There is a lot of focus during the adoption process on the children being adopted – as well there should be. They are only little children, after all, and going through circumstances they didn’t ask for or deserve. They are the ones making so many new changes – a new home, new family, and a new language.
But adoption doesn’t just affect the adopted children. It affects every single person in the family, and even reaches to the extended family and friends. For me, this journey has been three and one-half years of longing, torment, excitement and wondering.
I know it is difficult to understand until you have been through the adoption process. Know how one’s heart can fall in love with a child before they are in your family. How you can grieve for them and ache for them, when all you’ve seen is a photo (if that).
All I can relate it to is the first few months of pregnancy of a child who has been longed for and planned. As soon as that pregnancy test stick says “positive,” you love that child. You can’t feel them, see them… you know nothing about them except that they are yours and you would do anything to protect them.
You start to think about them all the time. You start to feel guilty when you drink caffeine, when you eat McD*nald’s… so you start to eat healthier, and cut out caffeine. You read about what size the baby is each week and where their development is at. It becomes so much a part of you that it is difficult to separate the baby from yourself. And when you first feel the movement in the womb – you are completely and utterly taken over by the wonder of it.
And so it is (the same) with our adopted children. They grow in our hearts so completely while preparing for the adoption that when we finally see the first photo – it’s as if our hearts are crying out, “I know you!” and somehow we can’t imagine them looking any different. They are beautiful. They are ours – wholly and completely.
And then you give birth. That magical first moment that you held your child, counted their fingers and toes, made sure to check the sex of the child. Then, imagine leaving them with caretakers you don’t know; you have no idea how they really care for the children, in a country with little medical care and crazy storms and earthquakes.
Imagine that you leave them there and let the lawyers decide how quickly they will work out the details until you can bring them home. You might as well rip your heart out. And that is how it was for me. I felt like most of my mind, and a big part of my heart was left in Haiti (my children’s birthplace). Every time I checked e-mail, it centered around wondering if there was an update (my heart still does a little leap every time I see our orphanage director’s name – even though I am no longer waiting for any news). But, peripherally, I also wondered if we were insane for doing this.
Would our new child be so traumatized that she wouldn’t be able to function properly in a family? (The horror stories in the blog-world haunted my dreams.) Would our child purposefully defecate all over our home? Would we eventually need to hide knives and put locks on her door to make sure we could sleep safely? Would she harm our other children and seek to turn other adults against us by telling lies about us? Or would she rage for hours, harming us, the other children and destroying our home? These are not unheard of issues as some adoptive parents deal with this daily.
And so I studied and studied attachment and post adoption care.
And I cleaned/purged my home.
We renovated.
We nested and prepared.
We tried to enjoy time together as a family of four – awaiting the fifth one.
I was restless. For three years, three months, I was restless. And, I often felt sick with the wondering.
And then it finally happened – the e-mail stating that things were ready, and we could go pick up our child. This was the time when all the dreams and fears began to be reality.
Denise Naus, 40, is a wife and mother of three children – one by birth and two by adoption. She reads more self-help and parenting books than any one person should, but also enjoys mindless fiction and watching movies with her husband of 18 years. She home-educates her children and tries to navigate being an introvert while having little people around her all day. She also blogs about life, family and her faith at www.pressingin.com