Category — Adoption

Many of you may know Kelley, a friend of mine through the Vietnam adoption community.  When Kelley was in the process of adopting her 10 year old twins, there was a volunteer named Sarah at her sons’ orphanage who sent Kelley regular updates and occasional pictures.  I remember Kelley emailing me about what a Godsend this woman was to her and how she would be eternally grateful for Sarah’s selfless volunteer efforts with her sons.  But as it turned out, there was absolutely nothing selfless about Sarah’s “volunteerism.”  Sarah is an aspiring journalist who was really just “volunteering” to further her career by writing a sensational article that misleads readers into linking Kelley’s adoption story to the reports of fraud and corruption that caused the Vietnam program to shutdown. 

Sarah befriended Kelley just to gather the details of her personal adoption story, then used those details in a poorly written article that misrepresents the truth, exploits Kelley and her sons’ story, and is an assault on all adoptive families.  She even used Kelley’s sons’ names in the article, with NO concern for what pain that may cause them as they grow up.  These are REAL PEOPLE with REAL stories that are personal and human and heartbreaking.  Sarah took advantage of her relationships with vulnerable people and perverted their stories for her own purposes.  Sarah’s betrayal of Kelley and Kelley’s sons, who she supposedly “helped” in that orphanage only to turn around a year later to stab them in the back, epitomizes the lack of journalism ethics that plagues her field.

This article not only infuriated me on Kelley’s behalf because its author was deceptive, insensitive, and inaccurate, but also because she attempts to paint this materialistic picture of adoptive families.  Even the most clueless person can figure out that adopting 10 year olds is a challenge, and doing things to ease the anxiety of the children being adopted is crucial.  THAT is why families send photos of their homes with pictures of the adoptee’s soon-to-be bedroom, etc., along with photos of family members.  It’s to ease the anxiety and the fear of the unknown, not to buy the child’s affection, lure them from birth families, or even demonstrate the “wealthy, middle class lifestyle which will soon be theirs.”  Also, the author’s wording bothered me when she describes “through the dimness into the bright light of the entrance we saw that a group of Americans had arrived to collect their adoptive Vietnamese babies.”  As if our children are coins we’re whimsically picking up off the ground and pocketing to add to our collections.   

I am glad the editor had the sense to remove Kelley’s boys’ names, but that is not enough.  This article is poorly written, tells a deceivingly incomplete story, misrepresents specific adoption stories, and is generally offensive and disrespectful to families formed through adoption. 

If you are bothered by this article and would like to support Kelley’s efforts to have it removed, continue submitting comments on her behalf.  They are no longer posting new comments, but I am sure they are seeing them. 

First, I want to thank those who took the time to offer their support and assistance to Jessica’s mom in my previous post.

Ok, so I have no idea why it didn’t dawn on me sooner to solicit pictures of common skin diseases from my readers, seeing as many of you have Vietnamese children or are Vietnamese. A few AWESOME people have emailed me and left me comments asking if it’d be helpful to pass along pictures of their kids’ ___ skin condition. YES! HUGELY helpful. So that you know how these pictures will be used, I’ll give you the run-down of the project I’m working on…

I am working with the dermatology department out here and collaborating with the dermatology department in Hue, Vietnam. Travis and I conceived (minds out of the gutter people) this project a LONG time ago, when we saw how prevalent certain skin diseases are in the orphanages of Vietnam, and how mis/undertreated they are. Things like scabies, impetigo, eczema, staph infections, viral rashes, etc. Sadly, there’s a huge lack of awareness regarding dermatologic conditions in Vientam - to be fair, we get really crappy educations on skin diseases here in US medical schools as well. Either way, it trickles down to orphanage care and most skin stuff just goes totally untreated, which makes for a pretty depressing quality of life. I CANNOT imagine itching or having permanently cracked, dry skin, etc. without relief ON TOP of living in an orphanage.

Trav and I thought it’d be a really useful thing to have a very basic guide, with pictures and realistic treatment modalities, for the 20 most common skin conditions, in every orphanage. This would allow the caregivers to consult pictures and simple descriptions in a manual to help them recognize the most common skin diseases and treat them appropriately. I found a dermatologist mentor, who has been wonderful, here in CO, and solicited the help of another US-trained doctor I had VERY coincident indirect contact with while we were in Vientam. Do you remember that little girl with severe hydrocephalus I met in the Hoi An Orpahange? After meeting her, I emailed the Hoi An Foundation to see if I could help raise the funds needed to get her a brain shunt and a very compassionate physician responded to me. Turns out, he founded the Hoi An Foundation, is faculty at Travis’ medical school, AND is currently living in Central Vietnam so that he can help educate countryside docs on certain public health and disease topics. WOW, talk about crazy coincidences (or something more if you don’t believe in coincidences).

