Hi. I’m new here. Not to adoptionblogs, but to this blog: Parenting Children with Special Needs.
I currently blog here for adoptive parenting, Guatemala, international adoption, and now, parenting children with special needs. If you happened upon my most recent post in adoptive parenting, you probably already know that I’m now a mother of three, having just welcomed home our newest daughter–a baby girl who is just over four months old. My youngest daughter, “Bella”, came to our family though domestic open adoption. We were well aware of her special needs prior to our decision to adopt; her birth mom formed an adoption plan prior to Bella’s diagnosis. In short, Bella’s special needs had nothing to do with her birth mom’s decision to place, or our decision to adopt. All information was freely shared so we were able to make a fully informed decision as to whether we wanted to submit a “Dear Birthmother” letter for Bella’s birth mom’s consideration. While I won’t be discussing our open adoption experience very much in this forum, I would like to say it’s been a wonderful experience so far. We consider ourselves very lucky to be able to consider Bella’s birth mom a member of our family.
Bella was born ten weeks early, weighing just under three pounds. You wouldn’t know it to look at her, though! She’s currently weighing in at a respectable 11 pounds, and is getting bigger and stronger every single day. What you would probably realize, though, just by looking at her for several continuous minutes, is that she is visually impaired. In less politically correct terms, my daughter is almost entirely blind. If you’re curious as to how I define “almost entirely”…there’s a chance Bella can detect extremely bright light (think direct sunshine, or a spotlight), but nothing more than that. It might improve a bit; it might not. Her eyes tend to drift a little bit, and that’s what physically suggests her visual impairment. Since she’s unable to see and hence not focusing on anything, her eyes tend to move a bit erratically, although she will turn her head to me when I speak to her. She has impeccable hearing, there’s no doubt about that, and is otherwise developing normally.
So my daughter is visually impaired, but there’s more to her story. An MRI in her first week of life showed Bella’s septum pellucidum is absent; my daughter was then diagnosed with Septo-Optic Dysplasia. So what does this mean? Well, at this point it could mean anything. We will not know where Bella falls on the spectrum until she meets (or subsequently doesn’t) her developmental milestones. In short, it’s a learning experience for Bella, for me, for our family overall. I do know this, though: Bella has only been home just over two weeks and I already can’t remember what life was like before her beautiful presence graced our family. I look forward to sharing my experiences with special needs parenting here at adoptionblogs.
Photo Credit: 2010. Courtney O.