Posey Is So Close!

I can't believe that I am able to say this so soon! Posey is less than $200 from making her Christmas campaign goal! If you wanted to get an ornament of Posey, don't forget to order one! Raising her grant is only part of our goal here though. We also need to find her a family!

We have another great update. We have this brand new photo of Posey grinning for the camera! These new photos of her are amazing. We are very lucky to be able to get photos and updates right now. Typically they are very rare for the bedridden kids. These updates are going to make a huge difference and help Posey find her family!

I love that her new photos show her smiling! They show how alive she is! People asked if she ever smiled based on her baby photos. She was a beautiful girl with a very solemn face. Now we know that she certainly does smile!

The only thing that could make her smile more would be a family. She loved having someone play with her when she was sitting out in her chair during my husband's visit. The kids aren't usually out like that though. There aren't usually visitors to chatter away and tell her how precious she is. Usually there is day after day spent laying down in a crib.

Posey has SO much potential. She could be so happy in a family. She has been transferred, but she is still so young! She would thrive in a family. The sooner they get there, the better she will do. We have adopted older kids. The years of waiting take a toll on them. I am so thankful to be their mother, but I wish someone could have brought them home sooner. I don't want Posey to have to wait as long as my kids did. Where is her family?

I Am Posey's Miracle Maker!

I am so excited to announce this! We are going to grow Posey's grant and help her find a family! First I want to introduce you to Posey if you haven't met her yet. She is so special. Then I will explain what we are going to do to help her find a family!

This beautiful little girl is Posey.

Posey needs a mama and a papa. We are going to help her find them.

It has been at least a year since Posey was transferred to the older child institution. Posey caught my eye during our last adoption. She reminds me of a girl we met named T. I will come back to her also!

Posey is a tiny, dainty little girl. She sometimes seems a bit cautious of her surroundings due to her vision impairment. Orphanages can be scary places. Posey is in the bedridden wing of her institution.

My husband was able to see and play with her during his recent visit there! So exciting!

He was able to glean some information based on the fact that she was out in the open in a group of a few of the healthiest looking children. Sometimes when there are visitors to the orphanage this group is taken out of their beds and cribs. They are placed in wheelchairs in front of a TV in a main room. Since Posey was in this group I am REALLY hoping it will mean she is getting some extra food and attention. It doesn't help the other kids who are never out of their beds, like our Lee, but I am glad for Posey's sake.

My husband had a great time playing with her. She smiled and interacted with him. She seems to be completely blind, but she does turn her head to follow the sound of your voice. She held onto his fingers with her hands. I don't know how much she can move in general because she is always laying down or rarely out in a chair like that. She would benefit SO much from therapy and medication to keep her muscles loose. He said she is absolutely beautiful, but we already knew that.

So now let's talk about what Posey's life might be like if she stays in the orphanage. She reminds me so much of the girl I mentioned earlier, T. T has spent her life in state care. This is a photo of T back when the charities were first beginning their involvement at the old orphanage.

Due to years spent without interaction or sensory input, T touches and pushes on her eyes a lot. This is a very common stimming behavior among blind children and adults in institutions. During a recent visit to the current institution T had a bad infection from doing this.

T will never have a life outside of the bed that she is in right now. T never goes outside. She will spend the rest of her life laying down in a room with no stimulation. I had hoped that Posey would be spared that dull and stifling room. Unfortunately since she was transferred from the baby house, her crib is now in the same room as T's bed. The cycle is continuing. Children are transferred from baby houses to adult institutions. They slowly deteriorate because they are never given the opportunity to develop. T will NEVER be free of that bedridden room. Posey can still escape.

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Now on to our job here! We are going to help Posey find a family. We are going to tell everyone all about her! We are going to raise her grant by $1000 between now and New Years Eve! It will be awesome! Anyone who wants to help, feel free! We are going to be a little bit busy with our own adoption and travel during this time, but we didn't want Posey to go unnoticed, so we jumped in!

There is a change in the name of Reece's Rainbow's Christmas campaign. In the past it has been called Angel Tree. The new name is the Miracle of Adoption Christmas Campaign. You can see all of the kids on the page HERE. You can search for her on the page with Ctrl F, or just scroll through looking at all the kids! If you donate $35 to a child, you get an ornament ($5 of the donation goes toward this) and the child's grant goes up by $30. I love these ornaments. The ones I have purchased in past years are very, very special to me. I love seeing how many of those kids have come home to families now!

