We got an email today from our social worker, Christyn. There's a family in the middle of the country expecting a child in four days and she thought we might be a good match. But the baby (we're not sure if it's a boy or girl) has a profound heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. We'd said we were open for correctible anatomical defects but this was the outside limit of what we'd been thinking of. Did we want our profile to be shown? Our decision needed to be in by 5 this evening.
I rushed home from work to talk it over with Jeff. I was happy we'd been matched, frightened of how sick this tiny life is, wondering if we could effectively parent a child with such deep needs. We called a pediatrician friend of ours. He was head of trauma at A.I. DuPont Hospital for Children for a long time and he now practices privately right down the road from us. He told us as gently as he could that the outcome of this type of defect is uncertain. It depends on the child. We read him the limited information we had: "The doctors predict a 90% chance of long term survival. They anticipate surgery at 10 days old, 6 months and 3-4 years and then a heart transplant as a teenager." Dr. Dan told us that basically, the left side of the baby's heart is the side that pumps blood to the body and that is the side that will not work properly. He said no matter how well this all turns out, there is a chance the baby could suffer brain damage from the sheer volume of surgeries s/he will have to have. It's certain that though he or she could lead a good life, s/he'd never live a normal life. Any illness would be a major concern. And the baby could die at any time.
We didn't know what to do. We called our parents, our pastor, Beth and Josh and asked for advice and prayer. We cried. We talked. We prayed. We cried more.
In the end, we called Christyn and told her our answer had to be no, at least for now. There's not enough information and there won't be any more until the baby is born. And there wasn't enough time. We just couldn't make a decision that would shape the rest of our lives in the space of a few hours. It's too big, too much. Which doesn't stop me from feeling absolutely awful. If love could fix this child, s/he'd be whole in seconds. I'd be in the car and on my way to where s/he is in the time it takes to blink. I want to hold that baby so badly. I just can't make a decision like that in only a few hours. I think of all the NICU stories I've read, of my blog-friend Tertia holding her son Ben as he died. And I just can't. I can't write that without crying, I can't think about it without crying. I can't. I feel like the worst person in the world for saying no.
When we called Christyn, she told us that it was okay, she knew it was too short of a time. She said she'd be happy to keep us in the loop because right now it looks like there is no other adoptive family showing interest. She said as soon as she knows more, she'll pass on the information and she'll let us know if the door is totally closed or not. Even though our no has a caveat, we're not expecting it to work out. We are pretty sure this is not our baby. But it doesn't stop us from grieving another loss.
I don't really know what else to say. I feel like I don't deserve another chance.
