Awesome Adoption Story


mueller_family

The Mueller Family

Joe and I, Barb met in 1990 and were married in 1994. We live in Minnesota. Joe has Spina Bifida and is very outgoing and energetic. I am a nurse and I work at Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare and my mother has a rare form of Muscular Dystrophy. We knew that we would not be able to have children of our own, but we both had always wanted to adopt children with special needs. Joe had some health issues that needed to be taken care of first. We signed up and sent in our home study to AdoptUsKids.org I think in 1998 or 1999. We did have two different potential matches at different times, both were 5 years old boys and both had Spina Bifida, one in Texas and the other in California. Unfortunately their foster parents changed their minds and wanted to adopt the boys after we came along and said that we would adopt them. We also had a baby boy with Cerebral Palsy that we thought we would be getting. Then the social worker ended up picking another family after she had told us we were perfect and that the paper work would be started for us to adopt him.

At this point we had decided that maybe adoption was not going to work for us and even stopped working on it. Then in the summer of 2001 we got a call from a lady in California wanting to know if we would adopt a little 18 month old boy, David, with Cerebral Palsy. We said we would need to talk to the foster family to make sure they were not going to adopt him if we became interested. They ended up being in their early 70’s and assured us they would not be able to adopt him. In October of that year we flew out to meet him, fell in love and knew he had to be ours. We were able to bring him home in early December.

In August 2002 I was at work one evening showing a doctor the website AdoptUsKids.org when a picture of Bert popped up under My Search Results. He was 2 years old with Spina Bifida living in Arizona. When I got home that night I woke up Joe at 12:30 in the middle of the night to tell him that I think I just found our new son. He commented that he did not know we were looking for a new son and I said neither did I. The next morning I called the contact worker and told her about us and that we were very interested in adopting Bert. We flew out to meet him and once again, knew he was ours. We got the call two days before Thanksgiving that the paper work was done and we could go get him. We were on a plane the next day.

Then on December 6, 2003 we got an e-mail on a Saturday morning that Molly, a social worker in Georgia, had seen our profile that we had originally posted back in 1998 or 1999 on AdoptUsKids.org. She was wondering if we had adopted or if we were still interested in adopting a baby with Spina Bifida that was due to be born on Dec. 16th. We talked it over and said why not we always wanted to try the new born experience. So I called Molly that day and on the 15th Joe flew out. On Christmas Day, Matthew was able to come home to Minnesota.

Now we have updated with AdoptUsKids so that we can once again adopt a child. This time we are thinking about a girl, although that is what we thought with all 3 of our boys. We would like the newborn experience again but we are open to a toddler as well.

www.adoptuskids.org

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