So, that doctor has put me in touch with the appropriate departments at the medical school in Hue. I will be collaborating with the physicians there, setting up a teledermatology link so that consultations can occur when an unusual derm case presents itself. Additionally, I am writing a grant proposal in hopes of securing the necessary equipment to make the teledermatology consults sustainable in that digital pictures will be forwarded on to the derm dept. here, and stored for future use in the picture-based manual I am ultimately trying to create. Once I have photos of all the 20 most common skin diseases on Vietnamese skin, I will compile them into the manual. The manual will then be distributed to rural health care providers as well as orphanage caregivers.

That’s the plan anyway. I’m still in the grant writing phase of the project, but trying to collect as many pictures as I can along the way. If your child has anything that’s been conclusively diagnosed and you’d like to help this project, PLEASE email me. Here’s what I’m looking for from the photos:

- clarity, good lighting, crisp image

- relative size - if possible, take 1 picture of your finger pointing to a lesion to illustrate how big it is compared to a fingernail

- location - close-ups are great, but if possible, also take a zoomed out picture so we can see where on the body the lesions are

PS: If you’ve read this far, you deserve a heads-up…check back before the weekend for a surprise:)

POST UPDATE: oh crap guys, didn’t mean to lead you down that path!  NO, I’m not pregnant.  NO, we’re not adding anymore kids to the mix!  I was trying to be coy, but I’ll just tell you - there’ll be another fun giveaway this weekend.  Sorry for misleading you!

For the APs and PAPs out there, and anyone else who knows an adoptee or is an adoptee, I don’t care what your politics are; we should ALL take issue with Cindy McCain’s speech tonight…

HOW THE HELL can we expect the general public to be more sensitive, more educated, less ignorant about adoption, positive adoption language, and the psyche of anyone made to feel like a charity case when the potential-first lady-to-be is an adoptive parent herself and holds her kid up to the American public in a SPEECH aimed at showing what a wonderful person she, herself, is BECAUSE she adopted her daughter out of poverty?! That poor freakin girl. And not because she was “sick and malnourished, living in Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh [paraphrased],” but because she has parents who have made it clear that they took her in, like a person would a stray puppy, and are seeking praise for doing so. And is it just me, or do any other PAPs or APs out there see a problem with Cindy McCain getting off the plane with an unexpected baby in her arms and her husband asking, “where’s that baby going?” and Cindy responding “to our house.” Not sure about you guys, but I don’t know if that’s the healthiest way to bring an adopted child into a new home. She might as well have said:

“Surprise honey, look what I found?! Can we keep her?”

Are you kidding me, Cindy? And then the camera pans to the daughter as the audience stands and applauds her mother for the wonderful thing she did in adopting this little orphan.

Maybe I’m off-base here. Maybe Bridget McCain is totally well-adjusted and so grateful to her parents for saving her. {That should’ve been read with great sarcasm, btw}

But I’m pissed off on behalf of my own family because that kind of public display of ignorance is why Travis and I are often approached to be told what a great thing we’ve done in adopting our kids, or the “wow, they don’t even know how lucky they are” comments at the grocery store. For the record, NO child who has ever lost the parents that gave him/her life is “lucky.” The luck and the good fortune belong solely to the adoptive parents who have the pleasure of raising that child. Being an adoptive parent is a BLESSING, and I hope my children NEVER feel indebted or unworthy to be our kids because of anything anyone else has ignorantly said to them or because Travis and I have failed at showing them that it is WE, their parents, who wake up everyday feeling grateful to have them as our children to raise, love, and adore.

Just a cute little clip from their first night altogether. Jena hadn’t gotten to town yet, and Shannon didn’t join us until Saturday, so it’s just Addy, Lucy, and Jackson running and screaming in this one! Shane Bug had already hit the sack that night.