We will also be running fundraisers for this, including Superman Was Adopted shirts! I am hoping to have the ordering process for those set up soon, so that they can be ordered, printed, and shipped in time for holiday shopping! I will keep everyone up to date on how that is going and what else we have to offer to raise that $1000 for Posey. Please share this and our other posts for Posey to help us make this a success!

Chantelle-Ann and Angela Are Aging Out!

Aging out is when a child becomes legally unadoptable due to their age and the laws of either the child's country or the country of the adoptive parents. Today's children are in the same country our family has adopted from. They require married couples with at least one parent more than 15 years older than the child. You need to send in immigration paperwork and fees before these children turn 16. The rest of the adoption process can begin after that, if necessary.

If you have any questions about this process, today's children, other aging out children, or how to adopt children with special needs internationally, email childinquiry@reecesrainbow.org for more information. See other aging out children who have been shared recently HERE. All of the aging out kids I post here have at least a $10,000 grant to assist with adoption expenses. Some have grants of over $20,000! Please share all of these kids to help them find families! It helps!

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Chantelle-Ann http://reecesrainbow.org/103300/chantelle-ann needs paperwork and fees sent before she turns 16 in 2017

Chantelle-Ann is the first aging out child. She recently had a committed family who met her but did not feel they would be able to provide for her needs within their family. I think it was a really heartbreaking decision for them to make. They so badly want her to find the right family where she can thrive, and I admire SO much the openness and honesty they are sharing.

"She is very smart and curious. She likes technology as she kept trying to figure out the tv and loved our phones, except my husband's phone wasn't too crazy about her, haha. She is adorable and tries so hard to communicate. She has a lot of potential if the smallest child in the family."

They clearly love her very much. She wants a mama of her own so badly. She sounds like she has the ability and desire to learn so much.

Right now Chantelle-Ann is the size of a 10 year old although she is 15. I would bet she has the potential to grow in a proper family setting with good nutrition! One of our teenage boys came home the size of an 8 year old and was my height within a year! She does express toddler-like behaviors that due to her size can be harmful to small animals. It is also recommended that a family only have older teenager or adult siblings in the home with her. She is large and strong, and has waited in an institutional setting without the loving guidance of a family for too long.

This is the sad part of older child adoption. This is why I am a very strong advocate for adoption of kids of all ages. Kids belong in families. Families can teach children. Families can model correct behavior. Families can put an immediate stop to less desirable behaviors. But in an orphanage or institution? Even the best caretakers can't watch everywhere and correct everything. Unfortunately there are also caretakers who don't have the best interests of the children at heart. There are caretakers who abuse and model that behavior. None of this is the child's fault. They are blameless in this. This is something terrible and unfair for them, that they have been placed in this situation.

It is tragic for the children. Chantelle-Ann has SO much potential. This family has raved about how clever she is. She is a very smart girl who could do so much more if she was given a life outside of an institution. She will need the right family. She still deserves a family! Please share her so that the right family can find her.

Chantelle-Ann has a $10,000 older child grant available for assistance with adoption expenses. Email childinquiry@reecesrainbow.org or view her profile HERE for more information.

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Angela http://reecesrainbow.org/33135/angela120  needs paperwork and fees sent in before she turns 16 in February 2017

Angela is the second child today.  She was in a bedridden room the last time a family saw her. I have been trying to find numbers on how many kids over the age of 10 have been adopted from bedridden wards in this country. I can tell you that it isn't very many. There are the kids I know of who have been adopted or have families in process in the region we last adopted from. I have heard of a couple kids here and there in other regions. There haven't been very many kids, but the numbers are going up over time.

As it becomes more common and more kids come home and more kids make progress and improve, I am hoping it begins to send a message. I am hoping the photos of the transformation of these kids will show their potential. I am hoping it will show their worth and value. We love and value our children. Their condition in these bedridden wards is NOT caused by their diagnosis. It is caused by the care and treatment and lack thereof. Yes, even when kids come home to families their underlying medical issues remain. But look at the difference in our kids.

Angela will be beating the odds to find a family in time. The odds are, in her country, that she will spend the rest of her life in a crib or bed. The odds are that a family showing up at her orphanage would be met with at best mild shock. I want Angela to win. I want all of the kids to win. Angela is deserves so much more than a life in a crib or a bed.

I LOVE the updated photo from a few years ago. She is absolutely beautiful. She is blind but she can follow the sound of your voice and she loves the attention of someone talking to her. There are so many resources in the US for blindness! Her profile also lists hydrocephalus. There is a diagnosis of a heart defect, but the profile doesn't list the severity. It may be mild or it may not.

