National Adoption Day- November 22, 2014
deadendp
Posts: 10,434
"National Adoption Day is a collective national effort to raise awareness of the more than 100,000 children in foster care waiting to find permanent, loving families."
Why do I mention this? I mention this because our daughter is one of these children.
K- came to us at a day and a half old. She was born cocaine positive to a homeless, drug addicted prostitute. Because she was the 7th child to be born to her birth mother, the 3rd in a row in this condition, she was immediately taken by the county. Not even 24 hours after giving birth, her birth mother left her at the hospital, never to be involved in her life again.
This is not where K-'s story ends.
On December 22, 2003, I was at work and I got THE call! They had a beautiful baby girl waiting for us. I drove to tell my husband. To tell him in person that we FINALLY had a baby was just more than I wanted to say over the phone. Never mind that I nearly plowed into the side of a car while on the way to tell him.
We called everyone we knew. They called everyone they knew. We went to pick her up and she was wonderful. She still is wonderful, even when I have to battle her to clean her room. :our current morning discussion:
We jumped through the hoops. We did what we needed to do. We had regular home visits from several county workers. They knew that our home was open to them anytime they wanted to stop in.
In early October, we received a letter. It stated that K-'s adoption day would be the very last adoption day of the year-- December 20, 2004. It was her first birthday! We live on a dead end street and we packed the streets around us with friends and family who came to celebrate. There was a snowstorm and people were standing on the back step, waiting to get in. We look forward to celebrating the 10th anniversary of her adoption with her this year.
How is K-? Well, she's soon to turn 11. She's as tall as me and has surpassed me in shoe size. She is a caring, loving kiddo who always gravitates towards loving the unloved. She plays soccer, takes swim lessons at the local university and does archery. She's learning how to play harp. She's excellent in science and will read anything-- probably even a car repair manual. She spent last year with straight A's and consistently keeps good grades. She's starting into that weird middle space between kid and teen. Why do I tell you this? Because so many foster children are left without forever homes. K- came to us with a birth story that not many people would be willing to take. She had been cocaine positive. That has effected her teeth (she had a root canal at 4 because of it, as well as countless fillings) and her immunity. Her immunity is finally building up. She is OCD for time/date & place. Kiddo can drive me a little crazy with it, but we work around it. I told her that we'll find a job for her someday that takes advantage of that.
She's not a throw away kiddo. None of them are. She is a success story of foster-to-adopt.
My husband and I are BIG advocates for domestic, foster care adoption. If anyone has any questions about foster-to-adopt, feel free to PM me. These kiddos need forever homes. We wouldn't trade our daughter for anything in the world. Now, if I can only get her to straighten that room . . .
Why do I mention this? I mention this because our daughter is one of these children.
K- came to us at a day and a half old. She was born cocaine positive to a homeless, drug addicted prostitute. Because she was the 7th child to be born to her birth mother, the 3rd in a row in this condition, she was immediately taken by the county. Not even 24 hours after giving birth, her birth mother left her at the hospital, never to be involved in her life again.
This is not where K-'s story ends.
On December 22, 2003, I was at work and I got THE call! They had a beautiful baby girl waiting for us. I drove to tell my husband. To tell him in person that we FINALLY had a baby was just more than I wanted to say over the phone. Never mind that I nearly plowed into the side of a car while on the way to tell him.
We called everyone we knew. They called everyone they knew. We went to pick her up and she was wonderful. She still is wonderful, even when I have to battle her to clean her room. :our current morning discussion:
We jumped through the hoops. We did what we needed to do. We had regular home visits from several county workers. They knew that our home was open to them anytime they wanted to stop in.
In early October, we received a letter. It stated that K-'s adoption day would be the very last adoption day of the year-- December 20, 2004. It was her first birthday! We live on a dead end street and we packed the streets around us with friends and family who came to celebrate. There was a snowstorm and people were standing on the back step, waiting to get in. We look forward to celebrating the 10th anniversary of her adoption with her this year.
How is K-? Well, she's soon to turn 11. She's as tall as me and has surpassed me in shoe size. She is a caring, loving kiddo who always gravitates towards loving the unloved. She plays soccer, takes swim lessons at the local university and does archery. She's learning how to play harp. She's excellent in science and will read anything-- probably even a car repair manual. She spent last year with straight A's and consistently keeps good grades. She's starting into that weird middle space between kid and teen. Why do I tell you this? Because so many foster children are left without forever homes. K- came to us with a birth story that not many people would be willing to take. She had been cocaine positive. That has effected her teeth (she had a root canal at 4 because of it, as well as countless fillings) and her immunity. Her immunity is finally building up. She is OCD for time/date & place. Kiddo can drive me a little crazy with it, but we work around it. I told her that we'll find a job for her someday that takes advantage of that.
She's not a throw away kiddo. None of them are. She is a success story of foster-to-adopt.
