Adopting a Snowflake

[Low C Sharp]

Anytime someone has a child, no matter how it's conceived, there's a possibility of problems. If you can't handle that thought, you really shouldn't be having children in any way!

This is so important. Yes, the odds of a serious problem differ depending on how the child joins the family. But EVERY child presents the risk of catastrophic physical, emotional, or mental disabilities. Every parent takes the risk of having an adult child who can't care for him or herself. It is something a lot more people should think about before they have kids the old-fashioned way.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by greekdee

Okay, you guys need to clue me in -- I'm not getting what is so disturbing about the word "condition."

It wasn't one word, it was the whole phrase.

Originally Posted by KSUViolet06

That type of interaction would have NEVER happened when say, my mom was a teen. They had the stories of girls getting pregnant and "going away" for 9 months. Then coming back after having given up their babies for adoption. No one ever talked about it. They never got to see their kids (until years later when they were adults.) It was all very hush hush and adoptive parents wouldnt dream of speaking to the birth mom. They got the bare minimum of info about the parents because everything was so discreet.

Closed adoptions have NEVER prevented the mother from telling the (usually) doctor who's facilitating the adoption "I have a family history of breast cancer, my dad's dad had a heart condition, etc etc." If the woman didn't share that, it's because she didn't know herself. If she was impregnated by a man she never saw again, it's pretty hard to know what his medical history is.

My cousin is adopted. It was through the family doctor and supposedly (this is what someone started to tell my mom in the grocery store one day, but she put her hands over her ears and said LALALALALALA) the mother was a teenage daughter from a prominent family in town. He has never had any interest in knowing who his bio parents were - I'm probably more curious about it than he is, just by virtue of writing this post. I know that there were some other cases where people wanted to keep adoptions closed, but they had to tell the kids because of the fear that they'd end up dating their half-siblings.

Have the information on file, but you don't have to look at it if you don't want to. I almost think that things have swung too far the other way nowadays, and there's a pressure to keep things open even if one or several of the parties (birth parents, adoptive parents, child) would really rather not.

[carnation]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Closed adoptions have NEVER prevented the mother from telling the (usually) doctor who's facilitating the adoption "I have a family history of breast cancer, my dad's dad had a heart condition, etc etc." If the woman didn't share that, it's because she didn't know herself. If she was impregnated by a man she never saw again, it's pretty hard to know what his medical history is.

They haven't- but hardly any adoptees I know have any medical history, be they domestic or international adoptees. A lot of adoptions go like this: "here's an apparently healthy kid, do you want to adopt him/her?" And people are so desperate for a baby that they don't ask any questions.

Sometimes the adoptive parents or adoptees do get some medical history later on. We had none on one of our girls at first but were able to get in touch with her birthfamily; good thing, because her birthdad died of diabetes in his 40s so she knows she needs to watch for it. (And now we are all big buddies with them on Facebook, haha.)

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by 33girl

My cousin is adopted. It was through the family doctor and supposedly (this is what someone started to tell my mom in the grocery store one day, but she put her hands over her ears and said LALALALALALA) the mother was a teenage daughter from a prominent family in town. He has never had any interest in knowing who his bio parents were - I'm probably more curious about it than he is, just by virtue of writing this post. I know that there were some other cases where people wanted to keep adoptions closed, but they had to tell the kids because of the fear that they'd end up dating their half-siblings.

Have the information on file, but you don't have to look at it if you don't want to. I almost think that things have swung too far the other way nowadays, and there's a pressure to keep things open even if one or several of the parties (birth parents, adoptive parents, child) would really rather not.

The operative phrase here is "through the family doctor." In smallish towns, there might be a lot of information (either confirmed or hearsay) about the birthparents. In locations where girls went out of town to have the baby, the information is very, very scant.

My HS Spanish teacher was very open about having given her daughter up for adoption--it was one of those old-style closed adoption where she gave birth and never saw the baby again. The girl reached out to her when she turned 18; they weren't been able to find the birth father at all.

Originally Posted by carnation

A lot of adoptions go like this: "here's an apparently healthy kid, do you want to adopt him/her?" And people are so desperate for a baby that they don't ask any questions.

