Talking to a pediatrician at the start of the process?
Did you talk to a pediatrician during the application process to decide what medical issues & drug/alcohol usage you could and could not accept?
We're doing a newborn domestic adoption program and I'm not sure if we just need to do some internet research (I've done some) or if we should talk to a doctor. We've been given a list of diseases and need to mark whether we'd accept it in the birth parents and/or the extended immediate family. A few are easy for me to answer but quite a few of the diseases I know nothing about.
And with drug usage, I know the ideal situation is that they never would have used but there's a chance that won't be the reality and I'm not really up on my drugs to know which are the worst.
Also, just out of curiousity when you got your referall did you have it reviewed by a doctor before you accepted it or did you just say yes/no right away? It doesn't sound like there's a ton of time to make up your mind and I'm not sure in the end there will be time to consult with a doctor beforehand.
Thanks!
Ang
Re: Talking to a pediatrician at the start of the process?
We will be meeting with our PCP in two weeks to discuss drug exposure/medical conditions. We're doing it at the same time as our physicals which are required for our HS. We've also done some internet research.
Good luck!
If you want to talk to a doctor, I'd suggest talking to a specialist in developmental pediatrics (at a children's hospital or a specialized practice) or a pediatrician who has significant experience in adoption (like the ones who do evaluations of IA referrals). Your average neighborhood pediatrician may not have much experience with drug-exposed kids.
As fredalina said, alcohol exposure tends to have the most serious effects, FAS/FAE etc. Personally, I'd have a tough time taking a referral that had been exposed prenatally to PCP -- the mice studies on that one are especially striking.
We thought it was very helpful to have our pediatrician lined up for two purposes. (1) we wanted a doctor who was comfortable with and had experience with children who may have drug exposure. Some of the doctors we talked with weren't overly knowledgeable or comfortable with the unknowns adoption brings. (2) we wanted to have someone who would review cases for us.
For two cases we called our doctor to ask a question about a medical condition in the BM or a drug she was on. Just for peace of mind. We are really glad we had a doctor on board for those reasons. We determined our comfort level with the other things from other sources.
I brought it up with our family dr when we had him fill out our medical paperwork for our homestudy. He was very willing to look over the different situations and give his feedback on what he thought were concerns. He also offered to look at any medical records we might receive when we get a potential match. We've just started the waiting, so we haven't had the opportunity to take him up on his offer, but it was nice to have someone make the offer.
I also work with a pediatrician, so we've discussed a few things here and there. I don't want to take advantage of her, though, so I haven't sat down with her and grilled her. We took our family dr's advice and some internet research and made our decisions based on that.
We spoke to our pediatrician about it during DS' 18 month appointment. I think that talking to a doctor AND doing your own research are very important.
Our doctor said that cigarette smoking, and even marijuana smoking, are not as big of issues as people think. She said to be very, very careful with alcohol use. She also said that babies exposed to hard drugs like cocaine / crack / meth are generally more hyperactive when they reach school age. She also cautioned us about certain mental health issues. She did not say "don't adopt these kids". She just said that we need to be aware of what some of the risks are, so that we are prepared.
Regardless of what tolerances we listed in our paperwork, the agency calls anytime a BM comes in that has used any type of drug or has any type of medical issue. We were asked if we wanted to be shown to one BM who smoked a half a pack a day, and to another who was diagnosed with non-situational depression. I called my pediatrician, my OB GYN and my PCP (yes, I'm a little crazy...I just couldn't believe what they were telling me). To sum it up, I do think it is helpful to get the advice from a doctor you trust. Just keep in mind that doctors will have their own biases, so it is important to do your own research as well.
I think it is absolutely worth talking to a pediatrician prior to making a decision if you have medical questions about a referral.
As a healthcare professional, I feel pretty comfortable making judgments about things we've been called on. But our agency also covered quite a bit in our training that would be useful to those just now learning about in utero drug and alcohol exposure, as well as chronic mental and physical illness/disability in a birth parent. We also talked about the resulting conditions seen in children born of these parents.
As PP stated, I, too, would be quite concerned about fetal alcohol exposure. But how many parents who don't place for adoption had a few drinks or smoked some weed (or worse) before they knew they were pregnant? My guess is LOTS. I'm not minimizing the risks, but it's worth having some perspective. And a pediatric practitioner can help you with that.