Hopefully people aren’t tired of reading about our incredible vacation in St. Augustine, and since Nicki and Kelly both already wrote about it WAY better than I have it in me to do right now, I’ll just refer you to their blogs for a good read!  No seriously; I’m exhausted and won’t be able to blog it half as good as they already have.  For my family and friends though: we know these families through various Vietnam adoption groups - some were with our agency (Nicki & Kelly), another we met up with while we were in Vietnam (Shannon), another through blogging alone (Jena).  Between all of us, we have 6 beautiful children adopted from Vietnam.  Seeing them all run, scream, laugh, play, etc., together was amazing and we’re really thankful to have established these friendships - these are very meaningful relationships to us and hopefully will be for our children as well.  Since there are so many blogger friends out there I would really love to know IRL, I’m hoping to organize a BIG get together where we can all get our kids together sometime in the next year.  The key will be to do it in a way that doesn’t take anything away from Vietnam Heritage Camp, for those of us who plan on attending that annually.  Perhaps we could plan around that and spend a day or two before or after that week?  Suggestions for how to pull this off are welcome! 

So, the weekend was pretty hysterical.  It was full of lively discussions, TONS of laughter and late nights, wild children, and happy, but exhausted parents by the end of it all!  We had an absolute BLAST.  We talked about everything from Bloggerville to Vietnam adoption ethics to religion to politics to olympics to parenting to careers, and so so so much more.  It’s funny how well you can know people through the internet…it was like all our friendships just had a very different starting point.  Like we’d been friends for years (which we have through our blogs and discussion boards) and were just catching up in person. 

Anyway, Nicki did her highlights already, so I’m copying that with a few of mine:

• Seeing Jackson TOTALLY smitten with Nicki’s boys, and then asking about her oldest son, whom he calls “Dolphin” after arriving home in Colorado (his name is Dalton!).
• Hearing Jackson exclaim “TRAVIS” when he saw his Daddy walk through the bedroom door.  We had so much adult conversation going on around the kids at all times that they all heard their parents referred to by first names so much and I think Lucy and Addy both referred to their parent by first name at one point or another as well.
• Seeing Jena’s face when I dropped the F* bomb in the most sacrilegious of ways (I believe it was something like “good F’ing Lord!). 
• Hearing sweet little Lucy’s voice say “hi baby, hi” every time she saw Finley. 
• Mistaking Khai for Jackson more than twice.  Shoot me, but they are SO similar physically.  They are about the same height, similar builds, same haircut, same exact skin tone, SAME freakin’ voices!!!  But I also have to admit I called Addy “Lucy” once…just thought you should have all the facts.
• Seeing Shane SO worn out from trying to keep up with the big kids (and holding that precious noggin up has GOT to be hard work too!) that he actually laid his head down in the sand to get a quick breather here and there.  Every time he’d give himself a little time-out from the action, he’d pick his head up and half of it would be painted with sand like The Mask.  Pretty funny stuff (see Kelly’s blog for a picture of him laying his head down!). 
• Teasing Kelly about how fanatical she is about the olympics.  I think at 1 point someone accused Michael Phelps of being fat and she busted out how many calories per day he consumes, his % body fat, and his training regimen.  Bwahahaha!!  It was a riot. 
• Jackson chanting “beach, beach, beach” as soon as we got off the plane in Colorado…poor kid.  I guess we know his heart lies with the ocean, not the mountains, although I used to think he was a mountain kinda kid!  Maybe you can be both, like how some people are dog and cat people?! 
• Hearing Shannon’s voicemail when she called Jena “Gina!”  Shan, totally forgot to tease you IRL about this, but I laughed my butt off and we jokingly called Jena “Gina” most of the weekend.  I guess that’s another one of those hilariously funny blogging things - you can know someone SO well on the internet for awhile and then meet them in person and realize you don’t know how to pronounce her name!  Hahaha.  So freakin funny.
• The VERY nosey woman ahead of me in the airport security line ask if my husband is Korean (Travis wasn’t with me at the time), to which I responded “no, and neither are my kids.”  Oh I’m cruel; I derived a strange sense of pleasure from tormenting her nosey mind with just enough info to really make her rat start running.

My least favorite part of the trip:

• Going 3 for 3 with poop diapers on the plane ride home…can you believe they were ALL 3 inspired to take a dump at the same damn time?!  And worse, there was NO changing table in either bathroom on the airplane(the airline was Southwest, and they should be ashamed of themselves!)

Ok, there were SO many more highlights but I have to get some sleep.  Here are some of my favorite pictures, but for the really good ones, you’ll have to see Nicki and Kelly’s blogs. 

