Family Stories


At No Hands But Ours, we love family stories. Since our inception in 2008, we’ve featured a wide variety of family stories – and we continue to add new stories regularly. Please use the links in the right sidebar to click through to stories on specific special needs, or you can scroll down this main page to read all our family stories.

If you are home with your child from China, and would like to have your family story featured here, just use this form to let us know.


 


Carli Mei

November 26, 2008 by nohandsbutours 0 Comments

By Brandy, mother to Carli Mei from China, with port wine stain birthmark

Chosen

We’re matched! We’re matched! I just remember that feeling of elation like it was yesterday. After a round of “matching” 3 months earlier and our family not being “chosen”. It was a day I tried to remain guarded…tried. My heart was already out there…loving these precious, precious children. And with one phone call, one beautiful little girl became our daughter in an instant. God richly blessed us with our Carli Mei Grace Harris. She is living, breathing joy.

We had been through the adoption process through the Non Special Needs program back in 2005. But we knew if the Lord ever allowed us the opportunity to return it would be through the Special Needs program. I will be honest. Our first adoption, I was concerned that our Non Special Needs daughter would be in poor condition. And nutritionally and physically, she was. But with proper nutrition and stimulation and love…she blossomed. I don’t think our first adoption my heart would have been ready to accept what I thought of as a Special Needs child. I had pictures in my mind of severe…very severe needs. And there are those children in the program…they deserve no less love. But, there are many, many special needs that are very manageable. For us, for our family, we were pretty open to many different special needs. We petitioned for 16 children off our agency’s list the second time.

We would have loved any one of them whole heartily. I would be dishonest if I didn’t tell you that our little Mei Mei wasn’t the cutest thing I’d ever seen. She was full of joy….overflowing joy…you could see it, you could feel it in her photos.

Her special need was listed as a hemangioma. It was located on her left face, scalp, ear, neck and upper chest. I did research on the Internet, visited the library, spoke to families on the birthmark yahoo groups, called and consulted with our pediatrician and a few of the best known vascular anomaly physicians. According to her photos that each doctor reviewed, they all were in agreement it was probably a port wine stain birthmark rather than the hemangioma they were diagnosing her with. Each doctor also let us know that they may or may not be able to fade the birthmark through laser treatments. It wasn’t because of her physical beauty they suggested the treatment. It was because of side effects of the birthmark such as thickening, nodules, bleeding, and distorted tissue from the pooling of blood. There were other possibilities such as Sturge Weber Syndrome and seizures that we kept in mind as well.

When we received the phone call, our coordinator told us we would have to choose from 4 of the children we had petitioned for. I hung up and for two hours my husband and I prayed for wisdom to know which child, talked about them, imagined each one in our family, pictured them growing up as a Harris. I couldn’t do it. He felt very strongly about Mei Mei (how Carli was listed). I trust him but I still couldn’t utter one name out of four knowing one would be “chosen” and the other three would still be waiting. It is too much for one Momma to handle. We then decided we would speak with the coordinator and ask her who would be the most difficult to place. Who would most likely go without a family. And she never even took a breath and spoke “Mei Mei”. Please keep in mind the other children in our group of 4…one had severe bilateral cleft lip and palate, another had unilateral cl/cp, another had cl/cp that had failed during a surgery to correct while in China along with multiple other deformities.

I immediately knew that my husband’s heart had been right, the Lord had given him our daughter…he brought scripture to me to verify his choice earlier but her confirmation is what eased my heart into choosing one….our one….our Mei Mei.


Our LOI had been sent into China and now we would wait….for what seemed like forever. We waited 170 days before our LOA arrived, about 6 of the longest months I have ever endured. We were ecstatic to finally receive it and then we waited another 6 weeks before we left for China. Once in China, I realized why they listed something as normal as a birthmark as a special need. She was gawked at, spoken to and about all with looks of disgust on their faces. It is enough to make your stomach turn. I realized then, that physical beauty is put far above any character trait, any condition of your heart, and any level of intelligence. It broke my heart when our guide told us that Carli would not be eligible to attend school because of her “facial disfigurement”…seriously, a birthmark. I wonder how it is God allowed us to parent such an incredible, amazingly bright, beautiful child. I know it isn’t because we are worthy. We are so thankful for her…words would not do our hearts justice.


Carli has been home with us for 8 months now. We have taken her to the pediatrician and specialists. She has had blood work, MRI, xrays, ultrasounds, eyes dilated and laser treatments. She doesn’t have Sturge Weber Syndrome, she doesn’t have glaucoma, she does have kidney stones from the melamine, she does have tubes in her ears now, and she may be near sighted. She has now had her 3rd treatment this month and the response is amazing. It is fading very well and for the most part, unless someone sees her the few weeks after treatment, they might not even notice her port wine stain. I know our family doesn’t see it anymore. But even if she had all of it…every possible thing they told us she could have come home with…would we love her any less? Of course not. She is our daughter.