Joan Didion's new book is coming out next month...she says that she and her husband got a call from their doctor (with whom they had been tentatively discussing adoption but hadn't made any decisions) saying that he had a healthy white newborn and if they wanted her. They weren't prepared at all and decided to just go on and do it.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by carnation

They haven't- but hardly any adoptees I know have any medical history, be they domestic or international adoptees. A lot of adoptions go like this: "here's an apparently healthy kid, do you want to adopt him/her?" And people are so desperate for a baby that they don't ask any questions.

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

The operative phrase here is "through the family doctor." In smallish towns, there might be a lot of information (either confirmed or hearsay) about the birthparents. In locations where girls went out of town to have the baby, the information is very, very scant.

My point is just that you don't need to have an open adoption to know about the baby's medical history. There's nothing preventing the birth mother from writing down as much family medical history as she knows and giving it to the adoption agency, along with the baby. If that info doesn't get passed on, then the agency (or whoever the adoption facilitator is) is the one falling down on the job.

I understand being desperate, but you have to think at the same time. If you can't do that, enlist a lawyer or somone else who will do the cold hard thinking for you and pull you back if you're going to do something unwise. If you have $$$$$ to spend on all these other things, you have it to spend on a lawyer.

[carnation]

What you deal with a lot in international adoption (and sometimes domestic, especially if the father could be one of many guys) is that there's no way you're going to get any information. Ever. If you want a child, you take it.

Most adopting families I know wanted their child enough to deal with unknowns. Very often, scant or no information is a given. Furthermore, we know of many cases where birthparents have lied about their medical history.

It's a choice--do you want this child enough to deal with no information or the fact that it may be unreliable? Potential adopters, especially if they've been trying to give birth and/or adopt for years, are going to say, "YES!! When can I have her? Yesterday?"

[KSUViolet06]

^^^True. Church friends of mine have 2 kids from Vietnam.

They know zero about either of their birth families. They've tried and tried to find it but it's just not there.

There are a number of reasons for that. Medical recordkeeping isn't always on the level of what it is here in America, or the mom may have seriously just dropped the baby off at the orphanage and kept going, not wanting to identify herself. In some cases, the mom isn't even alive.

[greekdee]

I actually have some info about our adopted son, BUT he was 7 years-old when we adopted him, had been taken from his birth parents and placed in an orphanage when he was 5-years.

We were, however, warned not to fully trust the medical info we were given. Even if his immunization records were legit, there was the chance that the serum had been purchased on the black market, or that the serum the orphanage had been given was outdated.

He was supposedly given a battery of tests while in the Ukraine, but our pediatricians at home -- very familiar with Eastern Europe -- redid everything. HIV, TB, Hepatitis, -- he was retested for them all. They completely started his immunizations over. Said it would not hurt him and that way we would be absolutely sure he was properly immunized.

Now get this -- at the time we adopted, the Ukraine would not allow 100 percent healthy children to be adopted. They had to have some kind of medical diagnosis and it was pretty common for orphanage pediatricians to "find" something wrong just so the child could be adopted. We were told our son had mitral valve prolapse, an extremely common and non-life threatening cardiac condition, but enough to get him out of the country. Well, our regular pediatrician as well as a pediatric cardiologist do NOT detect it or see any diagnostic evidence of it...so his diagnosis was one of the fake ones listed in order to make him eligible for adoption.

I have copies of all the social service and court records pertaining to him and his siblings being taken from the biological parents. I have parents names, birth dates and a pretty good write-up of how lousy and negligent they were. (I also know things based on what our son has told us.) Our son has six bio siblings, all who had been adopted before him. (We would have never broken up a sibling group!) So far, we've found his two younger brothers, adopted and living outside of Naples, Italy. He has four older sisters who could be anywhere in the world. Records are sealed with cement, but I have their names and birth dates and will hopefully be able to locate them one of these days. The oldest would only be 20 right now.

As for family medical history, we were given no info on that.

[AXEling]

I was adopted at birth (closed adoption, and I'm American-born), and I don't know anything about my biological medical history (not sure if that's the terminology I'm looking for) or birth parents. My adoptive mother probably wasn't told anything about the birth parents' medical histories.

I emailed the adoption lawyers that handled my case and they told me I can't have any information about anything until I am 21 (about a year and a half away). I'd really like to know my medical history (what might I carry that can be passed to my children?), and plus it'd be kinda cool to potentially see what region my ancestors came from.