Addy, Lucy, and Jackson:

Kell reading to my boys:

Jena reading to her kids and mine:

The most photogenic kid on earth, Khai:

The famously gorgeous Lucy:

Lucy, Addy, and Jackson:

Lucy, looking like she’s trying to flick off the camera, and Finley:

Lucy, Addy, and Jackson:

Khai, Jackson, and Lucy:

Khai, Addy, Jack, Lucy, and Shane Bug:

Shane looking out at Lucy, Jack, and Kell on the porch

Addy Mai’s million dollar smile:

Little Miss A~, smart as a whip and drop dead gorgeous:

Kelly and Lucy:

Jackson and Lucy:

Jena with Bailey and Khai

We are LOVING vacation. Travis finished his 3 months of surgery and we took off to Florida the next day. The boys are having a blast at the beach, and Travis and I have realized how in need we’ve been of some time together as a family, away from our day-to-day routine. Amazing what that can do! 

We had some visitors drive about 3 hours to come hangout with us the first day we were here. Some of my Vietnam blogging buddies might know Erin’s family.  Her ADORABLE boys shared their beginnings with our son, Jackson, at an orphanage in Vung Tau.  Travis and I first met Cameron and Connor the day we adopted Jackson, and we sent Erin some pictures of her little guys, who lived in the infant room with Jackson.  Here are some shots of our boys reunited:

Our DC buddies are here now…the ‘Caca Crusaders,’ although we’re missing my best friend, Dominique, and her family;(  It’s not quite the same without them, but we’re still having a great time and the quote list is already beyond ridiculous.  So there are 3 couples here and 5 kids, Jackson being the oldest!  It makes for an action-packed vacations, with very little sleep!  Oh, and for the Vietnam adoption bloggers, check back this weekend; we have some more good friends coming to visit this weekend!  Here are some pictures with our friends from the past few days:

Not at the beach, but I just love this picture of Jackson and his gorgeous eyes:

Here is a HILARIOUS sequence of Bryson drifting off to sleep on the couch next to Jackson:

Going…

Going…

Gone…

JACKSON: “Hey man, wake-up!  Movie’s not over yet!”

JACKSON: “DUDE!  Your friend’s calling.  He’s says wake the heck up!”

BRYSON: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!  MOM!!!!!  The kid who never sleeps is TORTURING me.”

Someone requested that I write a post about scabies and acropustulosis a LOOOOONG time ago, but at the time, I didn’t think it was relevant to very many of my readers since scabies has been written about often and acropustulosis is considered to be pretty uncommon. I think it was probably more relevant than I realized, and I just got another request to write on this topic. Sorry to whomever made the initial request that I ignored until now! Better late than never, right?

Hopefully this post will be useful to those readers who have adopted, or will adopt from an orphanage with the oh so familiar scabies epidemic.  Jackson’s orphanage in Vung Tau was pretty much crawling with them, and every baby we knew coming out of there had a decent to bad case of scabies.  Shane’s orphanage, on the other hand, in Que Son, was TOTALLY scabies-free.  It was amazing.  Shane left that place with GORGEOUS skin, and still has gorgeous skin.  Jackson, on the other hand, still suffers from his post-scabies skin problems, along with his eczema. 

Most people already know you should bring a few tubes of Elimite with you, which is a prescription topical cream that gets rid of the scabies mite.  Ok, I’ll back up.  Scabies is a dermatologic condition that results from the body’s immune response to the eggs of the scabies mite.  It’s commonly found in unclean conditions where people tend to be crowded together (prisons, orphanages, homeless shelters, etc.). The mites burrow under the skin, lay their nasty eggs, which causes the body to react with itching and red “bumps.” 

