One health risk that I have never addressed on this blog is adopting a child with no health history available. On my post, Adoption Regrets: Health Risks on the Adoptive Parenting blog, John left the following comment:

Faith, there is another group of kids, probably unique to older child or international adoption, kids without any medical history. You are signing up for whatever may show up in the future. Its hard to see that as a decison, they are healthy now, so whats the big deal? You are really saying 'ignore my no-go list, I'll take anything that comes up'. Risky indeed.

My oldest has no history, there were issues that probably would have been in a history, and it would have been very helpful to know that. Today he is in his mid 30s and wishes he knew his medical history, he has no idea what his son might face down the road. This was an adoption by another family at birth that didn't work out. It took three years to get the court to send a half page summary saying they had no medical history. John

SPONSOR

Click here to be
helped in California! Pregnant? Click Here

Adopting a child with no medical history can come about in a number of ways. You could adopt a child who was abandoned and placed into foster care or an orphanage. You could adopt a child who was conceived through stranger rape, so no medical history would be available from the birthfather. The child could have been placed into an orphanage in a country that does not obtain medical information when the child enters the orphanage.

Also, if you adopt a child from birthparents with no family medical history other than their own, your medical information will be limited. This can happen if the birthparent was also placed for adoption or into foster care with no medical history.

John is correct that adopting a child with no health history is a big risk. Many health risks are genetic, and some health issues will not arise until the child is older. For example, a child might be completely healthy but then develop schizophrenia in her teens. If you were aware of a family history of schizophrenia, then you would know to look for red flags. However, with no health history, you would have no reason to suspect that a mental illness could arise later. If you are not aware of the possible health risks, then you cannot take steps to prevent or minimize them. Also, you will not know to look for different red flags.

I was not aware that my son's birthmother's smoking increased the odds of him developing asthma, so I did no research about childhood asthma. I had no idea that the most common symptom of asthma is a persistent cough: I believed that asthma was always a wheeze. As a result, my son's asthma went untreated for a year (when he was four), even though I took him to the pediatrician about the persistent cough. We are fortunate that he did not have a serious episode before he was diagnosed considering that each coughing episode was his struggle to breathe.

If you adopt a child who has no health history, you really are flying blind about issues that might arise. The child might be completely healthy, or he might have very serious health issues waiting around the corner. You have no way of knowing which way things will fall.

I am not trying to talk anyone out of adopting a child with no health history because those children need homes just as much as any other child. However, hopeful adoptive parents need to go into the adoption with their eyes open, knowing that they might have to rise to the occasion of parenting a child with an unpredictable health issue.

Related Topics:

Health Risks category

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt