"...Love Doesn't Conquer All"

There is a well written piece in The NY Times that I've linked to the blog, "In Some Adoptions, Love Doesn't Conquer All" and it's a very real piece on the not so rosy parts of adoption which affect U.S. and Internationally adopted children; this article highlights International adoption and reactive attachment disorder because of the latest Russian scandal.

The article is 4 pages long, but explains much better than we ever could, the worst of the worst cases we see discussed in our online adoption forum regarding attachment and bonding. The past 4 years has been long, but we've taken this time to learn more about adoption and are WAY better prepared for the "what-ifs" than had we only waited 14 months.

We are probably over-prepared and will never have to use half of what we have learned, lol!

We have had a lot of people ask how we feel about the little boy sent back to Russia. When asked, I preface my response by saying that in no way do we agree with sending this little boy on a plane back to Russia, however we do not know to what point of despair this mom was brought to that clouded her judgment...nor do we know the availability of resources available to the family locally, so we are choosing not to judge.

For the last 4 years, we have been engrossed in an adoption forums with other waiting families, adopting from China, Russia, Ethiopia etc. and read of families destructed financially trying to get their children help, marriages ending in ruin, and/or children placed back into the adoption system in the severest of cases. When we refuse to state how awful it is that a mom put her child on a plane back to Russia, it's because we read these posts of other adoptive parents like ourselves who would have said, "I would never" but had to...we hope to never be in that place for the rest of the world to judge us.

Thankfully, we have a local pediatrician who has adopted from China herself, will be reviewing the medical file when we receive"The Call" and Dr. Borchers will be Emma's primary care physician. We also have the Children's Hospital International Clinic at our doorstep, should special needs present themselves...a lot of adoptive parents living in more rural areas are not as lucky and need to travel hours or states away for help.

When we come home from China, the first 12 months is a very important bonding and attachment time, a time that is very important for Doug and I only to meet Emma's needs so she properly attaches to us and recognizes that we are her forever parents. Don't be offended if we ask you to not feed her, be over-the-top cuddly or don't take you up on offers of sleepovers and babysitting...these are actions that can interfere with the bonding process in some children and it's going to take us a few months home to figure out where Emma is on the spectrum. Our agency says the first 6 months is really a "honeymoon period" and if there are going to be issues, they will show up after that time. We aren't angst-ridden, but we have to be realistic and can't pretend our child's life was environmentally normal before living in the U.S.

So, in the first 12 months, we might be do some weird things that seem out of sync with her real age, but know we are doing them to re-create the attachment and bonding process that was interrupted by orphanage life, so we can give her the best chance at her new life and properly form appropriate connections with us, family, friends and other children.