There are many kids who were previously listed as being in the same orphanage, and may or may not still be with Angela and able to be adopted with her. Many of them are also over 10 and would also be eligible for an older child grant like Angela! Angela is eligible for a $10,000 grant to assist with adoption expenses. You can email childinquiry@reecesrainbow.org or visit her profile HERE for more information.

This Could Be Hard

This is the Bedridden Project. I'm talking about what life was like for our son Evan and other children like him before he was adopted from a laying down room, and how awesome his life is now. I also talk about waiting children like Evan whose lives would be so much better in a family.

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This could be hard. I will say that front and center. This can be hard in so many ways. I'm talking about meeting your child in country for the first time, and deciding to say yes.

You are going to have people tell you not to do this. They will tell you to think of yourself, to think of your other kids, to think of the kids you could adopt instead.

During our adoption of Evan a lot of people told us not to adopt him. In the countries where these children are living, even the people who support adoption and special needs adoption often don't understand adopting kids from bedridden rooms. We had people say we were brave and crazy. We had people suggest adopting other more capable children instead.

There was a very long delay finding Evan's file at our initial appointment to get his referral. In fact, at first they tried to give us the file of a child our friends adopted from the same place! He is an older boy with Down syndrome. He is an awesome kid and I think the world of him, but he certainly wasn't our Evan! Other families have found that codes have been changed in files making younger children ineligible for adoption when they should have been available. In this country younger children must have a very specific diagnosis in their file in order to be adopted by a foreign family. In other countries other things happen. Some countries and orphanages never even list children with more severe needs because they don't see them as adoptable.

Evan's referral photos

Then you will get to the orphanage. Often the orphanage staff, the director, the regional person responsible for adoptions, and even your facilitator may encourage you to pick a different child. "This child will never get better. This child's needs are too severe. The adoption might not be approved. There is nothing you can do for this child."

I don't think these things are typically said out of malice. I think that it is an example of the underlying attitudes that ensure kids end up in these rooms to begin with. People really do believe it is a waste for a family to bring home a child with severe needs when there are other children with more mild needs waiting. They feel the others would benefit more and are also waiting for families, and there aren't enough families for all of the children to be adopted.

People really do believe that these kids can't get better. They haven't seen them get better. It is a vicious cycle where the children are never given a chance because they've never "proven" themselves. But how can they show what they are capable of when they weren't given a chance to in the first place?

Again, children with milder needs typically come first in their minds even when people do believe in better treatment for kids with special needs. Money is typically used up long before it can trickle down to kids in bedridden rooms. Foster care, group homes, experimental schools including kids with special needs, therapies, across the board. There is simply never enough to go around, and in a situation where "typical" kids aren't even getting what they need it is hard to convince people that these children also deserve more. Frankly, the same things can sometimes be heard in America as well, but at least people with disabilities have legal guarantees of fair treatment.

It is also likely that people involved want to be sure you are aware that you are not adopting a typical child so that you don't come back later and say you didn't realize. Again, for a lot of people it is far outside their expectations for someone to want to adopt a child with severe needs. They can't understand why someone would do that intentionally, so they want to make sure you know what you are getting yourself into. Sometimes they want to save you from yourself. It's often done with what people believe are good intentions, but it's not good for the child people might be convinced to leave behind.

So now you are going into your first meeting with your child with all of these people telling you to turn around and run. And if you aren't, that is something to be incredibly thankful for! It is a gift to both you and the child for you to be supported like that going into your adoption! Now you are going to meet your child with all of those thoughts swirling in your head.

First meetings are emotional and overwhelming for parents, but they are just as much so for the kids. For kids in bedridden rooms in particular, this can be an enormous shock. These are kids who might never leave their cribs. Being picked up and taken out of that familiar space can be terrifying. Human touch can be rare, and likely rough or painful when it does occur.

This crib was Evan's entire world every day. How scared he was to leave it.

Evan was plucked out of his crib and thrust into my husband's arms. He wailed and screamed in fear. He was never upright. He was never held. He was never out of his crib. What was he going to expect? What was going through his head? His muscles were so tight then that I'm sure it was also physically painful in addition to being so frightening for him.

He is not the same child now as he was then. I carried him dancing around the house last night. He loved being bounced and swung and held, my same child who screamed in terror at being lifted out of his crib. He has "gotten better" in ways that no one in his country ever believed he could. And you know what? Even if he hadn't, his life would still be worth saving. He still deserved the life he has now.

