The next steps - planning for placement

We are booked in to see the placement coordinator on November 11th to discuss what our preferences are for placement. We have been emailed two forms to read over before the meeting to help us decide what will and wont work for us in a placement.

The first form is mainly about birth parents contact and adoption plans. How often do we want contact, what type of contact (email/phone etc), and what would be no-go's for us e.g. violence, partner in jail etc. This is something I've thought a bit about and we feel relatively comfortable that we could provide an open adoption with a reasonable amount of contact as long as it was safe for our child. We would also be happy to provide extended birth family members with contact with our child, once again on the proviso that it is a safe environment.

The second form we received is a little trickier for us to work through. As we have been approved for moderate special needs, we need to complete a checklist of different health issues that we will and wont be prepared to work with. This includes the parents alcohol/drug history while pregnant, through to intellectual and physical disabilities the child might have.

At this point, we sat down separately to do our lists so that we wouldn't influence each other. Our lists for the most part were very similar, although mine was slightly more inclusive whereas Murray made some strong arguments on some of the health conditions that I hadn't thought of.

It's terribly hard. A friend of mine recently had a baby with Down Syndrome, which was unknown prior to birth. I admire her for how she is handling everything, and I am hopeful that we would cope as well if we were to give birth to a child with DS, but if you had a choice, would you actively choose a child to parent with DS if you knew that in advance? Or Spinal Bifida, Muscular Dystrophy or Cerebral Palsy? Those are four of the conditions we have chosen not to be eligible for, however I doubt they would be considered 'moderate' special care needs anyhow.

Some of the things we have included in our special needs list include health conditions like Asthma, Albinism, physical birth defects eg missing a limb or cleft palate, hearing loss, global development delay, Hepatitis B Carrier, sleep apnoea, or at risk of childhood cancer.

We are lucky in the sense that if we adopt, this will be our only child, and we will be able to invest time and resources into getting our child the best assistance possible. Regardless of our child's health, we can't wait to be a part of it!