Here’s a picture of a scabies rash:

In case that didn’t already gross you out, here’s a microscopic picture of what the mites look like:

They love to burrow in the creases between fingers, toes, and in the natal cleft (butt crack), so those are good places to check if you’re not sure if your child has scabies.  Because live mites and eggs are involved, scabies is a contagious condition.  However, it’s not nearly as contagious as everyone treats it unless your child has the most severe infestation (Norwegian Scabies) and you have a lot of contact with his/her skin before you treat it with Elimite.  You’re most likely not going to catch it from holding your baby that first day.  But if you want to be extra careful anyway, put your clothes with your baby’s clothes in a separate bag to take home and wash on high heat.  Anyway, here’s my advice:

1. The first night you come home from the orphanage with your child, you should cover them head to toe (avoiding the eyes) with Elimite.  I would do this even if you aren’t sure of the diagnosis, but see red bumps that seem to itch.  It’s a pretty benign treatment, and imo, the potential of getting scabies or having your child continue to suffer with them in the midst of his/her transition into your care is worse than the treatment. The guidelines are to “treat all contacts,” but unless you’ve waited to initiate treatment with Elimite and have been co-sleeping or living in very close quarters with your child longer than just that first day, it’s highly unlikely you get scabies if you treat right away. So, imo, if you slather your child in Elimite the first night, you shouldn’t need to treat the other family members who were present that first day.
2. Put the clothes they were wearing in a separate baggie to wash with high heat when you return home (most people keep that orphanage outfit as memorabilia for their child). 
3. When your child wakes up, which hopefully doesn’t happen until the next morning (HAHAHA, yeah right!), bath them to remove the Elimite.  This should be sufficient to get rid of the scabies.  VERY rarely will a child require a 2nd application of Elimite. 

However, successfully getting rid of the mite does not ensure you are totally done with this issue.  I’m talking about a skin condition called infantile acropustulosis, which is commonly reported after a bout of scabies has been treated.  It doesn’t require scabies to have ever been present, but it does often follow a known case of scabies.  Initially, it was thought to be a persistent immune response despite the mite having been eradicated.  It’s now known that it is not an immune problem, and it’s not a result of the mite recurring.  The etiology is unknown and it’s a pretty poorly understood and under-recognized condition.  It’s also not contagious.  It is more common in darker skinned people and usually presents with vesicles, or fluid-filled bumps, on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet (here are 2 good pictures), although in rare cases the vesicles can be on the trunk, face, or scalp as well.  The vesicles itch like hell, and probably cause your baby/child a lot of discomfort.  They also seem to be cyclic, so they’ll come and go.  Sometimes they last a few days, sometimes longer, and they tend to recur every few weeks.  The outbreaks are self-limited, meaning they resolve on their own and there’s really nothing you can do to hasten the resolution.  You can treat the symptoms with a topical steroid (like hydrocortisone cream), or an antihistamine.  Occasionally, pediatric dermatologists will use dapsone for really severe, refractory cases.  Your child will eventually grow out of the outbreaks altogether, thankfully!  Most doctors are NOT familiar with acropustulosis, and it’s believed to be underreported because there’s not much awareness about it.  Also, many doctors misdiagnose this as a scabies recurrence because they’ve just never heard of it, in which case they’ll have you using Elimite over and over with no results.  I had to tell our doctor about the condition, and she’s a really informed physician! 

Jackson has acropustulosis, although he hasn’t had a flare in a few months and I’m praying he’s finally outgrown it. During the flares, the itching bugs (no pun intended) the heck out of him.  He sometimes comes hopping towards us with 1 foot in the air saying “itch, itch!”  On occasion, he even has a hard time falling asleep because his poor little feet itch so badly.  On those nights, we give him Benadryl and apply a topical steroid.  We’ve learned to cover the hydrocortisone cream with a layer of aquaphor to seal it in so it doesn’t just rub off.  That helps a little bit, but it still really stinks when he has an outbreak.

Just out of curiosity, how many of your kids out there have acropustulosis?  If so, what did you have to go through to end up at that diagnosis (was your child given several rounds of scabies treatment?  skin scrapings?  etc.)?

All this talk about career, family, and going back to work, I thought I’d introduce you all to our Spanish speaking nanny.

The other day, while Rachel was visiting, Jackson was playing so well by himself and just jabbering away.  He does this all the time and his imagination is truly incredible.  Every now and then I stop to spy on his conversation with himself because it’s usually hilarious.  I swear I heard him say “ocho,” so I told Rach “I think he’s counting in Spanish.”  We paused to listen, and sure as heck, he was counting his toys in Spanish…1 - 10.  I got him to do it again for the camera when Travis was home to hear it too:

Like so many other things, I have never worked on this with him.  He must’ve picked it up from a Dora episode.  The crazy part is that it’s not like he repeats stuff while she’s saying it.  He just stores it somewhere in that brain of his and it comes out days or weeks later!

