How we were blessed to adopt and love Andrew Pierce Wells...

Fred and Deborah Wells got married in 1993 knowing planning to have two natural children and adopt two more children.  However, shortly before the wedding, on a routine exam, Deborah was told she may have a hard time getting pregnant.  At that point, she gave Fred the option of bailing on the marriage but he didn't care and they married. 

Because they were told that news, they decided to try and get pregnant almost immediately but nothing happened.  Eventually, they tried infertility drugs and Deborah had surgery but still no results.  Since they had planned to adopt anyway, they quickly stopped that whole circus and pursued adoption.  They met a great family that had adopted 5 black and bi-racial children and felt this what God had for them, as well.

Deborah had worked with special needs kids in college so they were quite open to adopting a child with special needs. 

When you are waiting to adopt a child, you jump EVERY time the phone rings.  Two months after they were approved, the phone rang and they got "the call!"  Kamala (his social worker) told us we had been matched with a six-month-old "juicy' boy!  She went on to explain he had some special needs and we needed to find out about them and decide if we wanted him.  We told her we really didn't need to think about it, we were sure he was the one for us. 

Then the agency wanted to gather more medical info and stalled and we started praying!  We even called special prayer meetings for moms and prayed for the red tape.  Sure enough, they called and told us he was coming home...tomorrow! 

We were thrilled...he was a great baby!  He had been born cocaine-addicted but the withdrawal was long gone.  He had asthma, developmental delays in all areas, was a premie (3 pounds 11 ounces at birth...22 pounds when we got him!).  When he was 11 months old, we found out he needed cardio-vascular surgery because he had an artery wrapped around his trachea and esophagus.  He recovered super-great!

The pictures above are of his First Birthday!  

Back then, doctors didn't tell you much about therapies but eventually some other moms pointed us in the right direction.  Andrew started getting speech, occupational and physical therapies and made great strides.  By age 3, he just needed speech therapy and was a fantastic big brother.  The Wells were blessed!