I think the biggest thing you can take from our experience is this. If you feel led, if your heart is telling you to pursue special needs adoption, if you get that peace from the Lord calling you to adopt a waiting child.


Answer the call, pursue the adoption, follow your heart….you will never know nor could you ever imagine what amazing and incredible things He has in store for you through the life of that child.

Josie

November 24, 2008 by nohandsbutours 0 Comments

By Kim Kenward, mother to Josie from a China with a Congenital Heart Defect ~ Tetralogy of Fallot

Our Journey to Josephine Xue Kenward

When we first started out in the adoption process, we didn’t start out pursuing a special needs adoption. On July 31, 2007, we found our daughter on a waiting child list with a different agency than the one we were currently involved with. We had been logged in with our agency and the CCAA for over a year and I was tired of waiting for my daughter. After years of fertility issues and the disappointment of not being matched with waiting children with our current agency, I was ready to go elsewhere. The new adoption agency agreed that they would work with us, but there was a family currently interested in this child. We were second in line. If the family decided against her, we would have the opportunity to put our letter of intention in motion. I said a few prayers and started researching her heart condition. 




Five days later, we were told that the other family was not going to pursue her. She was our daughter, if we were interested. Are you kidding? YES! Close her file to anyone else!!! From that point on, we had our work cut out for us. We needed to write a letter to our current agency asking them to release our dossier from the CCAA so that it could be resubmitted with our new agency. We also needed to update our dossier with all kinds of paperwork that would soon be expiring. My husband spent the last month of his summer break running errands, meeting with our new social worker to update our homestudy and driving to our capital office across the state to get the new paperwork sealed. I won’t bore you with the timeline, but it took seven months from start to finish to have Josie in our arms.

Although we thought we understood Josie’s heart condition prior to our trip to China, it wasn’t until we had her in our arms did we really understand what her condition was all about. Josie has ToF (Tetralogy of Fallot). She had four things wrong with her heart and in most cases; surgery is done immediately on the infant to correct these problems. She was 21 months when we got her and her heart had not been treated at all. She would often turn blue and had severe shortness of breath when she did much exercising or eating. She was very small for her age (she was wearing size 9 month clothes at 21 months old) and physically she appeared much more like a 12 month old than a 21 month old. 

We arrived home on a Wednesday night and by Tuesday of the following week; we were sitting in our cardiologist’s office making plans to have her referred across the state to our University hospital for heart surgery. During this period of time, Josie was still uncomfortable with anyone (including Chris) holding her, let alone examine her. You can only imagine the kinds of screaming episodes that went on during those appointments. Keep in mind, with her fragile heart, we were trying to keep her as calm as possible. During most of her required medical exams, she was a very angry little girl. She resembled a wild animal. It was heart breaking. We ended up having her sedated during most of the exams because she was so out of control. Poor Josie had no idea why we were subjecting her to so many strange people, strange equipment, and uncomfortable pokes.




Josie’s heart surgery took place on April 23, 2008 and was a complete success. She was supposed to have been in the hospital at minimum 10 – 12 days, but she came home in 5 days. I have a whole new respect for the doctors and nurses who did everything they could to treat Josie and make her comfortable. They were an amazing group of people.




On the first day that we came home, Josie was so happy to see her big sister and her house that she spent the entire evening touching everything. It was almost as though she needed to be reassured that she was really home. 

For the next month, we had visiting nurses descent upon our home on a weekly basis to check her vitals. She hated the visiting nurses, but it was better than making a zillion trips to our cardiologist’s office. We are now on a six month maintenance schedule with Josie’s local cardiologist. She’s no longer on any heart medications and her physical activity is no longer restricted. She’s gained six pounds and grown three inches since our March Gotcha date. She’s now wearing size 18 month clothes and I’m starting to think we can almost move into 24 month shirts. She no longer turns blue or pants when she’s eating or exercising. At some point, she may need a valve replacement, but the timeline is sketchy. We couldn’t be more pleased with her progress and diagnosis. She is truly not the same little girl that we received on March 16, 2008. 



Our next big medical intervention is Josie’s upcoming hand surgery. Our special little girl was born with an extra thumb on her right hand and prior to her heart surgery, we did visit a hand specialist. Obviously, we were more worried about her heart than her hand. Now that her heart is stable, we’ve decided to move forward with her corrective hand surgery. She’ll be casted from finger tips to her shoulder for five weeks while her hand heals. Considering everything she’s gone through, I’m hopeful that she’ll adapt to her casted arm quickly. I’ll be curious to see whether this experience will make her more of a lefty than a righty. Right now she goes back and forth between both hands for eating, coloring and playing.





Chris and I were reflecting the other night about our experiences with a SN adoption. It’s not for the faint of heart. It’s certainly not something we would have pursued if we didn’t have the full support of our entire families or each other. It’s emotionally, physically and financially draining. Don’t get me wrong…I had my moments of “what have we done!!!” but it’s been well worth it in the end and we are blessed beyond belief. 





Big sister, Emma
 Little sister, Josie


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