. Our family dynamic will once again change and everyone will need to make adjustments.
Gabrielle and Xavier both made a huge adjustment when we brought Josie home. Gabrielle, while still the oldest, was no longer her Daddy's only daughter. Xavier was usurped as the baby in their Daddy’s home. I became a mom to a little girl who is quite insistent on my attention and another child was added to the mix for Wim to keep tabs on—especially on week day mornings when the goings are already pretty hectic. Everyone made adjustments and we have grown into our new roles and transformed into a slightly different family that is filled with more love, more activity, and sometimes more irritability, with little Josie Dong Dong.
This time around, not only will there be the adjustment of adding a new family member and everyone’s role in the family changing, we will be adding another layer in that our new daughter, Clara Rose, has Microtia Atresia. Neither Wim nor I want Clara Rose to be defined by her medical condition. However, some folks may or may not be questioning our decision to adopt again and even more so to adopt a child with a known medical condition—and a medical condition that probably many of our family and friends are not familiar with.
We’ve decided to address these issues in the blog and hopefully it will cover questions/concerns that anyone may have but does not feel comfortable asking. So, this post and a few others to describe Microtia Atresia will be somewhat lengthy and not the typical light hearted blog posts I typically provide. After making these posts, I will return to posting the family activity posts as I typically post and will no longer focus on the issues of Special Needs Adoption, and Microtia Atresia. While these issues are a component of our lives- there are not and will not become a focal point.
Wim and I decided to adopt again for a few reasons. 1) We like being parents; 2) The key to staying young is to have young kids around—at least this is what we have been told; 3) We want Josie to have a sibling close to her age.
Wim and I preferred to adopt from China again because even though the length of the wait grew to such an extreme the first time around, China still has one of the best, if not the best, internationally run adoption programs. We also want Josie and her new sibling to have a similar birth culture and background.
As most of you know, the wait to adopt from China grew to a much longer wait when we adopted Josie. This wait has continued to grow even longer. Since we brought Josie home, China has only processed 3 months of approved adoption paperwork. The wait to adopt a *healthy* baby, as young as possible, is approaching 4 years from the time China receives the application. Granted, this is not a reason to adopt a child with medical needs, but many of the medical needs in China adoptions are not what we would consider to be serious. Many are easily correctable with surgery or some other type of treatment that is readily available in the US.
Wim and I actually briefly discussed adopting from China through the Special Needs program while we were in China adopting Josie.
After we were home with Josie for a year we began talking about another adoption and we felt our choices, given what we want our life to look like, were fairly clear if we were going to proceed with another adoption: 1) Wait until Josie is a little older ~6 years and adopt a child from China that is a year or two younger than her but who would be considered a Waiting Child (not as long of a wait); 2) Start the process now for a child not older than 3 but who has a medical condition that we feel our family can address without much hardship; 3) Don’t adopt again.
After much discussion, research into other adoption programs from Taiwan and Korea, research into several special needs/medical conditions—Wim and I decided that we would adopt again from China through their special needs program. Our plan at that time was complete our paperwork that would list a few medical conditions and age range desired that we would be open to, submit it to our chosen adoption agency, then wait to be matched with a child in that manner.
As it turned out, I happened to be browsing through a couple of websites that advocate for the adoption children with special needs and saw the file for the little girl we are going to adopt. I think I have mentioned to most folks, that she has Microtia Atresia, or malformed ears. There will be another blog post specifically about this medical condition. In this post, suffice it to say, that this is actually the medical condition that Wim and I had felt would be the easiest to address. Once we researched it, we both said, “That’s no big deal.”
Imagine our thoughts to see the posting for this little girl who is 14 months younger than Josie—then discovering from the Agency listing her that she was still available for adoption. We couldn’t believe we found the perfect fit for our family!
Clara Rose is exactly what we had hoped for!
So now we begin preparing for our family dynamics to change again. Gabrielle will remain the oldest—now the oldest of four Kids, which she recently informed us that she thinks it will be really cool.
Xavier will remain the only boy—now surrounded by three sisters.
Josie Dong Dong will be usurped of her role as the baby—we’re not sure how well that is going to go-over. She is already referring to Clara Rose as, “No Rose!”
I will be the mother of two daughters—I am really hoping Clara Rose is more of a Daddy’s girl than Josie Dong Dong!
Wim will be Daddy to four kids, three of which are girls. He has recently noted that our cat and dog are also girls and he has a sneaking suspicion that if we had the gender checked on Xavier’s leopard gecko, we would find that it is a girl as well.
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