Deciding to adopt

I am glad I am wrapping up the last of the original questions (though I might do a clean up post with a few of the follow up additions), because I finally have other things I want to write about.  But for today, lets finish with the hardest questions I received.

Z asks

We want a 3rd child and are waffling between adopting and trying for a biological 3rd. We are immigrants from a developing nation and would adopt from there. I really worry about my love/attachment with the adopted child and secondly i grew up in a blended family and my mom treated my step-siblings with slightly (not a lot) more leniency and I always felt the unfairness of it. As an adult I understand why she did it and I know in our case it’s not the same situation but i worry about being partial to either the adopted child or the bio children. Plus i also worry about never getting the hang of the feeling about everyone being ours as opposed to an us vs. them. I think these are the very tip of my fears and I wonder if there is something that you can recommend that we read or do before making a decision?

This is really hard for me to answer (which is why I stalled for over a week).  Before I go on, let me say I am absolutely 100% sure that adopting L was the right choice for me, L, and our family as a whole.

That being said, let me play devil’s advocate for a minute.

So say you don’t feel the same about your bio kid and your adopted kid.  What then?  If you adopt a child, you are committing to a lifetime of being this child’s parent, no matter how you feel.  You need to commit to treating your children equally, no matter what your underlying emotions might be.  Forever and ever and ever.  Are you ready to make that commitment?

As someone with both a bio kid and an adopted kid, I can attest that the bonding process was different for me.  (I touch upon those feeling a little in this post from our adoption trip.)   With M, I felt like her baby sitter for a long time.  I felt affectionate and protective of her, but it was probably about 6 months before I felt that warm and fuzzy feeling many new moms claim to have when their child is born.  (Admittedly, this is probably due to the unplanned nature of my pregnancy, my ambivalence about it and the lack of support I had those first months I spent alone with the baby.)  Even with all the affectionate feedback from adorable little M, it took a while for me to feel it.

With L, I also felt immediately protective and affectionate, but L was a wounded little bird.  She clung to me like I was a life raft.  I couldn’t be out of her sight, she would sit on me to claim me, she wouldn’t accept any care from anyone other than me, but there was not much affection there from her.   With a few exceptions of when I escaped for an hour or so,  I was providing 100% of her care 100% of the time.   Oh lordy, was it exhausting.  And in case you are wondering it was MUCH more exhausting than baby jail with a newborn who is born to you and comes fully equipped to accept care and affection.

It took about two years before L began to show signs of affection for me (rather than terror at the idea of me leaving).  Two long years before she began to relax.  Two years before she could put aside all those trauma responses and begin to love and be loved in a more “normal” way.  It is only now when she comes to me so readily for hugs and loves to snuggle in my bed in the morning that I fully understand how much her fear and trauma was holding her back.  It has been a slow and gradual process.  Sometimes it is still one step forward and two steps back.

In some ways, L’s very survival depended on me being able to meet her needs 100% of the time.  I know that if she hadn’t been able to learn to trust that I would be there for her NO MATTER WHAT, she wouldn’t be the trusting, loving, affectionate, happy girl she is today.

During those early years with L, she needed me more than M.  Many many times, M’s needs got put on hold so I could be what L needed me to be.  We are fortunate that we have a great support system of family and friends who filled in the gaps for M, but there were definitely many times I wished I was the one.  During that time, I remember a friend asking me if I felt close to M and I felt sad to answer “No” because it was the honest truth.  I didn’t have the time or the energy to snuggle and play with M like I had before.  I felt like I had lost her a little.  At the same time, I didn’t feel I had any choice because L’s needs were so overwhelming.

Now that we are over 3 years in, things are very different than they were.   L has made huge strides in learning how to love us and be loved.  I have more time to myself (for my sanity!) and for M too.  We are (I think) a happy, healthy, well-adjusted family.  And while I can honestly say that parts of our first years together were brutal, I believe we are only average among adoptive families adopting non-newborns.  We aren’t a worst-case scenario.

But what if we were the worst case scenario?  What if L always required that level of care (or much much more!) from me?  I think when you consider adoption, you have to think about the worst of the worst what ifs.  Could you provide the additional care your adopted child needed even if it meant you had to neglect your biological children?  Could you do that without resenting the adopted child?

I know of one family with two bio kids who decided their adopted daughter was “mean” to their younger bio son and wasn’t quickly attaching so the mother began to resent her.  The couldn’t give their new daughter the love and attention she needed so they disrupted her adoption after a VERY short period of time.  Undoubtedly, this caused untold damage to the psyche of a child who had already experienced tragic loss and trauma. It would have been better if they had thought hard about their own ability to “fake it until you make it” and how they could be fair to the adopted child in any number of different scenarios.

If you are seriously considering adoption, I would start by reading through all these great articles on the Pact Adoption Alliance website.  You can find them here.

There are a lot of books you should read before you decide to adopt.  I can give you a list of books to get you started that were critical in understanding what was going on with L. (I don’t have time to find links for them bc I need to go pick L up from school, but if you need more info email me.)

• Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child: From Your First Hours Together Through the Teen Years
• Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing
• Toddler Adoption: The Weaver’s Craft
• Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today’s Parents
• Nurturing Adoptions: Creating Resilience After Neglect and Trauma
• Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects On Raising Internationally Adopted Children
• Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew
• Parenting the Hurt Child : Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow

• Inside Transracial Adoption  (I know you would adopt from your home country, but you would be bringing a child from that culture to America or wherever you are too.)

Those should give you a great foundation for understanding adoption and the ways it might impact your family.

I will say one more thing, which is probably rather unpopular among adoptive parents.  If you do your research and decide NOT to adopt, don’t feel guilty. It is better to know your own heart and your limitations, than it is to bring a child into an adoptive home where he or she might not be fully embraced.  If you choose to adopt, do it because you have faith that your heart and mind can accept an adopted child the same as your biological children.  It is OK to choose to have a biological child if that is where your heart leads you. In my option,  adoption is not the solution to  the problem of orphaned and needy children in the world. There are many, many ways to help children in need.