Couple with Spina Bifida Adopts Girl with Same Disability: ‘So Much Love’

A married Indiana couple with spina bifida (SB) is telling their inspiring story after adopting a little girl with the same rare condition.

SB, a rare “permanently disabling” birth defect that occurs when a fetus’s spinal cord fails to develop or close properly, is known as a “snowflake condition” because no two cases are exactly the same, according to the Spina Bifida Association. 

Kelly and Larry Peterson, both 46, first met at a camp for other kids with the condition when they were just 10 years old, and even dated in high school before they broke up and went their separate ways when Kelly went to college, People reported.

Years later, the old friends — who coincidentally were both born on December 22, 1978 — reconnected on MySpace after about a decade. 

“I happened to be on MySpace and he popped up on MySpace profile,” Kelly, who was then married to someone else, told People. “So we started talking through there and for several years just talked.”

Kelly, a special education teacher, got divorced from her then-husband, and she and Larry eventually began dating again. 

“With [Larry], there’s things we don’t have to explain,” Kelly said, referring to the fact that they both have SB. “They don’t have to be understood because we both have gone through it. That gives us a level of ease and comfort.”

After getting married in 2015, the couple decided they wanted to expand their family via adoption — a task that would prove difficult due to their disabilities. 

While Larry does have movement in his legs, Kelly is fully paralyzed from the waist down, and both of them use wheelchairs. 

“My husband can stand with support or holding onto something, and can actually throw his [wheelchair] in the trunk of the car and hold on to the car to get to the driver’s seat,” Kelly said.

Though the couple was determined to adopt, they were denied by agencies.

“I had a Christian agency that flat out told me, ‘We don’t work with people with disabilities,'” she recalled. “I said, ‘Well, that’s not very Christian of you.’ “

“Every agency that was willing to work with us had only dealt with families where one person had a disability, not two. We were warned it would take a whole lot longer to be matched because of our disability.”

With the help of special needs adoption agency Special Angels, the Petersons were finally matched with newborn baby Hadley in 2018 — a little girl with the same type of SB that they have. 

Due to paperwork and regulations, the adoption was not finalized until 2020. 

Despite the challenges, Dr. Sue Mukherjee of Shriners Children’s Chicago, where Hadley is a patient, told the publication that the fact that both parents have SB is actually good for their now-six-year-old daughter. 

“Living life with spina bifida is complicated,” Mukherjee said. “There is a lot of medical care and follow-up… Who better to teach a baby with spina bifida how to grow up to be independent and to manage their own care?”

Hadley is also in a wheelchair, but has movement in her left leg, Kelly said. 

An adorable family photo shared on Facebook shows the happy family, with the little girl smiling in the middle:

“It takes a while for families to get onboard when they have no prior experience with a child with spina bifida,” the doctor added. “I thought it was lovely in this case how two adults with spina bifida found each other, so they bring their own lifetime of experience living with the condition.” 

Larry said that his daughter “has brought so much love, joy and fun into our lives since the moment she entered the world.”

“She continues to amaze us as she grows and becomes more independent.”

While Hadley also has other medical challenges, including autism, apraxia — a chronic neurological disorder — and a chromosomal disorder that causes heart issues,  the Petersons do their absolute best to “advocate” for her, Kelly said. 

“We don’t have experience in all of these things, but I know what to look for, how to help her and how to advocate for her,” the mom noted.

“We don’t see our lives as that different, even though when we stop and think about it, we know it is,” she added. “But when you’re living day to day, we just don’t see it that way.”