Just over two years ago, Rafael joined our family.  His biological mother left the hospital without him when he was a day old, and for two months he lay in a hospital nursery waiting for a family. And then in what was clearly divinely orchestrated, a match was made between him and our family.

Many people have asked me, why in the world would we want to add another child with Trisomy 21 to our family?

You know how when people don’t understand something you do, they think you’re either crazy or put you up on a pedestal of righteousness? There’s another explanation. 🙂

After having Yirmi, the T21 label and stereotype lost a lot of the power it would have had without our personal experience. It became very simple – a child with T21 is a child. Not a label, not a disability, not a tragedy, not a burden – but a blessing.  Just as every other child is a blessing.

Knowing that the vast majority of newborns in the foster care system in this country are voluntarily given up because of T21 was very painful for me to think about. I would look at Yirmi and look at how our lives have been expanded and enriched. Then I would think about all these beautiful babies who were given up due to ignorance or lack of accurate information.

We knew a lot about T21, we had a strong family with a lot of love to give, we were open to having more children… and this is the direction it made sense for us to go in.

I would often think of the story of the starfish thrower, initially written as a 16 page story by Dr. Loren Eiseley. Here’s a very short video adaptation:

(A boy was throwing starfish that were stranded on the beach back into the ocean. A man said, there’s too many starfish, your efforts can’t possibly make a difference. The boy meant down, picked up another starfish, threw it into the ocean and said, “It made a difference to that one.”)

I couldn’t change the reasons people were giving these babies up (while I thought about advocacy on this front it was clear it wasn’t meant to be my role at this point), I couldn’t given them all a home, but I could make a difference to one child.

Just one child.

Yet every child is a world.

And so we applied to be foster parents specifically for babies with special needs (who are placed into the long term foster care system rather than being placed for adoption).

Five days after our application was completed, we got the call about Rafael.

Three weeks later, he was home with us.

Two years have flown by and we can’t imagine life without him.

Avivah