Natan Shai's Story: Our Special Child
By Hannah Levi
JewishMom.com
Our story started back in 2006 when my husband Naor and I decided that we would like to be a foster family for a special needs baby.
We decided that God had blessed us with 5 beautiful, healthy children and we wanted to give something back. So we applied and waited, not knowing exactly what the future would bring. We waited and waited and nothing seemed to happen as fast as we had expected.
About a year later, in November, we got a call from Social Services saying that there was a baby boy who had been abandoned at birth at a nearby hospital. We got the call on the Monday, visited on the Tuesday and took him home on the Wednesday……….yes a three-day pregnancy!
Luckily I still had lots of baby things from my own kids, my youngest at that time being only four years old. It was SO exciting for all of us.
We didn’t even ask any questions, and were told only that he wasn’t going to be normal, even though he looked just like a regular baby. We were also told that he was born prematurely (900 grams) and has hydrocephalus and hydranencephaly (whatever that was!) and that we would have to find out about giving him a shunt...