My husband and I are BIG advocates for domestic, foster care adoption. If anyone has any questions about foster-to-adopt, feel free to PM me. These kiddos need forever homes. We wouldn't trade our daughter for anything in the world. Now, if I can only get her to straighten that room . . .
2014: Cincinnati
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
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Comments
I hope her health continues to improve and strengthen...and that those able and willing seriously consider adopting. There are too many in similar situations as your K was.
And yes, hedonist, we are all very thankful and definitely fortunate to have K. Would love to see more kiddos like mine get forever homes.
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
As of earlier this year, we now officially have two adopted grand-nephews- two really fine young men with a couple of great parents (one of my nephews and his wife) doing a fabulous job.
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
It's not to say that over the years we haven't had some stupid ass shit said to us. My husband's extended family don't look too fondly on adoption. To his cousins and extended family, she is different, they treat her as such and we're almost shunned in a way. Well, they can bite me.
When we were in the wait process for K, we put it out there that we wanted anyone to ask us anything. We've kept the same policy now. My husband's parents didn't say that they didn't approve, but they kept giving us pamphlets to go to other countries to adopt. They wanted us to go to China and Guatemala. Now, it isn't to be said that these children don't need homes. It wasn't where our hearts calling led us. In all honesty and to put it quite bluntly, my in-laws did not want us to adopt a child that was African-American. In their eyes, ANY other race would be fine. My husband and I told them from the beginning that we did not specify race. We told them that we left it open and that we would end up with the child we were meant to have. I didn't realize my SIL felt the same way until the first time she held K. K was a few months old, (my SIL lives out of town) and she looked up and said, "Aren't you so glad she's white?"
She could have knocked me down with a feather.
:confused tip of the head: "We didn't care."
Really?
(It should be said that my in-laws love K to death and have no issue with her adoption. We just had to get them past the first hurdles.)
We had friend's parents yell at us for having plans to build into K's life that she was adopted. (K was only an infant at the time.) "Um, how would we explain the open relationship we have with her siblings?"
We've gotten the excited, "OH! Where did you adopt from?" After telling them the county south of us, it was kind of a let down to the person asking. They wanted to hear some grand story of how we went by boat and critter caravan to rescue our child. Again, internationally adopted children DO need homes. In our case, we felt the need to go 20 miles south and give a child here a forever home.
We've had people say, "Oh, I could never adopt." That's alright. Truly. Not everyone is equipped to do so and that is okay.
"I could never adopt someone with different genes than me." Here's a news flash-- your own genes are a crapshoot. This was a seasonal coworker who thought he carried a superior set of genes and thought that he was, in fact, God's gift to humanity. I have to argue otherwise.
I also have HUGE issues with adoption disruption. Adoption disruption is when people decide that this child is just not working out for them and RETURN THEM. Adopted children do not come with a forever return policy or a non-expiring gift receipt. I understand that there are RARE times that disruption is a need. In America, there is an ugly underground child trade system of people. Children who were adopted but seen as not fitting in with their "forever" family are then traded off to other families. (Sometimes they are just placed on planes with a one-way ticket back to their homeland.) These are sometimes Craigslist postings of parental groups. They have found that in some situations, these children have been placed with rather unsavory folks. :shakes of the head: Really? That practice needs to stop. This breaks my heart.
As I've said before in other postings I've done on other sites, we did not adopt to be viewed as "heroic." We didn't adopt to have some gold pin and parade. We adopted to be a family. K needed a family and we wanted to give that to her. Bringing up National Adoption Day is just to bring awareness to the foster children here who are waiting for forever homes.
Happy National Adoption Day, K!
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
Our daughter is adopted. From India. She arrived when she was 8 months old. (We have a birth son, too.) Orphanages in China and India (and I'm sure other countries) are filled with girls who are given up because - well, they're not boys. Our daughter just turned 18 and she is fabulous. We count our blessings every day. If we were younger we would look into adopting a foster child. And I agree with your comment - we didn't adopt to be heroic either - we wanted family. Congratulations to you, your husband, and your daughter.
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
I told my ob/gyn when I was having fertility issues that she should talk more to her patients about adopting - not just fertility doctors and fertility treatments. Adoption is such a gift for both parties.
Your discussion with your ob/gyn is right on. We experienced mid-pregnancy loss and were advised not to try again, as the end result would be the same. I barely escaped death myself. We talked of different birth control, but never had a "have you considered adoption" discussion. My husband and I had talked about it while I was in the hospital, so perhaps she heard that. I was in and out and can patch some things together, but don't have a lot of details of the 8 1/2 days unless people told me.
Stating this, we always planned on adopting. We talked about it on our first date, so we knew that it was always going to be. (Both of us were in a place where we knew we were looking to settle down and neither one of us are really the text book "normal" anyone thinks of anyhow.) It may not have been in the exact path that we would have gone for, but everything worked out the way it was meant to be and we wouldn't trade K in for anything in the world.
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1