After all, clubfoot is not perfect.

There is a flurry of talk in the blog world about choosing a healthy child via adoption….one with little or no deformities. It’s another variation of the old infertile -vs- fertile war that I see raging daily.

Let’s go there. So, if I were to have done PGD with my 3rd pregnancy, and I ended up with 2 live embryos……2 fertilized, viable babies, and one was Quinn with left clubfoot and the other a normal male child, with no discernable abnormalities….which would I have chosen? This is purely hypothetical, because I could never make that kind of choice. I would want them both. But let’s play the game. Mind you I don’t have the same skills of telling the future that some have, so I would not have the foresight of knowing what an amazingly bright, gifted, funny, loving, precious child that Quinn would be. Would I terminate him to have a healthy baby? What if I was adopting and could choose between Quinn and a normal male child? You answer that hypothetical question, because if I did and chose the healthy male child, I would have to explain to my son why his clubfoot made him anything less than perfect.

I don’t have any problem with the adoption special needs checklist. These people can’t read your mind. They ask these questions to understand what your expectations are. They are trying to pair you with a child that you need and that needs you. If you want a child with no obvious deformities, then check no to all the boxes. That is your choice and that is the EFFING purpose of the checklist.

These are children for crying out loud. Not some checklist of abnormalities. If you choose not to adopt a child with clubfoot because you need a perfect, healthy child to love and experience, more power to you. There is nothing selfish about this. You have been through so much. But lets not forget that it is not just a clubfoot. It is a human being with all the same emotions as you. My heart breaks and I cry as I write this because what I got from all the posts that I read is that my child is not perfect, therefore not worthy of being an infertile persons dream child. You see, I learned something today……. infertile people deserve a healthy child, just like me. Tell that to Quinn.

Quinny

We started adoption paperwork to adopt a child from China one month before I got pregnant with Amelia, and we did fill out the special needs checklist……we checked clubfoot, because hindsight is 20/20.