Search Results for: blog what is an adoption doctor and why would i need one

Still Need Information

As you may know I have tried to reach out to my kids’ biological mother to get information from her regarding their births and their biological dads. She provides information about 2 of our 3 kids but has still not replied to the questions that I asked about my third child or more details about her 2nd child. In my last entry I mentioned how my son George was delivered by emergency C-section when the doctor could not find a fetal heartbeat. Then he was hospitalized in the NICU for an infection for 2 ½ weeks. She said nothing about … Continue reading →

Something You Should Know

We have three children that came to our family through adoption. All three children are siblings, they have the same biological mother but they all have different biological fathers. The biological mother is Caucasian and one of our sons has a father that is African American. With us being Caucasian we were not really sure about different skin and hair care issues that a child of an African American race we would encounter. The first difference that we came to was when the Pediatrician told us he was “ashy”. What the heck is “ashy”? I had no clue, but I … Continue reading →

Book Review: All About Adoption:How Families Are Made and How Kids Feel About It

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All About Adoption: How Families Are Made and How Kids Feel About It is a book from Magination Press, which specializes in titles helping children understand tough situations or deal with feelings. (Magination Press is also the publisher of Maybe Days, a Book about Foster Care.) All About Adoption authors Marc Nemiroff and Jane Annunziata are both clinical psychologists specializing in families and children. All About Adoption starts out by saying “there are lots of different ways to have a baby. ..some parents have one baby..and some parents have two or three babies all at once. “Babies grow inside a … Continue reading →

Touch Sensitivity

Sensitive skin is a topic near and dear to my heart — when I was little, I would break out in hives every time my mom changed laundry detergents! My skin is very sensitive when it comes to cleansers and scents. But that’s not the only kind of sensitive skin out there. Touch sensitivity is a kind of malfunction in the tactile sensory system. Sensations that might be meaningless background noise (like the feel of the seams in your shirt) might be uncomfortable or even painful to a person with touch sensitivity (also known as tactile defensiveness). A person with … Continue reading →

Book Review: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Adoption

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The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Adoption is an overview of all types of adoption. Thus it is necessarily light on any one type. While it provides many “real-life snapshots” of various parties involved in all types of adoptions, it is a good general overview for initially researching adoption, rather than a manual I would refer to again and again (as, for example, I do with Real Parents, Real Children, in which I always seem to learn something new that applies to the different stages of life that our family moves through). The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Adoption is written by … Continue reading →

Extended Family Members of Adopted Children May Need Hepatitis A Vaccine

If you are beginning an international adoption, you’ve probably thought quite a bit about the health of your potential child. In a home study, you have had to address questions about your own health. A few of us might think 6 months ahead to plan for a trip to our child’s country. Even if we do begin a vaccination schedule for ourselves, we likely wouldn’t think of having our parents or other close relatives, neighbors and babysitters vaccinated. I know I didn’t. But that needs to change. In a sobering case, a 51-year-old adoptive grandmother was hospitalized earlier this spring … Continue reading →

Adoption in the News this Week: from ER to Madonna to the Hague

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Adoption has certainly been in the media this week. As my fellow blogger Michelle has noted in the popular culture blog, Madonna’s petition to adopt a second child from Malawi was denied by a judge in Malawian court. Madonna, who has said she plans to appeal, left the country Sunday without three-year-old Chifundo “Mercy” James, the child she had planned to make her daughter. The judge said she fears that waiving the country’s residency requirements for adoptive parents would open the door to traffickers. Other possible reasons for the different outcome in this case from Madonna’s previous adoption are being … Continue reading →

Adoption in the Little House TV Series, Season 8

Although this blog (one of a series on adoption storylines in the Little House on the Prairie television show) focuses on season eight, the two episodes (“Growing Pains” and “Uncle Jed”) which continue the story of the new Ingalls family members James and Cassandra were discussed in the season seven blog. In the season eight opening two-parter, “The Reincarnation of Nellie”, Mrs. Oleson is devastated when Nellie and Percival move to New York. Dr. Baker suggests adopting a ten-year-old girl to cheer her up! Nels and Harriet visit an orphanage and look the children over. Harriet falls for one who … Continue reading →

Prospective Parents Health: Possible Impacts on International Adoption

My last blog began to address a reader’s questions about whether health conditions would disqualify someone from adopting. In that blog I talked about possible impacts on domestic infant adoption and adoption from state foster care. This blog will talk about possible impacts a health condition could have in pursuing international adoption. For international adoption, someone with a serious health issue may very well be disqualified by certain countries. Other countries can set their own standards on who is eligible to adopt. They often do not have the same anti-discrimination laws we do. Various countries have set conditions that their … Continue reading →

Shop to Help Kids!

I’d like to remind all of our readers that we can use our holiday shopping dollars to support people around the world, including our children’s countries of origin. Charities and/or fair trade cooperatives, which provide local craftspeople training and the chance to earn a fair price for their work, probably operate in your child’s country of origin, whatever that may be. One website alone (SERRV, which I reviewed last year) carries plaques and sculptural art made by Haitian artisans using recycled oil drums. SERRV carries scarves and textiles from India, Cambodia, Vietnam and Nepal as well as tableware from Chile … Continue reading →