Having to Say No

It breaks my heart to have to say no.  So far there are two little boys in China who desperately need families and Chris and I had to be honest about what medical needs we can handle and how much of a leap of faith with uncertainty we're comfortable taking.  While we've been waiting for our dossier to go to China, we've had the opportunity to review referrals for children from the Waiting Child List.  These are children who either have significant needs and/or were not matched during the monthly referral process.  For two particular boys, I've stared at their pictures, googled nearly every piece of medical information in their referrals and hated the unfairness of their diagnoses.  Mostly, I've been hating myself for not being strong enough.

Chris reminds me that we can't go through with adoption trying to save the world.  We are not heroes.  We are two parents with two young children who need so much of our attention.  Daily life is already chaotic and busy and stressful.

Some might criticize us for choosing which needs we will and won't take for an adopted child when we didn't get that choice for our biological children.  In my opinion, there is choice when it comes to biological children.  If you're not HIV-positive and neither is your partner, your baby will not be born HIV-positive.  If you and your partner are not carriers of a genetic disease, your child will not be born with that disease.  Chris and I did choose a child without HIV or certain genetic diseases.  There was plenty that my children could have been born with, but there was a lot more I knew would be either impossible to occur with my children, or would have been unlikely. 

When Chris and I first filled out the "openness" form for China adoption where we selected the medical conditions we would and would not consider, the list terrified and overwhelmed me.  Six months later, fewer of those diagnoses scare me, even some really serious ones. Yet it's not always the diagnosis itself that causes the biggest worry.  I question whether he's gotten the right treatment and whether it was done early enough.  I wonder whether he's gotten the follow-up care he's needed.  I wonder if the original diagnosis is made worse by untreated side effects or just the effects of institutionalization.  I wonder what hasn't been diagnosed.  I wonder if the original diagnosis, the one causes one prospective adoptive family after another to pause is even correct.  The answers to most of these questions we'll never learn or 100% trust. 

I watch the short videos on repeat that the social worker sent me and reread the referral information.  He looks so healthy I think.  What I'm seeing in the video doesn't match what I think of a child with this diagnosis.  I tell myself that the referral information must be wrong.  

Or the scant information in front of me could be correct.  I do believe life can give you more than you can handle.  And I do believe it's possible survive whatever life throws at you, but at what cost?  I feel torn between the little one who deserves a family and the three who are already part of my family. 

So those are all the questions Chris and I ask ourselves over and over, yet there is no right answer.  The rationale side of me knows all this.  My heart can still ache.