Jax's Story- Shana, Megan and Jax

The best thing about being a new mom is watching my son learn and grow. Jax was born with Cerebral Palsy and did not start receiving early intervention until he moved to North Carolina to be our son. He is physically and developmentally delayed, but is making up for lost time with new milestones everyday. He is truly amazing and we couldn't feel any luckier to have the family that we have.

Jax was immediately put into foster care because of his birth mother's history and we found him on a special needs adoption website in Texas. A lot of people wondered why we would want to adopt a child with special needs. The short version of the story is that Megan and I were ready to adopt and because of our experiences with the special needs community, we felt comfortable caring for a child with special needs. We already had Mary (an older woman with multiple disabilities who we care for and lives with us), volunteered at the special education school in our city, and Megan had over 12 years of experience working with adults and kids with special needs. We chose to look in Texas because North Carolina has a contract with Texas so that they pretty much treat the adoptions as if they were coming from their home state because Texas, being a bigger state, has more children in foster care.

Because Megan and I are same-sex partners, only one of us is able to legally adopt- even though we both went through the necessary foster-to-adopt training. Megan is Jax's legal guardian and once the adoption is finalized in September, I will have to sue her for parental rights in order to be his second parent. It is a simple $40 civil suit, but the principle of the matter is that we have both been his moms since he came home in March. I take that back, we have both been his moms since the day we saw his picture and profile online and submitted our home-study to his social worker in Texas. We never inquired on another kid, even as the months passed. We knew it was against the odds that they would pick a couple of lesbians from NC out of all of the home-studies they received, but we still knew he was ours. We began buying him clothes, decorated his room, and imagined calling him Jax (we changed his name).

Megan and I often reflect on the moments of vulnerability and craziness we endured in the adoption process. We went so long without any news or progress on his case, we were going crazy with anticipation... hello shopping therapy! Eileen, our adoption coordinator from Family Lutheran Services was a huge support, as were our family and friends. When we traveled to Texas to meet our son after being chosen to be his parents, we were shocked at his living conditions. He was one of twelve medically fragile kids in a group home, somehow called a foster home. He threw up on him self all day and night, had no early intervention or therapies in place for his delays, and was stuck in front of giant TV 90% of the time. There were kids in every corner of the room, laying on the floor, ignored. We were shocked. He moved here with nothing and we were told he would basically not be able to be do anything. He was written off.

Since Jax has come home to NC, he has been attending the Infant/Toddler program at Gateway Education Center and has made huge strides in his physical and intellectual developments.

He gets specialized speech, physical, and occupational therapy and is taught in a classroom with his peers. I can not even begin to tell you how much he has changed and how great he is doing. It's seriously like night and day. Even the professionals at his school didn't think he would come this far so fast. Jax has been fully accepted into our family and he is growing and changing everyday. We are so excited for our future and already know we will be adopting again. We are still unsure if we will adopt another special needs child or a typically developing child, but we know that our family isn't done growing. I would recommend adoption to any family who thinks they can provide a safe and loving home to a child.

You can read more about Shana and Megan on their blog, http://carignanadoption.blogspot.com/