It is normal to feel a certain amount of anxiety after you are offered a referral of a child or a match with an expecting mother. You do not have to accept a referral or match right away. In fact, our agency told me to talk the situation over with my husband, sleep on the decision, and then let them know if we wanted to match with this expecting mother. Our agency was straightforward about the challenges of our situation, the biggest being the expecting mother's smoking throughout her pregnancy. The director wanted us to make an informed decision before agreeing to adopt this child.

Whether you match through a referral of a waiting child or with an expecting mother, you should have some medical information available about the child's health. Discuss all of the medical information with a health care professional. A pediatrician can let you know about the possible medical aftereffects that might result from behaviors during the pregnancy, such as smoking, drinking, or drug use.

If you are adopting internationally, find a doctor who specializes in international adoptions. By looking over your referral, he can read between the lines and give you a better idea about the child's health. In some countries, children can only be adopted internationally if they have a special need, so the orphanages word things on the referral in a way that enables the child to be adopted outside of the birth country, even though the child does not really have a special need by the standard of other countries.

The Internet can provide you with a lot of information as well. My favorite site is WebMD.com, where you can research just about any medical issue.

Do your research with your eyes wide open. I chose to disregard warnings about respiratory problems that can result from smoking during a pregnancy, and I am now parenting a child with asthma. While I have no regrets about adopting my son, I could have caught his asthma much sooner if I had known what to look for. Because his lungs were normal at birth, I crossed that concern off my list of things to worry about. As a result, he had asthma symptoms for a year before being diagnosed. (I was not aware that children frequently cough rather than wheeze when they have asthma.)

Address any reservations that arise from other concerns, such as an expecting mother's desire for more (or less) contact than you initially wanted. You will be living with this decision for the rest of your life, so make sure you can make peace with the terms that the expecting mother is offering.

While it is normal to be excited when you are matched, do your homework and address any reservations that you have about this match. If you do not feel comfortable with adopting this particular child, then decline the match.

Related Topics:

• Turning down a referral



• Reasons for turning down a referral



• Health Risks Category

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt