Adopting THREE siblings at once? You crazy?!?
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Lee and I have always discussed sibling adoption as something we’d like to do, going back to our dating days.
Did we ever think it would be a sibling group of THREE after we already had three children, including one who only came home from Taiwan nine months ago?
No.
Nonetheless, we are ecstatic. Our hearts are bonded to these three precious ones much in the same way as we love Jocelyn and Robbie and Zoe. We can’t explain it fully, but this crazy plan to complete our family is so perfectly right for us.
It won’t be easy. We’ve weathered some hard things as a couple, and we expect this to be the hardest.
But?
Sibling groups wait and wait and wait for families, often having to be split up (which is what was going to happen to our three children in Uganda). In the case of our group, two children are younger than five, which is often the magic tragic age at which the odds of getting adopted drop. Even our six-year-old Ugandan princess is gorgeous, so perhaps her odds wouldn’t have dropped yet.
In other words, each child alone would have better odds of being adopted than the group.
That’s without factoring in the HIV+ status of one of them, which – while manageable and not risky for a family – is another dynamic leading to longer wait times to be adopted.
The odds are stacked against the adoption any sibling group, much less one with identified special needs.
Yes, sibling adoption will be hard for us.
Remaining orphans or being split up from your siblings after losing your parents?
That’s harder.
Did we ever think it would be a sibling group of THREE after we already had three children, including one who only came home from Taiwan nine months ago?
No.
Nonetheless, we are ecstatic. Our hearts are bonded to these three precious ones much in the same way as we love Jocelyn and Robbie and Zoe. We can’t explain it fully, but this crazy plan to complete our family is so perfectly right for us.
It won’t be easy. We’ve weathered some hard things as a couple, and we expect this to be the hardest.
But?
Sibling groups wait and wait and wait for families, often having to be split up (which is what was going to happen to our three children in Uganda). In the case of our group, two children are younger than five, which is often the magic tragic age at which the odds of getting adopted drop. Even our six-year-old Ugandan princess is gorgeous, so perhaps her odds wouldn’t have dropped yet.
In other words, each child alone would have better odds of being adopted than the group.
That’s without factoring in the HIV+ status of one of them, which – while manageable and not risky for a family – is another dynamic leading to longer wait times to be adopted.
The odds are stacked against the adoption any sibling group, much less one with identified special needs.
Yes, sibling adoption will be hard for us.
Remaining orphans or being split up from your siblings after losing your parents?
That’s harder.