Medication. Sedation. This is common in general, but especially in kids who are in bedridden rooms. Sometimes kids are suspected to have epilepsy and are given medications to control seizures which have the side effect of sedating them. It is common for very frail, tiny children to be given doses of medication which would sedate adults. Sometimes kids are medicated because it is believed to help them sleep better or be necessary for medical conditions. Sometimes it is for convenience or because children get into mischief or they stim loudly or any number of reasons. The takeaway from this is that you may be meeting a child who is heavily sedated during your first visit or who is often heavily sedated.

Kids might not be able to stay awake. They might be unresponsive or minimally responsive. They may have unusual reactions to stimuli. Glassy eyes and blank stares. Sometimes this is also from the stress of something as unusual as a long period of direct interaction. Kids can shut down because that is also overwhelming compared to their typical routine. But the possibility and likelihood of medication is something to remember.

Evan could barely lift his head on many of the visits. (Can you see Daisy behind him?)

And now you need to decide. You have to continue forward with this adoption, or turn around and choose another child, or go home without a child. This IS hard. This is not a light and easy decision.  I have known so, so many families who struggled with this decision. That's why I am talking about it here and now. MOST families find this a hard decision. That is normal. It doesn't mean you can't do this. It doesn't mean you should say no. All of these people are telling you to say no, and you are meeting a child who is likely to be very frightened or unresponsive, and you need to decide if you can do this very hard thing and say yes. This was the hardest part of our adoption of Evan. We said yes. It was 100% the right decision for us and for Evan.

Sometimes people say no, for a variety of reasons. Maybe they don't think they can adopt this child along with another child. Maybe their homestudy doesn't include some of the child's needs. Maybe they feel like these particular needs are too much for them. That no can be the right decision for some families. For us it wasn't. Bringing Evan home was right. That was Evan and that was our family, not every child and every family.

This is such a HUGE decision that is literally life altering for both the child and the parent. It is so important to know about this and think about it ahead of time. It is important to know how many people initially struggle making this decision, because it can be a hard thing to share publicly. People are excited to see updates about how you have met your child for the first time. It is hard to say that you might be having second thoughts with all of those people watching, even when you do go on to say yes. It is very common to have those questions though.

With all of the things said about Evan, we could have said no. Some people would have told us that we made the right decision. They would have said that was the smart, safe thing to do. We didn't say no. We said yes. It was hard, but it got easier. The more visits Evan had, the more comfortable he became. Since he has come home he has changed before our eyes. He is not the same scared, frail little boy. But even if he was, I would still be glad we had brought him home. I know what his life was like there. I know what it is like now. He is safe and he is loved. That is worth it, no matter how much or how little progress a child might make when they come home.

Evan is rocking out these days!

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Now for the waiting kids. I'm going to post again about some children I have mentioned before. These are the kids who are with my Lee right now. They continue to deteriorate. I am hoping for some miracle where the orphanage will allow charities to step in and help fill the gap between what the kids can be given by the state and what they truly need. In the meantime, the kids are suffering. I can guarantee that parents adopting these kids are going to hear the same thing about how hopeless these kids are. THEY ARE NOT HOPELESS. Hope is the only thing they have left.

This sweet girl cannot be adopted. She was one of the healthiest kids in Evan's room. I barely recognize her now. These photos are in the old orphanage and the new one. This is the same child. The old orphanage was not a great place, but charities could provide extra food and extra care. It was keeping kids alive.

Leilani needs a family urgently. A family already in process who could add her to their adoption is her best chance to make it out in time. She is growing hair on her arms as part of her body's response to starvation.

Quinn is a very sweet and very responsive kid. He would thrive in a family. He used to make noises and try to talk. I don't know if he still does, but that potential is there. This is a kid who could do amazing things in a family.

This boy is not listed on Reece's Rainbow, but he can be adopted. His name is V and he was born in 2003. He absolutely lights up in response to people, but he has been spending more and more time sleeping here. He is frail.

My Lee is fading. His last photo showed his arms so wiry thin I don't know how he is holding on. His arms and body are hidden in his most recent photo. But the other kids' photos tell the story. He's also laying still. He usually is trying to sit up and lifting his head to get attention when there are people in the room. We are so close. I hope we can get there in time. We are not yet fully funded, if you would like to help us get him home by donating HERE or HERE.

Denzel and Phoenix are also fading, but they also have a family coming to rescue them. They are only waiting on travel dates right now. You can donate to them HERE.

