Hello to everyone. I hope you enjoyed your weekends.

For me, it was a mixture of so many feelings starting with joy that I got by visiting my parents’ place with all of my children, and of stress and upsetting, because Peng caught cold and had fever. We had to stay at home on Sunday waiting for a doctor to come and check him up. It’s flu. He probably caught cold on our way to my parents’ place. It was a bit chilling, I must admit. In any case, he’s getting better.

It’s so upsetting when children get ill, but flu can be easily treated on early stages. However, there are such diagnosis and conditions that can’t be treated, unfortunately. Many people ask me if it is possible to adopt a healthy child. We’ve already discussed this issue in one of my previous posts. Let’s think what kind of mothers abandon their children: successful and healthy or depressed and with bad habits? I’ve been to a few orphanages and talked to its workers about children. They said that really a lot of children suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome and even drug exposure. Of course, these children may be born with worse health conditions or even mutations. There are HIV and AIDS positive children whose parents didn’t want to take care of them. Most of prospective adopters aren’t ready for taking such a challenge. But don’t be afraid, the upper mentioned doesn’t mean that all children available for adoption have a diagnosis. When we applied for adoption in China, we mentioned that we were open for a child with moderate to correctable condition. We were matched with Peng who had slight developmental delays, speech delays and problems with hearing and his middle ear. He used to have frequent otitis. This wasn’t a problem for us. For us, he is a healthy kid. Perhaps, he will often have running nose or even otitis media. It is curable. He needs and operation of adenoidectomia that is a surgery of removal of adenoidal glands. He just needs to grow a little bit, so not now. By now, we have a flu and very afraid that it may cause another otitis media. Because otitis is treated by antibiotics, every time. And he used to have otitis almost each month. This is not good, but it is treatable.

Hopefully enough, there are people who are ready to become a family to a child with special needs. These children need and deserve special attention. This is an immense work from adopters so I really admire such people. If we talk about countries of Eastern Europe, this problem is especially vital. A lot of people there live below the poverty level so they simply can’t afford providing for a special need child. Moreover, there are almost no facilities for such people in public places, public transport, schools and nurseries. This is an immense problem both for children and grown-ups, that’s why so many people abandon their children once the diagnosis is revealed, so almost always at birth. Life in their birth countries for such children is located in their small rooms. They can’t even go outside. Getting education is almost impossible. Moreover, such children are very seldom adopted domestically. No one wants to take a challenge. The only hope for such children is to be adopted by foreigners who can provide for them, take care of them and give them a chance for a better life. Moreover, you should know that the adoption procedure of such children is much simplified if compared with healthy kids. You will need the same pack of documents, but less time for a match and for the final court decision to be taken. So this will take less time.

Even if one person reading these lines decides to adopt a special needs child, this would be a true miracle. This is not for everyone. This is for very brave and strong people who I really admire. Lots of health to every parent and every child in the world!

Take care!