"A child like this requires a lot of care" are some of the first words Teddy's mother hears after the birth of her child diagnosed with Down Syndrome. In the maternity ward, the midwives lament the mother and advise her to leave the baby in a home as "they will take good care of him there because they know how". Driven by their love for their child and in immense pain, the Petrovs made the hardest decision of their lives because they were told they could not cope with raising Teddy.
So the child was placed in a residential home for children with disabilities, and a month later, at the suggestion of a social worker, the family signed a document for Teddy's full adoption, hoping that their offspring would find his fortune abroad.
Teddy's grandmother couldn't bear to watch her daughter's family fall apart in grief, and then the tragedy of the Petrov family reached us.
The coordinator of Hope and Homes for Children – Bulgaria Branch (HHC) for the district meets Teddy's mother and tells her in detail about her child's disability, about her rights and about Teddy's possibilities to be taken care of by her family with the constant support of HHC. "If someone had told me all this in the hospital, I would never have abandoned my child," the mother exclaims at the end of the conversation.
Weeks later, the Petrovs filed new paperwork with the Department of Child Protection, and despite social workers' disbelief of the family's intentions, six months after his birth, Teddy is home for the first time, and with her, hope and smiles have returned.
