We made it.
Today is the day when my sweet little Angelina gets to make her wish.
Wish Day! Yea!
My house is full of giddy small children who are dancing around yelling wish day! wish day! I couldn't ask for a more blessed life, truly.
I must admit that starting this PTR was daunting to me. Just introducing the cast of characters in and of itself seems overwhelming because of our family size.
I suppose I should just start at the beginning. And please note this might be way too much information for some people, for that I am sorry.
I do have a blog if anyone is interested:
http://www.ourhaitianjourney.blogspot.com/
My husband and I were both single parents when we met. He had four children and I had one baby girl. At the time I was also a college student and a foster parent to three children. We quickly became best friends and in our own fairy tale sort of way we just knew that it was Gods plan for us to be together forever. We combined our two families and started with eight children, his four, my one + three foster children.
Being a large family to us is what is normal.
We loved being foster parents and we fostered over 50 children through the years. Six of those beautiful children would become a part of our forever family. Bringing our family size to 10.
As the baby (at the time) got to be about four years old- we had that tugging feeling again that maybe our family wasn't complete. My husband had a vasectomy during his previous marriage so we decided that we would save and have a vasectomy reversal and try to have a baby the old fashioned way. The reversal worked but because of the time between vas and reversal was 14 years, and because of some "girly" issues that I had- our chances were really low that it would actually work. We then decided to look into international adoption.
After much prayer and consideration we decided we would adopt from Haiti. We were quickly turned away because of our family size.
So we knew that Africa (specifically Liberia) was where we would try next. We got all of our mounds of paperwork ready and felt that two babies or small children was what Gods plan was for our family.
Then God sent us an Angel.
Over my email came a picture of a little sweet baby in Haiti. She was found abandoned outside of a hospital. She was desperately in need of a paper ready family who could move fast to get her adoption done quickly. She had Spina Bifida, club feet, her spine was open and the surgery wasn't available in Haiti... we knew that her days were numbered as she leaked spinal fluid from her back. Because she sat for so long in her waste and spinal fluid she had developed large decub. ulcers all over her backside. There was a huge chance of infection in one of those open wounds or in her "bump" (myelomeningocele).
We didn't know anything about Spina Bifida. But we did know that this little Angel was our baby. Even though we had been told we had a family that was too large to adopt from Haiti- I sent an application to the orphanage via email anyway. Later that day I got word that baby Angel was ours.
We quickly changed all of our paperwork from Liberia to Haiti and sent off our huge dossier to Haiti. The hope was that we could get her adoption done within a few months so that she would be able to quickly come home. (Haitian adoptions were taking 18 months-2 years or MORE at the time.) As the weeks went by, and baby Angel got more and more ill- we knew that waiting even a few months for the adoption to get done was not going to be ok. Angel wouldn't make it a few months. Her head was swelling more and more by the day because of her hydrocephalus and she was a sick little baby. We quickly moved to action.
We knew that even if Angelina didn't survive to ever make it out of Haiti that it was Gods plan for us to go to be with her. We had talked to the orphange workers about getting a medical visa to bring Angelina to the USA. They had tried to MV's in the past and weren't able to ever get one done. I started researching medical visas. I started contacted other people and organizations who had gotten medical visas from Haiti in the past. I asked for help from one large organization that regularly helps international children but because Angelina had Spina Bifida (and it was something that wasn't ever going to go away with a surgery) her life wasn't worth bringing her here to them. It was crushing to realize that if we were doing this we were on our own.
I had never been to Haiti. I didn't know much about Haiti and I was still just learning about Spina Bifida! But fear of the unknown was minimal compared to the plan that was laid our before me and what needed to be done.
I started contacting hospitals all over the country to see if I could find a place that would donate surgery for Angelina. The days of phone calls made me grow weary hearing no, no, no, no. And baby Angelina kept getting more and more ill.
Finally- in a small city in Ohio we had a hospital and surgeon agree to do Angelinas surgery for FREE. They would sponsor her coming to the USA for life saving medical care. There was still the issue of them being able to travel within Haiti with a sick, fragile baby to obtain her Haitian passport and paperwork necessary for the medical visa. My husband stayed home with several of the older children to work. (Someone had to keep the bills paid!) And I left for Ohio with my oldest daughter and all the younger children. They were to stay with my Mom while my oldest daughter Leishan and I traveled to Haiti to get baby Angelina!
