Not Knowing

I think, when you put aside the agonizing mountains of paperwork and scrutiny (background checks, classes, home studies, fingerprints) and waiting one must go through to adopt a child, the hardest and most difficult part of adoption is the fact that you truly do not know a medical history for your child.  We are seeing that three times over with our children.

While we have an "open" adoption with Caleb's birthmother, we still do not truly know his biological parents' medical history.  While we're pretty sure we know who his birthfather is, we do not have any medical history from him as he was not involved in the adoption process.  In fact, he never responded to any communication from our attorney and the court had to terminate his paternal rights due to the lack of response.

We have called Caleb's birthmother and his maternal grandmother to try and get information, but we do not know how accurate that information is, especially in light of the fact that his birthmother has a cardiac problem that she adamantly denies is a cardiac problem.

When we saw the geneticist a week ago, he is quite concerned about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome for Caleb, even though Caleb does not have the facial features of it.  However, without having concrete proof that his birthmother drank, we will never know for sure, especially since she denies alcohol or drug use.

Caleb has had every genetics test performed that is available at this time and those tests have not revealed anything to us.  His geneticist is looking at some scans that were done more than a year ago and we are waiting to hear his thoughts on those.  I pray for some answers for Caleb and for us and am hoping that these scans will provide some of those answers, even if that means we need to start thinking about some VERY serious things.  If that is the answer that we receive, we will do what is best for Caleb and continue to probe for answers, whatever they might be.  If the doctor does not see anything that concerns him, we will just continue to do what we can to help Caleb, as we have been doing.  We know that whatever the answers are, God will be with us and continue to give us the strength to make it through each and every day as He has been.

Now, Cassidy!  We are taking her to the same neuropsychologist that Caleb saw almost two years ago to see if we can get some better answers on how to help best her.  I pray that we get some good results from this testing! We also have very limited information from Cassidy's birthmother and nothing from her birthfather.  Because of the nature of Cassidy's adoption through the state, it is "closed" until she reaches 18 and she decides she wants information.

Knowing the reason she was taken into state custody and things that her birthparents were involved in, I pray that our nurturing of her and God's grace will be enough to squash out what has the potential to be there from genetic nature.

Steven's adoption is the same as Cassidy.  We have very limited information from his birthmother and nothing from his birthfather.  Thankfully, Steven's developmental pediatrician is going to see about having some genetics testing done to see if it will give us any insight, but we know that nothing is 100%.

So we will continue to plug along each and every day with the beautiful children that God has blessed us with and do our best with the limited knowledge that we have!  Some days though I do wish we had a crystal ball to know exactly what was going on with our kiddos!