Zoey/Becky is one of the tube-fed kids, who are all very urgent. She may be sedated and less responsive at times, but she is capable of so much more than they realize. She is aware of what is going on around her.

Posey. This was the one bright spot out of all of these updates. We get to see Posey smile. She is smiling here, but she still needs a family so badly. She is so young, and this is such a hard place for bedridden kids.

The following children are in different orphanages. They also need families.

Christian is a little boy who is currently heavily medicated to treat seizures. He is beautiful. I think he is still in a baby house, but I can't see him surviving at all once he is transferred. He is old enough to be transferred at any time.

Starr is a precious little girl. She is also heavily medicated right now. She has had her referral pulled many times, but no families have been able to take her home. Some have had other kids whose needs required too much attention to add on another child. In the past she was smiling and responsive. She was unable to hold up her head or open her eyes when the most recent family met her. She also needs a family desperately. Our family adopts older kids, but we would make an exception for her!

Janie is a little girl who has been listed for many years. She has been transferred out of the baby house into an orphanage where many children look just as bad as the ones at the orphanage we are adopting Lee from. I don't know of any adoptions from her orphanage, but she and the other children there need out.

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Please share this post and share these kids. I don't think people realize the full extent of how bad the bedridden wards and laying down rooms can be. Our family has been there before and is going back. We have seen it firsthand. And sometimes I think we can't even comprehend it. Please help these kids get home to families, and hope with us for a change that will help the kids who can't be adopted.

Denzel Is Aging Out!

I can hardly believe that it has come to this. Over two years ago this sweet boy first found his way into my heart. He was in the same room as one of the boys we were adopting. He was in the same room as two more children who we are going back for. If I was blessed with infinite time and money and ability, he would be one of many, many children in our home. But despite all of the things we have been blessed with, we have limits. We can't bring home seven children on this trip. Every "yes" to one child is a "no" to two, five, twenty other children. We said "yes" to Amos, then to Daisy, then to Lee and Violet.  Each of those "yes" decisions was a "no" to the special children like Denzel who we also carefully considered bringing home.

I want in my heart to believe that we were led to our other children because Denzel has a great family coming for him. And he might have one out there already. I have had many people ask me about Denzel, but none of them could say "yes" to Denzel right now. Believe me, it is not for lack of wanting and praying and trying. There are people who love this boy deeply. But because of his country's requirements or immigration requirements or because families have already said "yes" to other kids, Denzel still waits.

Denzel can't wait much longer.

In January Denzel will turn 16 and age out. A family needs to file paperwork and fees before then. Aging out isn't the only threat creeping up on Denzel though. Denzel has been transferred from one institution to another. This wasn't the dreaded transfer out of the baby house. Denzel had already survived that. He just barely survived it. In 2007 a charity started to visit the institution he had been transferred to. He was 6 when they started to visit. Children were regularly starving to death. Children were transferred to the bedridden ward from the baby house, and the majority of them died before the next batch of kids were transferred the following year.

Denzel was saved in time, but barely. You can see the hair growing on his face. That is a sign of starvation. It is one of the body's last tactics for survival before giving up. He was only 6, soon to be 7. That was so long ago. He has survived so long since then. He was able to receive nutrition through an NG tube thanks to the charity's work. An unfortunate side effect of that life-saving nutrition is that the orphanage needed to tie his hands or swaddle him to keep him from pulling that tube out. Most orphanages and institutions don't have anyone on staff willing or capable of replacing a tube like that. When we were there the orphanage's doctor on staff was actually a retired dentist.

Denzel was saved. He smiled! He laughed and watched everything around him. He is a clever boy inside, underneath all of the sedatives and medications and starvation and profound neglect. He is alive inside his body. Can you imagine being trapped in a crib, left to starve and rot, just because you can't make your body work the way you want it to? That has been Denzel's entire life. He deserves so much more.

But then he was transferred again. This sweet boy is fading too fast. He is losing weight again. His light is going out. He would need a family urgently even if he wasn't aging out, but he is. He has less than 5 months to find a family.

Denzel needed a family years ago, but no family came. So he needs the next best thing. He needs a family today. He has no hope at his current orphanage. He needs special formula instead of the typical diet these kids are being fed, but it is more expensive than the government allots for a child's food budget. There is a charity who would provide it, but none are allowed in right now. Denzel will be adopted or he will die. Those are the only possible outcomes right now.

I can't imagine this boy who is so special to so many people being left behind. I want so badly for a family to come for him and bring him home and help him smile again. He has been pulled back from the brink before. It could happen again. But it needs to happen soon.