A few other funny Jack tidbits…we’ve had some signs that he’s ready to start potty training.  I’m just not sure I’m ready yet!  While Rach and I were hanging out, we heard Jackson announce “I poopin!”  I didn’t take it seriously at first because we don’t even call it “pooping” in our house.  But Rach yelled to me “uh, he took his diaper off!”  I ran over to see, and sure as $hit (like that pun?!), he was in the corner and had already pooped in the book box.  He was barefoot and decided to squish it in with his heel.  Just for good measure I guess.  Off to the bathtub we went.  Then, today, he told me as he was squatting, “Jackson make caca volcano.”  I kid you not.  Those were HIS words!!!  I have NO IDEA where he gets this $hit (again, no pun intended!), but he cracks me up!  And btw, he had, in fact, made a caca volcano and the lava overflow was truly a force of nature.  I’ve been getting him to sit on the toilet and he’ll say “tum out tata!”  Luckily, Travis Aunt Karen happens to be a potty training expert!  No really, and she coincidentally JUST sent me her latest book, The Playskool Guide to Potty Training, by Karen Deerwester.  I think I’ll be reading that one this weekend and I’ll try to post a review of it soon.  And I think that little singing potty is in our future. 

Off the potty talk now, he’s also been very obsessed with his “booboo’s” lately.  He likes for me to kiss them, then he gets the “Magic Bunny.”  The Magic Bunny(that’s just what we named it, I’m not sure what it’s really called) is this adorable ice pack thingy with a bunny around it that we got as a gift from my friend, Shannon.  After he ices his injury, he likes to exclaim “Mommy, I feel better!!”  So cute.  Poor kid busted his face the other day - tooth through the bottom lip and everything - and after the Magic Bunny touched his lip for all of 3 seconds, he was smiling and telling me “I feel better!!!”  Meanwhile, he’s got blood streaming down his chin.  Oh well, the placebo effect is strong in these little guys and I, for one, am thankful for that.  Thanks again Shannon for that thing, we love it!

We’ve been working with Jackson on the concept of sharing and taking turns lately.  So now when he grabs some poor kid’s toy and shoves him to the ground, he says “Jack’s turn,” in the sweetest little voice you’ve ever heard.  That sweet, innocent sounding voice always catches people off-guard!  And lately, he’ll push Shane off a toy and say “just sharing, Shane!”  Oh well, it’s a start, right?! 

Shane, on the other hand, is the most warm-hearted, gentle-natured kid.  I set Finley down earlier for tummy time while I stepped into the kitchen for all of 10 seconds, only to come back and find Shane laying across her, his head resting on her belly, eyes closed so lovingly.  If her face wasn’t turning red and her lungs begging for a breath, I would have gotten the camera!

As for our Little Finjin, she was battling thrush last week and it was getting progressively worse and more bothersome to her.  No biggie, but we had to do the Nystatin suspension for her, and cream for me since she’s breastfeeding.  Oh, and I had mastitis again, but I treated it early enough that it’s gone without incident this time.  I took her in to our family doc just for follow-up since I’d had Rachel’s fiance call in the prescriptions we’ve been on.  She’s weight in at a whopping…wait for it…10lbs 11oz!  I can’t believe what a peanut she is.  She’s so cute though and such a happy baby.  Her big thing these days is blowing raspberries, and she thinks it’s hysterical when you do it back to her…so Jackson likes to get in her face and blow big ones, but then I always have to step in and wipe her off!  You should see her when he does it - first her eyes get huge, then they flutter really fast as the spit starts flying, then she gives him these huge grins as he’s catching his breath!

And thanks for the comments on Parents magazine - we finally saw it for the first time yesterday.  I thought it was a good adoption article, only I was sad about the part that said international adoption is good for people who “prefer not to have contact with the birth mother.”  It is true, but I SO wish we had that option.  I was very disappointed with the picture they chose - were they trying to pick a photo in which Jack was whining and only the back of Finley’s head and the side of Trav’s, Shane’s, and my head showed?  Oh well, it was neat to be a part of that. We were honored. 

Thank you for all the wonderful feedback!  I had no idea that would be such a well-received post, but I’m so glad people got something out of it.  I also have learned a lot through others sharing their experiences in my comments section, so thank you.