They were having a hard time getting the passport... and so while at my Moms in Ohio we kept putting off the travel dates and pushing them back day by day. We wanted to go at the right time and then at last we knew that Angelina might not make it and it was time to go even though they still didn't have her passport. We had gathered all the US documents, and they were gathering the Haitian documents at the orphanage so that when we arrived we could get an appointment at the embassy to process the medical visa. But without the passport, it was an impossibility.
Leishan and I flew into Haiti and arrived at a guest house in the middle of Port au Prince. We were waiting inside the house when we heard a baby screaming from the street out front. Angelina had arrived, and her scream was unbearable. We knew even before seeing her that she was in terrible pain, that she was very sick, and that our time was so limited.
Once we had Angelina settled down a bit we found some old medical text books in the guest house and researched what was going on... bacterial meningitis. Based on the way that Angelina was arching her back and screaming in pain, we knew she had meningitis. The bacteria had gotten into her open myelomeningocele on her back and traveled up her spine into her brain and she was dying. Truly dying. Might not make it through the day dying. And we were in Haiti. At a guest house. With our dying baby.
We needed a miracle.
We needed many miracles as we still didn't have a passport.
The orphanage worker had traveled into Port Au Prince and had been spending day after day riding around on his motor bike trying to get Angelinas passport. He was an
and our miracle worker. He wasn't going to give us. He begged, cried and pleaded for her life to the passport offices and finally... they gave him her passport. He arrived dirty on his motor bike with the passport in hand. And we sobbed and hugged and knew that if Angelina made it through the night that the next day we would be able to the embassy and try to get her a medical visa.We changed our return flights for the next afternoon. We would arrive at the crack of dawn at the embassy and get in line. We knew that there would be a long line and we hoped that they would have mercy on baby Angelinas life and see us through that line. We also knew that sometimes they grant the medical visa and it could take a few days to actually get approved and put onto the passport. But we didn't have a few days. We were on borrowed time.
Each time that we moved to fast or went over a bump in the road Angelinas wails would intesify. She was in terrible pain. Touch was excrutiating for her. She also had a parasite and her bowels were like acid running out of her, tearing up her little bottom more and more.
Here is a picture of Leishan holding baby Angelina. Leishan had been sobbing and was exhausted. She was terrified Angelina would die. (As was I- but I had to hold it together. I didn't think how much this would affect Leishan- and felt horrible for both my girls!)
Through a series of miracles that still to this day blow my mind away. Someone advocating for us in the street to be let into the embassy. A stranger inside who worked from Nigeria for the United Nations telling people to step aside and allow us "to go to the front of the line now!" to pay our visa fees for Angelina. The woman behind the glass who had mercy on Angelinas life and watched us break down to her and she heard our pleas. The people in Washington who approved her visa in record timing and we were out the door, back to the guesthouse within hours. The driver who sped through to the airport and the airlines that waited for us to get on the plane before take off. The paramedics in Miami that checked her vitals and gave us a quiet place to wait for the next flight to Ohio.
Once in the US we felt so much better but the fact remained that Angelina was still so ill. Would she survive?
Yes! She did!
And today is the day... she gets to make her wish.
Dreams really do come true.
Miracles really do happen.
And Blessed we are by this amazing little girl. Who we were told MANY times wouldn't live, wouldn't be able to walk/talk/breathe on her own. She survived and she thrives. And she is a JOY in everyones life that she meets.
We would go on to adopt two more children from Haiti and this past January we had yet another miracle... a baby girl. Whom we had the old fashioned way. We are so blessed.
Its wish day!!!
Your kiddo truly, truly deserves this wish- and so does the rest of the family. Hope she gets her wish and can't wait to read more!!!
) Or if you do O'hanna's with Lilo and Stitch, it's at a resort (the poly) so no ticket and you can park there during your breakfast and then go where ever your plans take you. But if you did a big character breakfast, you could maybe snack lightly at the parks and have a big dinner at GKTW when you get back. You can always order pizza too there! That would make for an early morning too, so you could get back to GKTW earlier and do one of the parties there too! Anyway- dunno if I helped or made it worse lol 
