George’s Family
Adoption has always been a huge part of my life. My mom is adopted. In 2008, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Linden in the middle of a hurricane. Born with Down syndrome, she was my introduction to the world of Trisomy 21.
Because of Linden, I adopted a little boy, Jackson, with Down syndrome from Ukraine back in 2012 when he and Linden were both 3 years old. Down syndrome is both a huge part and yet a rather normal part of our daily lives.
When I met Sal, he fell in love with Linden and Jackson as well as my older daughter, Aislinn. We had a homestudy done to adopt two teenaged sisters from Ukraine that we hosted several times over Christmas and summer break. We were close to finishing up the US side of our adoption when Russia invaded Ukraine, halting all adoptions.
It was a devastating blow. Eventually, the girls were taken in by their godmother and taken off the adoption registry. Sal and I had to decide what to do with our homestudy as it was time to update it after 2 years of waiting. “Do we just let it expire or should we update it for a different child?” we contemplated.
We decided to update it to be a domestic homestudy of a child 0-3 years old, with or without special needs, in the US. The pull to adopt another child with Down syndrome was very strong for me, and Sal took some convincing. He had some fears to work through. Eventually, we got on the NDSAN registry and fully expected to be waiting a long time for a baby given our huge family.
That was August 1. In October, an adoption situation was presented to us and we presented our profile for a baby to be born in late November in Texas. We got a phone call a few days later that the birth family had chosen us and we were officially a match for Baby Boy.
Sal and I were in Texas the last week of October for some medical testing for our youngest son, Sam. On the morning we arrived, I got a text message that the birth mom was in labor! It wasn’t a false alarm either even though she was only 36 weeks. He was on his way! He was born later that afternoon!
Once Sam was due to be released from the hospital a few days later, so was the baby. He was in a town just a couple hours away from where we had been all week! So we Instacarted an infant seat and newborn diapers to the hospital and left as soon as Sam was discharged. His birth parents actually took him home from the hospital and that’s where we met them. His birth mother handed him to me in the most heartbreakingly beautiful moment. It is such a surreal feeling to be chosen to raise someone else’s flesh and blood. Such a privilege.
We hadn’t even told anyone in our family that we were adopting so we got to make a bunch of fun phone calls that evening!
George is what we named him and he is the sweetest, most incredible baby. We are so blessed by him.