Please share Denzel. He is eligible for a $10,000 older child grant toward adoption expenses. You can email childinquiry@reecesrainbow.org for more information. He needs a family to mail in immigration paperwork and fees before his 16th birthday. His country requires married couples and for at least one parent to be 15 years older than him.

Denzel is one of many aging out children I have shared and he is also one of the kids I have posted in the Bedridden Project, but he is so much more than that to me. I have watched him and smiled with him and posted about him in the hope that he would find his family. But he is still waiting. Please help Denzel find his family. Soon it will be too late, one way or another.

Updates: A Whole Bunch Of Good News, And Some Bad News Too

This is going to start out happy. And I am so happy and so grateful for where we are right now. I love to read happy updates so I'm sure other people like to hear the good news too. But it's going to end with some news that is not good. We are hanging in and hanging on and going as fast as we can.

So let's start with the good. Have you seen the miracle that was the Shadow Children Giveaway? This was a huge, earth-shaking, heart-moving two weeks. During the giveaway $11,956 was raised for our family. My hands shake just typing that! Otto's account has $4712! Otto still needs a family. Please help him find it! This surpassed even my wildest hopes and dreams. Go see if you won something! Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who took part.

Right now we need $12,025 to be fully funded. We need this account HERE to read $26,849. We have another non-tax-deductible account HERE.

We will continue to have fundraisers. We have mug swap sign-ups going on right now! It is so much fun! It costs $5 to sign up. You fill out the form and will be assigned a partner to send a mug and goodies to. I love the community building aspect of this. Go HERE to read more about what a mug swap is, and go HERE to fill out your like/dislike form and sign up! If you have any questions I can put you in contact with the awesome organizer! Thank you for checking it out!

Now, a big piece of news! Our dossier is en route! Actually, most of it is already there and already translated, ready to go. As soon as this last envelope is translated it will be ready! We will be submitted and start the process of waiting for our travel dates. This is such a huge relief! It also means we can apply for a few grants that may or may not be able to assist us with our remaining fees. There are fewer grants we are eligible for, but we are applying to the ones we can!

There is such a great need for grants to assist with adoption funding and the process in this part of Eastern Europe is unique in that you do not receive a referral until you are in-country. We hope to adopt the children we have committed to, but there is no hold or guarantee that they will be eligible when we get there. This is more often a problem for families adopting babies or young children. It is extremely rare for older children with special needs like ours to be randomly chosen by a different adopting family, but for the purposes of receiving grants some foundations do require an approved referral. Others only ask that you have submitted your dossier. And we will be doing that very, very soon!

We also have a new photo of Daisy. She is outside in the sunshine! We love her so much and can't wait to get her home.

The current transition time for the group home to a foster home is up in the air. It has been delayed in the past and may continue to be delayed. This is a second chance for all of the other available kids who are at risk of being switched into foster care. Tania, Katrina, Emily, Miriam, Leroy, as well as another unlisted but available boy are all still waiting. A family could have completed the entire adoption process during the time they have been waiting for the foster care changeover. Who will make a leap of faith for these kids?


So that is a whole bunch of amazing news. Awesome, exciting, super thankful news. I am so grateful for all of those things, that I hate to need to share the news to follow. But that is the process of adoption. It is good and it is sad and you hang on as best you can! The same thing once you get home and start living your new life as a new family all together. It is great and it is hard and you hang on for the ride.


With all that said, there were recent visitors to the orphanage where Lee and the other bedridden kids have been moved to. Lee is hanging on, but I don't know how. When we brought Evan home 2 years ago he weighed 33 pounds at age 11. Lee was a similar size. Now Lee will soon be 13, and he has lost so much weight. I can't imagine how light he is or how he looks under that blanket. His ribs showed two years ago. What was left for him to lose?

Here is Lee two years ago when we said goodbye to him, and just a week ago. He should be growing and thriving. Instead he is getting smaller, so small I don't know what is left keeping him going.

Lee isn't the only one there. There are so many children waiting for families. I despair at how many children are waiting without families coming. I am worried about Lee surviving until we get there and until we can bring him home, but we are coming for him. Who is coming for Denzel or Leilani? Their needs are so urgent. And yes, there are many other children in other places in need of help, but these are the kids who have spent their lives with my own son. The responsibility to help them escape too weighs heavy on my heart.

Denzel. This boy was so alert and aware when I saw him in the first photo from two years ago. I believe some of the children were taken out of their cribs specifically for the observation visit when his new photo was taken. Denzel looks so small and listless now. He ages out in January. That is only a few months away. He could be that same smiling boy again if a family brought him home.

