Adoption Roundtable #42 - Sickness, Injury & Open Adoption

Time for another Open Adoption Roundtable sponsored by Open Adoption Bloggers. This roundtable topic is:

Think about a time when your child has been injured or sick (or for adoptees, when you have been injured or sick). Did adoption change or complicate that experience at all? Did you share it with others in your adoption constellation?  You might write about an actual experience you have had or think about what you ideally would want to have happen.

This post was an odd one for me to respond to - probably due to the level of openness that we have. Our adoption is so open that I can't imagine this being an issue at all...

Fortunately, we haven't really had any injuries or illness come up yet. Probably the closest that we've had has been my oldest daughter's allergies. She has a severe peanut/tree nut allergy, but I don't really think that adoption played much of a role in how that was handled.

Of course, when we found out that she had food allergies (she has many) we immediately called to see if the birth family had any similar allergies (in case we needed to watch out for others allergies to appear). And the one time that she had a reaction to peanuts we were actually with her birth mother, so we didn't really need to call or anything.

I do know one thing for sure - with either of my children, if something happened to them (injury or illness), we would certainly call and let the birth family know immediately, just as we will call the rest of our family. And I can guarantee that they would be there in the hospital with us - worrying along side us. Because we're a family. And that's what families do.

Drop by Open Adoption Bloggers to read the other responses to this prompt from a variety of members of the adoption triad (adoptive parents, adoptees, and birth parents).