A few people raised some good points in the comments.  I was not suggesting that I think it’s impossible for others to feel empathy towards first moms if they have not experienced having a bio child.  I have always thought of my sons’ first moms, but until I delivered Finley, I don’t think I grasped their losses quite as deeply as I now do.  That is just how I arrived at that empathy, but I think it’s possible for others to realize the significance of that loss without having experienced the bio connection.  In fact, the 2 women who’ve shown me the greatest degree of sensitivity towards first moms have no bio children -  Margie from Third Mom and Judy from Just Enjoy Him.  None of us will ever truly know what that loss is like unless we’ve lived it, but I think we can all be empathetic to it if we’re open to trying to understand it.

Jen, to answer your question without writing a novel on it, I think it is SO individual.  Here’s Jen’s comment for reference:

I appreciate this post as well…but I cannot help but wonder if it is ok to adopt when you are pregnant or if you have a child less than 1 year old? Since you are so forthright and honest, I would greatly appreciate your insight on this one? Do you feel that having a newborn has jeopardized your bonding with Shane?

I don’t want to be confrontational at all–just curious about your feelings and whether or not this has added any difficulties to bonding with adopted kiddos when they are so close in age to biological sibs.

Our agency expressly forbids adoptions when parents are expecting/caring for a newborn, yet other agencies don’t….how do you feel after your experience? Personally, I don’t know if I could meet Morgan’s needs and the needs of a new baby sufficiently. I think it would be really hard!

For some families, caring for a newborn or a pregnancy on the heels of adopting would throw them into overload - emotional and physical.  I think there are SO MANY factors to consider going into a situation like that - strength of marriage, emotional stamina, desire, physical ability, adoption awareness and readiness, mentorship and family support, work dynamics and parent availability, etc.  I’m not implying that we had the ideal set up going into this situation either, or that we never feel like we’re on overload; I’m just suggesting that every family is different and there are a lot of dynamics that contribute to the *right* answer for each different family.  

For us, it has been very difficult, for sure, but has always felt right for our family.  Yes, Finley’s birth affected our bonding process with Shane, as I’ve mentioned in several posts.  Undoubtedly, our attachment process with Shane will be more gradual than perhaps it could have been if he were our only child.  But because he is not our only child doesn’t mean we won’t still reach the same endpoint, it just takes more work and probably more time.  So no, I don’t believe anything has been jeopardized for us or Shane.  But I also think we got unbelievably lucky in ALL regards.  Had Jackson and Shane’s personalities been reversed, or had Jackson’s homecoming been tailed by Finley’s birth, we might be in a VERY different boat right now.  So I think there is some component of the situation that had nothing to do with our readiness as parents and had everything to do with the dynamics of our kids’ personalities.  And with that, we just got lucky.  Jackson was a hard baby, but he was an only child for over a year.  Shane and Finley are both very easy babies with very laid back dispositions, so we’re beyond thankful that they are the 2 that joined our family close together!

The other thing you mentioned was it being a concern for your adopted kids when you deliver a newborn right away.  If anything, I think the risk and challenges are much bigger when you’re talking about multiple ADOPTED kids coming home close together because their needs are so much greater and more complex.  I never have to worry about Finley, but if we’d adopted her too, I’d be struggling to attach and bond to BOTH new babies simultaneously.  Instead, it came easy for me with Finley (which I realize now is not a universal experience, but was the case for me), so I just have to work at it with Shane.  It’s a lot less emotionally taxing in my eyes than if they both took work and the same degree of consideration. 

In terms of agency policy, I think it’s a very responsible one to just forbid it across the board.  Because it’s so specific to individual families, and since most social workers really don’t screen very carefully for which families would be prepared and which might have a bad outcome with this scenario, it’s easiest for agencies to just disallow it.  Ideally, there’d be counseling and other preparatory steps for families like ours to go through, and for a way to assist and then assess readiness after those steps are taken.  But that’s not realistic, so instead of a creating a system with a biased case-by-case policy, they just say “no.”  While we explicitly chose an agency that did not have this policy, since we were confident about how we wanted to build our family, I do think it’s responsible on an agency’s part to just simplify things and protect everyone.  Especially if the agency isn’t good with providing resources to families who need extra help on follow-up visits, etc. 

You also made the comparison to your situation with Morgan, who just came home.  So he is still a “new baby.”  I totally understand you feeling that way and probably would feel the same, but we we had spent 4 months with Shane prior to Finley’s birth.  He’d only been home for 2 months, but it wasn’t like having 2 brand new babies at exactly the same time, which for me would have been overload.  That said, I do know families who have done that with great success too.  Like I said, it’s all very individual! 

