First Thoughts (From Laura's Blog)

Laura, my wonderful, smart, beautiful, 16 year old daughter started a blog several weeks ago. She gave me permission to steal her words. I am not going to re-write her entries, because I think the thoughts are so similar to mine. So, here are Laura's thoughts:

Part of the research we did led us to want to adopt a Special Needs Child (SN). When we first heard this, we had no idea what was considered SN in China. After looking into it further, we realized it was something we were definitely interested in. We learned that a lot of Chinese children who are SN have heart defects, something our family is familiar with.

When I was born, the doctors found that I had a small ASD (Atrial Septal Defect). However, we were told when I was 1 year old that it had closed. It wasn't until I was really sick with H1N1 and pneumonia in Nov. 2009 that the doctors heard a heart murmur. They sent us to a pediatric cardiologist only to find that the hole never actually closed. Luckily, it never caused me any major problems growing up. In fact, no other doctors had ever noticed it before. However, I am scheduled to have the closure surgery Feb. 16th to prevent any risks in the future.

We found it ironic that all my life my parents had joked and called me their "Special Needs Child," not knowing that I sort of was one. So through research and our past experiences, we decided that we wanted to adopt a SN child that had a post-op or correctable special need such as a heart defect.