NaBloPoMo '07 Part 5: On "Choosing"
November 20, 2007
Part 2: Shen
We adopted Shen for Kai. That sounds wrong I know, but it is true. We never sat down and drew out a plan to have a family of four boys: two bio-kids two years apart, wait twelve years add two more boys one year apart through adoption. I mean, what kind of plan is that? And besides, I was the "reluctant husband" every time. We started with just one boy, and he was great, and we loved him. But he seemed lonely, and so we decided to make him a sibling. So one of the reasons we had Ben was because we already had Cameron.
Once we found our way to Kai the same thing sort of happened; he was great, we loved him, but he seemed lonely. So we set out to find him a sibling. There were a number of factors we weighed as we started out down the road to Shen. Since Kai is the only child in our family adopted from China, we thought it would be nice for him to have a sibling with that in common, so adopting from China again was the first criteria. We were happy with our experience working with our agency's Waiting Children program, and because of our age, and Kai's, we wanted to adopt a toddler again. We also hoped to find a child with a similar limb difference to Kai's as this would give them both someone close to share this rather uncommon experience/challenge with. Though we know people who have had good experiences adopting "out of birth order" we felt for us it would be better to find a child younger than Kai. As to gender, after three boys, the initial choice was obviously a girl this time, but the more we talked about it the more unrealistic this looked for us. We live in a very small house, and space-wise there is no physical room for a girl, unless we wanted to raise her as a boy.
So, now we had defined our search criteria: boy, under 4 years old, from China, with a limb difference. You'd think that if you get this picky about something it would never happen, but then the universe has a funny way of working sometimes. We started looking at the kids on our agency's current list. The first little boy we were drawn to had an amazing little smile, and we were quite smitten with him, but his file was already under serious review by another family and they decided to adopt him by the time we asked to see his file. In hindsight he was quite a bit younger than we were really looking for, so again, I think the universe was looking out for us there.
And then there was Shen. There were some factors that deterred us at first. He was exactly one year younger than Kai, that was a bit closer in age than we had first imagined(It also meant another December birthday). And the pictures of him didn't project a "I'm a crazy loving kid just waiting to play with you!!" kind of feeling...
These were what we had to go on. And a medical report that rated his IQ at 75. That was qualified by the fact he couldn't complete the tasks requiring two hands, so not a real clear measure to go on. Even more fun, when we had two different local doctors look at his medical report for us they misread it and believed he had hepatitis C. Both doctors cautioned us strongly regarding the impact on our family bringing home a child with this condition would have. Our agency actually arranged with the orphanage to have him retested and it was clear that he was actually negative for hep-C. Having cleared that hurdle, we were starting to feel a commitment to this little guy and decided to move forward with the adoption.
In reality, the "choice" to have any of our children was much more complex than what I've put forward here, but my point is that even in going through the motions of choosing a Waiting Child to adopt you don't really have that much control. Who would have known from the pictures above that the little boy entering our lives would be this guy?
We adopted Shen for Kai. That sounds wrong I know, but it is true. We never sat down and drew out a plan to have a family of four boys: two bio-kids two years apart, wait twelve years add two more boys one year apart through adoption. I mean, what kind of plan is that? And besides, I was the "reluctant husband" every time. We started with just one boy, and he was great, and we loved him. But he seemed lonely, and so we decided to make him a sibling. So one of the reasons we had Ben was because we already had Cameron.
Once we found our way to Kai the same thing sort of happened; he was great, we loved him, but he seemed lonely. So we set out to find him a sibling. There were a number of factors we weighed as we started out down the road to Shen. Since Kai is the only child in our family adopted from China, we thought it would be nice for him to have a sibling with that in common, so adopting from China again was the first criteria. We were happy with our experience working with our agency's Waiting Children program, and because of our age, and Kai's, we wanted to adopt a toddler again. We also hoped to find a child with a similar limb difference to Kai's as this would give them both someone close to share this rather uncommon experience/challenge with. Though we know people who have had good experiences adopting "out of birth order" we felt for us it would be better to find a child younger than Kai. As to gender, after three boys, the initial choice was obviously a girl this time, but the more we talked about it the more unrealistic this looked for us. We live in a very small house, and space-wise there is no physical room for a girl, unless we wanted to raise her as a boy.
So, now we had defined our search criteria: boy, under 4 years old, from China, with a limb difference. You'd think that if you get this picky about something it would never happen, but then the universe has a funny way of working sometimes. We started looking at the kids on our agency's current list. The first little boy we were drawn to had an amazing little smile, and we were quite smitten with him, but his file was already under serious review by another family and they decided to adopt him by the time we asked to see his file. In hindsight he was quite a bit younger than we were really looking for, so again, I think the universe was looking out for us there.
And then there was Shen. There were some factors that deterred us at first. He was exactly one year younger than Kai, that was a bit closer in age than we had first imagined(It also meant another December birthday). And the pictures of him didn't project a "I'm a crazy loving kid just waiting to play with you!!" kind of feeling...
These were what we had to go on. And a medical report that rated his IQ at 75. That was qualified by the fact he couldn't complete the tasks requiring two hands, so not a real clear measure to go on. Even more fun, when we had two different local doctors look at his medical report for us they misread it and believed he had hepatitis C. Both doctors cautioned us strongly regarding the impact on our family bringing home a child with this condition would have. Our agency actually arranged with the orphanage to have him retested and it was clear that he was actually negative for hep-C. Having cleared that hurdle, we were starting to feel a commitment to this little guy and decided to move forward with the adoption.
In reality, the "choice" to have any of our children was much more complex than what I've put forward here, but my point is that even in going through the motions of choosing a Waiting Child to adopt you don't really have that much control. Who would have known from the pictures above that the little boy entering our lives would be this guy?
