This letter was written by the birth mother of a boy born with special needs in the 1940’s. It was sent along with her son as he was being sent to Woodlands, an institution in Burnaby. Back then parents were urged to give up parental rights and put their disabled children in institutions. They were told it was the best thing for everyone and for the child’s best interest there should be no further contact. Thankfully we have moved past these beliefs in BC but I think these conditions and pressures are still very prevalent in Eastern Europe. I will have little to no information on my daughters birth family but this letter has softened my attitude towards them. I believe that they loved her. They did the best thing they knew how to do for her. They listened to the advice of the doctors and placed her in a place that they believed would care for her specific needs better then they themselves would be able to do. I am so thankful that my daughter’s mother did make that choice. She will have a better life because her mother made that selfless, difficult decision…

To Those In Whose Hands God Has Placed My Darling son,

Dear Sirs:

This is just a few lines to outline to you some of my little boys habits. I do hope you don’t mind my writing this to you.

I have put his name on all his clothes, which he has plenty of for the time being. This is the first time I have been parted from him and it seems very terrible to me just now, and yet I know it is all for the best. I  understand him so well and have loved doing everything for him for so long but my strength has given out and so now I must leave the rest to God.

He talks to me quite a bit with his eyes, but does say these few words: Ma Ma, Da Da, car, cow, I go out now, Ma Ma up, Bow Wow, Ball Boat, Walk, Nan Na meaning his granny, and when he wants a drink he says Ma instead of milk.

I have had him trained since he was two years old, and put him to the toilet every morning as soon as he is awake and mostly once or twice in the middle of the night when he wants to go he can’t say it but looks down and kicks his legs and when he wants a drink of water at night he opens his mouth wide. I always had terrible trouble with his bowels right from when he was a baby, and so I have given him two tablespoons of mineral oil every night along with the same amount of Cod Liver Oil every night of this life and even then he only has a bowel movement every second night before he is washed for the night. After breakfast I dress him and put him right  in his walker which he calls his car car and he is in it until lunch time, after that a little rest and in it again until supper time, and then after that I prepare him for bed, but he loves his walker and I do hope you will let him be in it a lot, except of  course when he isn’t well.

He was ruptured when very small from crying so much but this has never seemed to bother him as I have never let him cry very much. If he is naughty I just wheel him in another room and shut the door and in five minutes he has cried it out and is alright again. He is very patient and I hope you will all love him and that he gets adapted to his surroundings quickly. I am sure he will be happier once he gets used to your ways: I quite understand that he is not the only child to be cared for, that there are so many, and am only writing this because I cannot face bringing him all the way their and I thought these would be a few things you might have asked me if I had come. If there is ever anything you want me to send to him please let me know. I am packing a can of Hot Chocolate in his suit case as he loves that or cocoa but don’t drink much milk except cream on his porridge in the morning. He eats and likes practically anything  except  he doesn’t digest cabbage or corn very well, and does not chew his food quite as he should. I have really mashed up everything which I know I shouldn’t have done.

I am sending along his toys for him to share with the others. I do hope he is allowed to play with them and have others amuse him.

My dear mother and my husband are bringing him and would you please let me know how he is from time to time and please let me know when you transfer him to New Westminster.

I am also sending along his story books he loves being read to and three little pictures to hand at the head of his bed, if you had been short of cribs he has a lovely white one he could have shipped over their, as I know there are so many little patients and I have lots of nice bedding  for him, if you could use his own little crib let me know.

I really must close now. I didn’t intend to take up so much of your valuable time reading my long letter but I wanted to make things a little easier by explaining.

Thanking you all in advance for caring for my darling son,
              I am
                 Yours sincerely,
                             Mrs. Muriel

This week I got the drive to finish up Livi and her soon-to-be sister’s room. I don’t know what really got in to me… especially since Jon and I have been sick with really bad colds. I think it can only been explained by the “nesting” instinct!

My sister came over and cut in on the edges while I rolled the bright purple paint on 🙂 I took advantage of Jon staying home sick on Thursday and drove out to Richmond to pick up the girls’ beds. I found them on Craigslist for a VERY reasonable price from a manufacturer. I got both bed frames and one mattress in my Mom’s minivan!

Thursday night things were clean and set up enough for Livi to sleep in her new room. Livi was literally bouncing off the walls with excitement for her new room, but when it came down to being bed time Livi had some anxiety. She cried on and off for a bit while we coddled and tried to comfort her. She only took about an hour to settle down and slept the whole night through! Nap and night time the next day were not an issue. She loves her new bed. She loves her new room and continues to drag us back to play with her in it.

Friday, I finished transferring Livi’s clothes and putting up pictures….

After running around all day and setting up the girls’ room I finally sat down around 7pm to check my email. My heart jumped as I saw one from our adoption agency with the subject “Bulgaria”! Why did I wait until after hours, before a weekend to check my email?!?! Our Dossier was accepted and registered and attached were two proposals for little girls needing a Mommy and Daddy! Jon was sitting beside me and we started reading. I was crying. One of these girls is my baby!!! I still can’t believe it!

The proposals were both not very complete and did not have pictures. We have to make an official request to get the full packages of information, which we will be doing on Monday. Both girls were born in April 2008, so they are 4 months older than Livi. Both girls have Down Syndrome, both are in the same orphanage and, from the little information we have, both seem to be developmentally quite similar. How do we choose?!!!! This seems like an impossible task.

