With apologies to our fearless Popular Culture bloggers, I must admit that I am usually woefully ignorant of TV and music personalities. Nor am I usually a reader of People magazine. I just had to purchase the October 5 issue, however, when I saw the cover featuring actress Katherine Heigl and her musician husband, Josh Kelley, with their ten-month-old daughter Naleigh, newly arrived from Korea.
I’m so out of the TV scene that it took me several paragraphs to realize that Katherine Heigl wasn’t Kate Hudson, but her story sounded very familiar to me. Although the cover teaser talks about the Grey’s Anatomy star’s “emotional decision to adopt a special-needs baby”, the article says that, much like myself, Heigl had always hoped to adopt and minced no words telling her Kelley this before they married.
“I wanted to make sure I was marrying a guy…who understand that that was going to have to happen,” Heigl told Ellen DeGeneres, on whose show she announced the imminent placement of her daughter.
Heigl has an older sister, Margaret Leigh (Meg) who was adopted from Korea. The article stated that the couple began the adoption application and homestudy process shortly after their December 2007 wedding. (This is the only part which surprised me—my understanding is that couples had to be married for two to three years prior to adopting from Korea.)
The couple reportedly learned six months ago that they would be receiving a little girl from Korea, but expected a longer wait to bring her home. (Often the passports and visas are the most wearing part of tan international adoption LINK even after all parties are agreed to the placement.)
However, the couple learned, with just a few days to spare, that the placement would take place on September 10. Heigl told DeGeneres that the placement was accelerated because the girl now called Naleigh (actually named Nancy Leigh for Heigl’s mother and sister) was “a special needs baby”. Heigl did not specify what the special need or needs is. Adoptive parents are often advised to be mindful of their child’s privacy and remember that the child’s story belongs to the child.
Susan Soon-Keum Cox, vice president of Holt International Adoption Agency and herself an adult adoptee from Korea, says that special needs which could expedite an adoption range from a need for minor medical attention to more serious medical or developmental disorders. These conditions make the children harder to place with families.
Cox said that Heigl and Kelley did not get special treatment and the adoption was done according to good social work practices of putting the child’s needs first.
The article contains some lovely photos, not only of a Korean baby close to the age and size my girls were on arrival, but of Heigl and her Korean-born sister on Meg’s wedding day. I’m always looking for pictures of multiracial families and Asian women to show my girls. (Unfortunately, I’ll first have to cut the photos out of this issue, which features some very skimpily-dressed people photographed for other articles.)
Naleigh’s arrival has already inspired a song from her dad, which he debuted at a September 18 concert. The 29-year-old Kelley captures the change that happens to almost all parents, mother or father, birth or adoptive:
“I know the kind of guy I am
A bit too much to myself
Not much left for anyone else…
But all that changed when you first touched my face
Halfway around my little world
You had no idea that you were my girl
And you found my arms, not a moment too soon,
I couldn’t see past me ‘til I saw you…
I love the man you’re makin’ me
Everyday I wanna prove there’s nothing I won’t do for you
And just to see you in your mama’s arms is all I need
To bring me to my knees…I couldn’t see past me ‘til I saw you.
Please see this related blog:
What Kind of Special Needs do Kids Awaiting Adoption Have?