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When you’re going through the process of adoption and looking forward to the homecoming of your children, you can fit in a lot of daydreaming. You imagine combing and braiding your child’s hair, playing games together, rocking at bedtime, and dressing him in all the clothes you’re bound to collect during the wait.
You are probably at least somewhat prepared for sleep deprivation– at least as prepared as you can be. You won’t be too surprised if your baby pitches his food off the tray or if your two year old learns ‘no’ as his very first word in English.
It is harder to imagine the emotions that accompany this new job. Some moms who adopt infants report feeling head over heels in love the first minute their child is in their arms. Some take a few days to warm up and feel like mom. Other moms can take months. Yes, months.
Especially when you are adopting children past the age of infancy, so much of the child is formed already. The child has habits that you don’t know, a voice you’ve never heard. Even the smell of the child may seem foreign to you. Strangely enough, some of my adopted children smelled familiar to me right away, and others did not. I remember cuddling my first Ethiopian daughter to me in the van right after she’d been handed to me, and feeling surprised at the feel of her curls against my cheek.
Even if a mom is experienced and knows how it feels to be a mom, it can take a mom awhile to feel like the mom to that particular child. I remember feeling a little like a babysitter for the first days with my two children adopted as toddlers. I can only imagine that the unfamiliarity will be even more striking when we bring home our older girls.
Erin over at Holding Still wrote a thoughtful post chronicling some of the changes her emotions have gone through since she brought her two little boys home from Ethiopia. Go check it out: she’s done an awesome job sharing the feelings involved. Read some of her previous posts too, while you’re at it. She has had some tough early days, but she is making it, and her kids are settling in well, and so is she, and that is wonderful to see.
Related links:
Post Adoption Depression
Mother’s Day
My husband and I also felt like babysitters for much of the first month home with our kids. That was a feeling I was not prepared for. I was so relieved when it faded away and I truly began to feel that these kids were mine, and not someone elses’.
I was a mom 3 times over before my adoption, and felt fairly maternal right away, but it still took time to feel as viscerally intense as I do over my other kids. I had a distinct moment of solidification in my Mom feelings about 6 weeks after my 7 month old Ethiopian daughter came home. I’d spent several days in a row holding her feverish little body all day when she became extremely sick, but it wasn’t until I had to take her to the E.R. that I had this conscious dialog in my head: It is not the babysitter wh sits all night in the E.R. with a child. It is the PARENT. Babysitters don’t do this. Moms do. I am really, truly the mom.” This cycled through my head periodically that night, and really moved my feelings into full mother mode.
thanks for linking to me, and thanks for the support and compliments! We are definitely hitting our stride as a family, and there is lots of love in the air.
Thanks again!
Erin