Our Journey to Matthew

~God created you, a beautiful child, you were just delivered to the wrong address.~

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Light at the end of the tunnel...

Well...after nearly dying of frustration, it looks like our agency has come through with flying colors! After we lost baby Alexander to a Russian family on March 30th it has been very hard to continue. About 10 days later we were told there was a baby on Sakhalin Island but he won't be off registry until the end of August. At the time it was over 4 months away and on the other side of the world...literally so we said no thanks. By mid April we were offered a referral of an adorable 9 month old baby in Kemerovo (central Siberia). He looked like a "Boris" but we had no name or exact date of birth for him. Just a video and lots of cute pics. We consulted Dr. Dana Johnson, chief of Pediatrics at University of Minn children's hospital. We knew he was little and was a bit premature, we knew he had a heart condition, a rather serious one at that but we were shocked at Dr. Johnson's report. He said not only does he suffer from the congential heart defect and appears to be mentally retarded and have severe CP. My heart sack hearing that on the phone but he is the expert. I cried to Brian over the phone and he was sad also but we know what our limits are and mental retardation and CP is not within those limits. It's not that we aren't capable of loving a special needs child but realistically speaking, it wouldn't be fair to the child. We are in our 40's and one of us would have to quit our job to stay home 24/7 with him and it would lower our standard of living for all of us and also who would take care of him when we're gone? No one, that's who!
Brian called our family doctor and he suggested Dr. Sherman, Chief of Pediatrics at Henry Mayo Hospital take a look. Dr. Sherman came to the same conclusion as Dr. Johnson so we declined. It was hard and we felt guilty but we just couldn't take him.

By now we're at the end of April and early May. Our agency called to advise us there was a 15 month old in Samara, overall healthy although premature and small. Just one small glitch....he has tested positive for HIV. His Mom was HIV postive and he tested postive at birth and then negative 2 times. I called Doni and she advised he get a PCR test to ensure he is not infected as you are not out of the woods until over 18 months old. Our agency never formally offered him to us and never mentioned him again so the test must not have been good. They then called with a 17 month referral that we suspect was from Kaliningrad since we were told we would know our court date before we left from trip 1. He was a bit out of our age range. We decided to wait it out, frustrating as it has been.

On Monday, June 13th, our agency called at 1pm to offer us this perfect little 6-7 month old angel. He is in Western Siberia, hopefully far enough away from Moscow that we won't lose him to a Russian family. No worries about relatives as he was abandoned. We just need to make it to trip one and sign papers and meet our future son and we can breath a bit easier. We hope to travel as close to 8/27 as possible.

No more updates until the eve of trip 1...