Leilani was only recently moved into this institution. She was already very frail at the baby house. The older and stronger kids who were moved here two years ago are quickly fading. What will become of her? She has such bright eyes observing everything in the photos and videos I have seen of her. Her life in a family could be incredible. She won't live for long where she is now.

One of my favorite kids we spent time with was Phoenix. He was so happy when we spent time with him. He was crying in the last video I saw of him. I have no idea what is wrong with his wrist in this photo. He was not a complex kid when we spent time with him. When we met him he was a kid who would have been very easy to move into a family. He didn't have complicated medical needs like some of the other children. He just needed a family to take him out of a crib. He was learning how to walk!

Posey breaks my heart. I've shared before how much she reminds me of an older girl who is also blind named T. I hoped Posey would be adopted before she reached transfer age so that she would be spared the life T has lived and the toll it has taken on her. Posey and T have been transferred to the same place and are even in the same room, only a few beds apart. T has a terrible infection from touching her eyes with her hands. This is a common stim that blind children do in an institutional setting. Even though I remember seeing T do this at the old institution, I never saw her eye infected like this. It looks awful. And a few beds away is Posey laying in a crib. Posey can still be spared. T can't be adopted due to her age and will eventually die without leaving the bed she is in now. But Posey can. Posey CAN be adopted. But not until a family comes forward and says YES to this beautiful girl.

Zoey (Becky) is another child currently being fed by NG tube like Denzel and Leilani. She often seems to get lost in the shuffle, but she also needs a family very badly.

Quinn is an incredible kid. He is very sweet and very interactive. At the baby orphanage he would make noises to respond when people talked to him. But he too is fading here. His arms are so thin and the light is going out of his eyes. He is a gem.

Before Lee was listed I called him V. This is the "other" V. He was also born in 2003 and he is also available for adoption. The perspective of this second photo makes him look many times bigger than he is. He is even smaller than Lee. He used to be awake at the old institution, but he spends a lot of time sleeping now, possibly medicated or possibly too exhausted to stay awake. He is sweet and dear. He knows his name and responds when people say nice things to him. The first photo is an older one of him, and the second is the recent photo where he is even smaller.

There are other waiting children whose photos weren't taken during this visit. Some of them are with these bedridden kids and some of them are in the section for other girls. Our Violet is at the same place, but the girls in her section are much easier for the institution to take care of and look like they are in much better condition.

I had hoped for this post to be a lot of exciting news about our progress forward. I'm so thankful for all of the help everyone has given our family over the last two weeks and since we began the adoption process. Now I'm going to ask something more of you though. Help these kids find families. Help the children in this bedridden group escape the orphanage before they die. Right now we are praying for the charity to be allowed in, but until then adoption is the only chance for these children to stay alive. Please help me. I feel like I am failing that so many of these children are still waiting to be adopted. I would bring home each and every one of them if I could, to love them and keep them safe. But I can't do that, so we are bringing home our 4 kids, and I need more families to come forward for the rest of these children.

Living and Dying: The Why Behind The Bedridden Project

This is the Bedridden Project. I'm talking about how life was for our son Evan before he was adopted, how amazing his life is now here in our family, and other children in laying down rooms who are waiting to be adopted. If you would like to help us fund our current adoption, including two children who used to be in cribs next to Evan, there is an amazing fundraiser going on right now HERE. Please go check it out. And please share this post and the waiting children who so desperately need to escape these cribs.

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"They stayed alive when they could and they died when they couldn’t."

These words are not my own. These are the words of Anne McDonald, a survivor who was able to escape a large institution for severely disabled children. She was able to prove that she was of average intelligence but unable to speak due to athetoid cerebral palsy. More of her story is at the following link. Please read it. 

http://www.annemcdonaldcentre.org.au/rowing-upstream-0

Anne spent years in the same type of life that the children I feature here are living in right now. There are so many different directions I could take this post from there.

Yes, some of the children in these bedridden wards are of typical intelligence, but unable to communicate. Bedridden wards don't offer alternative outlets for communication for children who are unable to speak. In addition, the level of neglect is such that children often aren't even exposed to language. You are not born understanding a language. You learn it through exposure. How will a child learn a language if adults are only present a few minutes a day, never speaking to the child? A few places are lucky enough to have a tv or radio turned on for the children to listen to, but most are just empty rooms. This is a level of neglect so extreme that case studies are written on it. 

