Indiana family adopts baby with rare genetic disorder
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A baby with a rare genetic disorder will soon be celebrating her first birthday.
She’ll be doing it with the help of the parents who adopted her.
Ivy Case is one of very few people in the world with Trisomy 9 Mosaic. That means some of her cells have three copies of chromosome 9, as opposed to two.
This impacts Ivy in a variety of ways. She has airway and vision issues, a seizure disorder and she has severely dislocated hips so she can’t crawl or walk.
Her parents knew all of this when they adopted her from a family in Texas. In fact, they sought her out.
A few years ago, they adopted a little boy named Jacoby. When he was one, he was diagnosed with a genetic disorder.
It was an overwhelming process for the Cases at first, but they eventually got the hang of it.
So when they were ready to adopt again, they wanted another baby with special needs. They felt it was their calling.
“Being these kids moms is the best thing,” said Renee Case, “It has grown me as a person, it has grown Josh and I as a couple. We never anticipated that this is what our family was going to look like when we got married almost seven years ago. We thought that we were going to have kids that were normal and ya know, now that we have the kids we do, it’s such a blessing. They bring joy to our lives, they bring joy to our families and I couldn’t see myself having any other kids, these are my babies.”
The Cases will be making the two and a half hour drive from Warsaw, Indiana to Riley Hospital for Children about six times in the next few months for both of their kids. One of the doctors they have been seeing is pediatric neurosurgeon Jodi Smith.
“I was just impressed with the parents who adopted this child and their willingness to take a child who has so many problems and love on them like they are the most normal child in the whole world. I love the families because by doing that, it seems like the kids develop better from the love that they get like they get from their parents. Like Baby Ivy’s parents will help her thrive and be the best Baby Ivy that she can be and that to me, when I see good parents, I know that no matter what I have to do on that child, they’ll be able to recover cause they’ll be taken care of.”