We’ll be waiting to make our official decision until we have the full files, but we know that one of these girls is our girl! We’ll be asking our agency to hold back the pictures of the girls and only send us the one of the child we choose. Since they are both in the same orphanage, I don’t want to know which child we said no too and have to leave her in that orphanage. It would break my heart more than having to make this decision. It seems so absurd to choose one child over the other. Please don’t get me wrong, this decision is going to bring one of the best blessings for our family and I don’t really believe that there is a wrong decision here… I just want to make the right one. Does that make sense?

Stay tuned for more info!!!

Monday night Jon and I had the opportunity to talk with the president and vice president of Anido, our Bulgarian agency! This evening was just what I needed at this stage of the adoption. I don’t feel any less eager to get things moving with the adoption but the anxiety I was feeling has been relieved… for the moment any way 🙂 The information was first hand and complete. I got a lot of the rumors I’d been hearing cleared up and some reasons behind things cleared up. It was invaluable and I’m so glad we got to go.

International adoption is ever changing, very political, and quite based on relationships between agencies. People who think adoption is the “easy” way out are very mistaken. Our Canadian agency, Sunrise, had gone to Bulgaria a few years ago to start developing their relationship with Anido and it was their turn to come check things out here. They started the evening by giving us a bit of a synopsis of how things looked in Bulgaria as it related to adoption. It was a lot of info to take in so I’m just going to write out some of the more pertinent parts that relate to our developmental special needs adoption… which is DEFINITELY not the norm for Anido.

– There are four types of orphanages in Bulgaria…Ages 0-3, 4-7, 7-18, and severe special needs orphanages. Down Syndrome is classified as a severe special need. (Sadly so is deaf and blindness, even if they are developmentally typical.) In the typical orphanages the children have all their needs met (aside from the obvious downsides of orphanage life). The special needs orphanages are not so lucky and “are not is as good a shape” as the vice president put it.

– 90% of the orphans are given up because of poverty. Their parents do not have the resources to care for them.10% are given up because they have health issues. It is the 10% that we are interested in 🙂

– Children are available for international adoption after one year of age.

– An interesting cultural difference in looking at ages is if you say in your home study that you want child “under 3”, you will get a proposal for a 2 year old. If you are open to a 3 year old you have to say “under 4 years old.”

– Another rumor that was cleared up for me was the 2 month proposal thing. I, along with a lot of other people, understood that the agencies shuffle files of children between them every two months. This had me really worried about correct timing for finding our child and frustrated with how inefficient that process was. Thankfully, this is misinformation. There is a centralized registry of all the children. When an agency does take a file of a child to propose to a family, they can only hold on to it for two months to make sure no other agencies take it and propose it to another family. This ensures families don’t get attached to one child only to have it be adopted before they finish up their own paper work. That does happen in many other countries.

– Once our Dossier is accepted Anido registers us in the Adoptive Parent Registry and we are put on the list. The Ministry of Justice then looks at their list of children and starts going down the list of parents to see if any of the kids meet their criteria. Special needs kids are prioritized. The wait time for a typical, healthy child under three is 3 years… the wait time for a kid with DS is 3 days – 3 weeks!!! Can we all say YAY!!!!

I had a hard time relating to the other potential parents in the room. We were the only people in the meeting interested in adopting a child with special needs. We were the youngest couple in there. We are not looking at a long wait. One woman I talked to has been waiting 4 years already! We (thankfully) don’t have grief issues around not being able to have a biological child. I can’t imagine the grief that this causes but I get frustrated at the idea that adoption is a way to guarantee parents get a “perfect” child. One woman was frustrated with the fact that there was no way to ensure the birth mother hadn’t drank during the pregnancy. This is Europe we are dealing with here… everyone drinks! Perfectly “imperfect” children are the way to go!

So what’s the hold up with our Dossier? Well, Bulgaria has a lot of National holidays, like stats in Canada, so their vacation days add up. They don’t need to use them because they have so many long weekends. So, the government forced people with too much vacation banked up to take a vacation… which was everyone. Everything stopped and there is at least an extra month added on to everything. We were told between 2-3 months for our Dossier to be approved. It now looks like it will be closer to 4 months. We are almost at the 3 month mark for our wait. Once we are approved though, our waiting should be almost over! I do have to remember that international adoption is very unpredictable and tons of different things could happen or go wrong.

One really exciting thing that Anido told us is that we could probably get a video of our daughter with, or shortly after, our proposal! That will be so fabulous to see her moving and maybe hear her voice and her laugh. How incredible! I just have to detach myself from thinking of her in an orphanage that doesn’t have enough of the bare essentials for all the children. I don’t know how I’m going to cope with leaving her there after the first trip. I cry just thinking about it. Our friends had a really great experience with the orphanage that they picked up their son from. Hopefully ours isn’t as bad as I’m imagining. I need to stop imagining.

I think this evening was really good for Jon too. When we started this adoption process Jon had just started a new job. Most of his attention was going to that and I was in charge of all the particulars with the adoption. I find all the info, get all the paper work and just keep Jon up to date and involved where he needs to be. He knows he wants to adopt but has not begun the attachment process like I have. I think it takes some guys a little longer than moms. It took Jon until after Livi was born to be attached to her, where as I was in the process of attaching since the first time I felt her move in my belly. I think this evening made it a lot more real for him. He couldn’t sleep that night because he was “too excited about the adoption!”