But I'm here to talk about living and dying. Some of these children are living and some of them are dying. More than six months ago I posted about the children who we spent time with while we were adopting Evan. They were transferred. They are not doing well. The new orphanage is not open to the type of charity help the children were receiving before. I am praying for a change.

This girl was in the video above, sleeping under the mural. When she was awake she never stopped moving. She would stim loudly, rocking all the way up and down against her mattress. She would sit tall and shake a rattle to listen to the sound. She was the chubbiest of all of the children in the room, the healthiest looking. She can't be adopted. Her family visited her before she was transferred and retained parental rights. She is also too old to be adopted. Since she has been transferred she has declined greatly. She is just a skeleton now, laying on her bed and gasping.

There are people who have documented these kinds of bedridden wards more thoroughly and more eloquently than I have. They exist in many different countries, all slightly different but mostly similar. Mostly places for children with "severe" disabilities to die slowly or die quickly. And so much of that severe disability is brought on by living in these places to begin with. A child with Down syndrome would never be assumed to be a bedridden child in America. Children with cerebral palsy don't need to be confined to a crib.

It isn't pleasant reading, but there is plenty of information out there about how badly children and adults with disabilities are treated. This exists right now.

It is here and it is here.  It is here as well. And here. It is here. Here. Here too.

I don't have the strongest words or a large audience to call to action. But I have the children I have seen and spent time with in my heart. I have my memories. I can smell the sulphur and rot and disinfectant that hit you as you walked in the door. I can see the bright yellow ant poison that was spread under the crib mattresses to keep the insects away from the spilled formula and immobilized children. The green ointment applied to scrapes and bedsores and raw, chewed hands. I remember the children's smiles and their cries. The workers bustling around for a few minutes changing and feeding and gone again. That is the world these children are living in.

But some of them are dying. They are being fed less. The same eager eater who was given the rest of Evan's bottle of food or formula when he refused to eat at the old orphanage? She was only drinking broth when her family came for her. They are being medicated. Children are so sedated that they rarely wake to eat. They are fading. There is no charity allowed here right now. No charity workers bringing kids to a playroom. No charity workers trying to coax children to stand or play with toys. No stretching and loosening tight muscles with therapy. No requests for extra formula to keep the children from starving. Some of them were in such bad condition before the charity began working in the old orphanage that their ability to digest food was damaged. They need special formula. They're returning to the same condition that the charity worked so hard to save them from.

My Lee is there right now. Look at his soft round face growing thinner. I'm sure they wouldn't have talked to him when they took his photo for his profile, but I hope he heard them talking among themselves. I hope he heard them saying it was so that a family would come for him, even if they were scoffing at the notion. I want him to have heard that to give him the hope to hang on until we get there.

These children there with him aren't the only ones. There are so many others out there living and dying in the same way. I want them to have families too. But I have seen these children. I have spent time with them. I have wiped their faces and spoken to them and promised to try to help them. I feel I am failing. I have been seeking a family for Denzel for so long. Now he will age out in less than six months, and he is still waiting. Will it be a race to see whether he ages out before or after he starves to death? Younger children continue to wait without families and are transferred into the same conditions.

The children in the bedridden area right now include the following kids. Each and every one of them urgently needs to be adopted:
Denzel
Phoenix
Tiny V, an unlisted but adoptable boy with cerebral palsy, born in 2003
Posey
Quinn
Piper
Zoey/Becky
Leilani
Lucie

There are other children at this orphanage also. The other girls are in much better conditions. A family adopting one of those girls could easily save the life of a child in the bedridden wing by adopting them both at the same time.
The other girls at this orphanage are:
Kristina
Waniya
Brenna
Kellsey

There are so many bedridden children listed right now and so few families stepping up to adopt them. These kids are amazing. Their special needs may seem more intense, but adopting a child from a bedridden room is a very different type of adoption. In a lot of ways I've found Evan's adoption to be much easier than an adoption of a neurotypical child his age. The birth order concerns some agencies and social workers express don't apply to Evan at all.

You don't need to dive into multiple therapies immediately upon arriving home. Focus on necessary medical issues, yes. But what Evan needed most was time to experience a family and be a kid and get good nutrition and be loved. All of those things have been life-changing for him. He has been life-changing for us. There are so many kids waiting for that. Some of them are dying while they wait. That should not happen, but we can change that. We can change it for each of these children that we adopt. We can show more people how awesome this kind of adoption is. We can show people in the countries our children came from how much more these kids are capable with if they are treated properly. We can change this, if we step up and give these children a chance to live.