Family adopts multiple children, including baby girl given two days to live

When Joy and Stephan first married, they planned to build what they considered the perfect family, with one boy and one girl, and travel the world with their two children — but God had other plans. The couple had two biological children and then went on to adopt eight children, including a baby girl who was given two days to live at birth, and two children with Down syndrome.

The couple’s story was shared in a YouTube video by filmmakers who set out to “make a movie inspired by our friend Jay, who has Down syndrome,” called “Made With Love.” In the YouTube video’s description, the filmmakers stated, “Along the way, we’ve met incredible people whose stories have inspired us, and we hope to share that with you.”

Family adopts baby given 2 days to live “She was everything beautiful with the world”

Joy and Stephan had a baby boy and girl shortly after their marriage — Mélika and Jacob — but Jacob passed away at 8-and-a-half months old. The couple felt their dreams for their family die with him, and were unable to have more biological children. In their hurt and loss, they looked into adoption and adopted Kylee, a little girl who was a distant relative. 

But they still felt their family wasn’t complete, and they wanted a house full of children. The couple looked into domestic infant adoption, but after years of searching, were not paired with a baby.

“We had six, and we were done”

They eventually decided to host a 12-year-old boy from the Philippines for a summer — but there was a problem. The boy’s legal name was “Baby Boy,” and it wasn’t possible for him to get a visa with that name. So, instead of hosting the boy, Joy and Stephan decided to adopt him, and they named him Aaron.

About a year later, the couple heard of three biological brothers from the Philippines who also needed a family. The brothers would soon be ineligible for adoption because of their ages. Joy and Stephan were not legally allowed to adopt at the time because they had just adopted, but a counselor decided to look into an exception for them.

Joy kept thinking about and praying for the three boys. The couple remained unsure about their adoption until their pastor gave a surprising sermon. Joy recounted:

Our pastor did a series (he never does this)… on Christmas carols. And the one he chose that Sunday [after the couple had spoken with an adoption counselor about the three boys] was “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” And he broke it down into Em, Eman, and Emmanuel, and together it means ‘God is with us’.

[The boys’] biological names are Em, Eman, and Emmanuel… So we said, ‘Yes.’ The Philippines said, ‘Yes.’ So we had six, and we were done.

But shortly after adopting the three boys an adoption counselor told Joy about a baby girl who couldn’t be placed for adoption. She had been expected to live just two days after birth — which she had already outlived — and was being kept at a geriatric hospice facility awaiting her death.

Though Stephan had been against adopting again, once Joy heard about the baby girl, she told Stephan. He had many reasons as to why it wouldn’t work — money, insurance, a loan repayment — but Joy told him, “We can’t make any of that happen, but God can. All He needs is a yes and a willing heart.”

“Everything beautiful in the world”

Eight days later, the family welcomed baby girl Asher into their home. She was two months old and weighed five pounds. Despite having far surpassed doctors’ predictions, the couple was “warned” that their view of Asher’s future was unrealistic. 

“… [T]he doctors really thought we had a Pollyann[a] view of her disabilities and she had a terminal illness. And they said, ‘I don’t think you understand. She doesn’t have the lobes of her brain. There’s just spinal fluid,’” Joy said. “And she had a very, very small portion of her cerebellum and a brain stem.”

But Asher, whom Joy called “everything beautiful in the world,” not only lived far longer than medical professionals had predicted, but was able to do much more than expected. The family had been told she would never see, hear, recognize people, or experience emotions. But Joy said, “[T]hey were very wrong when it comes to Asher. She would smile and laugh. She knew her people. She knew who we were.”

Asher and the other children brought “laughter and love and beauty and healing” into the family, according to Joy. Asher was able to reach people in a unique way because she loved unconditionally.

“People saw things in Asher. She reached the core of them in ways that other people couldn’t,” Joy recalled. “She was just love, and so we found that every member of our family, when experiencing grief, after my mother died, when walking through hurt and trauma and loss, every member of our family went to Asher when they were happy, mad, sad, for all the emotions, because she just loved.”

Leaving a legacy

After Asher’s death, Joy and Stephan adopted Zay’den, a boy with Down syndrome who was born with a serious heart defect and missing the lower part of his digestive tract. He has thrived in the couple’s family. “He loves people. He gets smiles out of people all the time,” Stephan said.

Later, the couple adopted a baby girl with Down syndrome so Zay’den could grow up with a little sister. Mila is “just full of joy, also full of sass,” according to Stephan — and a “deep thinker” who is “very bright,” according to Joy.

Stephan described the meaning he found in adopting his children, and encourages others to consider the same:

It’s my challenge to all men out there that, you know, we need to stop just thinking about our late stage in life to retire, play golf, go fishing. These are all fun things, but… [w]hat kind of legacy are you going to leave behind? I want my children to see that there is somebody in their lives that steps out of their comfort zone to try to make the world a better place, to really try to impact the world around us.

… [B]ringing one child home and changing that child’s life – that is so important…. Children with special needs are lined up waiting for families to welcome them in their home. 

Joy added, “We consider ourselves extremely privileged to have been able to walk this journey with them.”