This post has been collecting dust in my ‘drafts’ folder for awhile, so I thought I’d put it out there.  As always, this post represents MY experience and MY perspective.  I welcome other views in my comments and hope that no one finds this offensive; that was not my intention in writing it. 

A lot of people ask me if the emotions, love, etc. are the same when you adopt as when you deliver a bio baby.  For me, the short answer is no.  Don’t misinterpret that to mean one is less and the other more, or that the love I have is deeper for Finley than it is for Jackson or Shane.  Because it is not.  That love is every bit as intense and as deep.  But the way I’ve arrived at that love is so totally different. 

My love for Finley has always been effortless; my attachment to her never required work, contemplation, analysis, or struggle.  It just was.  She came from my body, my brain had a physiologic response to my hormones, my body reacted when I heard her cry, and without effort, it has sustained her with nourishment since she was conceived.  When she cries, my body continues to PHYSICALLY respond without thought - I have milk letdown.  I know how to console her and her needs are obvious to me (mostly anyway).  She needs me, my love, my body.  Nothing more, nothing less.  That’s the case from birth through the newborn period anyway.

My instant love for and attachment to my daughter is so very different from how I have grown to love and adore my sons.  Adoption is difficult.  In our case, we entered our sons’ lives after they’d been physically and emotionally separated from the women whose bodies had grown them.  We entered after they had gone on from that loss to live for ~6 months in orphanages with too few caregivers and other needy babies who had sustained the same early loss.  Their needs went well beyond the comfort and milk a body effortlessly provides a bio child.  Their wounds are deep, their needs significant, their cries about much more than hunger, a dirty diaper, or the cue for a nap.  And often, I had no idea exactly what they were crying about.  I felt detached from the inconsolable crying.  Frustrated when I couldn’t sooth my own child.  I still feel this way about Shane on occasion, as we are still very much in the throws of his adjustment period and have to work daily on our attachment process with him.  I’m still very much in the cycle with him where I get frustrated with his irrational crying, then get frustrated with myself for not having more patience for his crying.  I am still able to detach from his crying, and then I feel horribly guilty for doing that.  It’s a familiar cycle, as I experienced similar emotions with Jackson early on.  I know it will get better with time, but that’s just the reality - I’m doing my best, but I know that won’t feel good enough for awhile. 

I realize my love for my sons has been a choice, something I’ve had to intellectualize before I actually started to feel it in my heart.  But when I did begin to really feel it, it grew deeper and deeper.  And the feeling it has given me when it became a reciprocal love was unparalleled.  Rewarding doesn’t begin to describe it.  And that was because it took work.  So please understand that I do not mean nothing was gained by the fact that this love was not reached effortlessly.  But the getting there was hard, and we’re still not all the way there yet with Shane.  It takes time, effort, a TON of patience and energy, but I know it will come.  And when it does, I won’t be able to fathom loving anything more deeply.  Adoption is an amazing way to build a family, and I’ve always known that. 

What pregnancy and having a baby biologically has really driven home for me is just how primal that connection between a birth mom and her child truly is, which has made me realize in a deeper way how significant that loss really is for my boys.  I have thought about their birth moms so often since my delivery and wondered how anyone can endure such a separation and loss.  It breaks my heart to think about it - for Jack and Shane, as well as their first moms.  Those first few weeks with Finley were so filled with love and joy, as well as the physical pain that was a constant reminder of her delivery.  I also had this very primal sense of protection over her.  I had NIGHTMARES that she’d drowned in the tub, or that I’d rolled over on her, or that she’d fallen from a high place.  Stuff like that.  I’m not positive, but I think those fears are normal when you are responsible for a totally helpless, very fragile, teeny teeny tiny life.  I know it’s really common to have dreams like that in the 3rd trimester of pregnancy as well.  It makes me wonder if Jackson and Shane’s first moms are plagued by fears for the boys as well.  See, every time I woke up in a panic, all I had to do was reach out and feel that my baby girl was sound asleep in my arms.  Then I could drift back to sleep with a smile on my face knowing she was safe.  It kills me to think Jack and Shane’s first moms might be going through that, or that they might’ve when their boys were first born and separated from them, and that they may never have the peace of mind that I do because they may never know how much their babies are loved and cherished by Travis and me.  I just wish I could share that with them so they could at least know what incredible kids they gave life to and how much we love and adore them.