Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Long days, gone quickly
I've been meaning to sit down for a long time to type out some thoughts about what life has been like these past three months but I haven't been able to get anything down more insightful than "Here's what we did yesterday!"
Being an adoptive mother is a challenge. M is a wonderful girl, but there is so much more to being her mother than just going through the normal motions of motherhood. The attachment process is hard work. I'm not sure what it is that I expect. I have seen M light up like fireworks when Kevin pays attention to her. I hear her squeal for joy when C or K pays attention to her. And this is absolutely wonderful! She responds to me too, but not quite as vigorously, or perhaps I am seeing her response to me through a guarded perspective. She definitely prefers me to other friends that hold her. She makes the best eye contact when I change her, feed her, carry her, and always when I strap her into her car seat (funny... like she's saying, "Where are we going now?") Just yesterday, she crawled all the way from the living room, through the dining room, through the kitchen, and into the laundry room to grasp and climb up my pant leg so that I would pick her up and change her! I was thrilled and amazed. Last night when I was feeding her her bottle and rocking her to sleep, I finally gave myself permission to fully love her. Doesn't that sound ridiculous? It has simply taken me a few months to settle in to the idea of being her mother, since for most of the time I have felt more like just a caretaker. But somehow I sense that she is looking for more than a caretaker now. She deserves to have a mother that loves her wholeheartedly, and I am now that mother.
Today I woke up and felt so much more joy and freedom throughout my day. The day wasn't that much different than other days when I spend a lot of time doing laundry, taking care of M, and then picking up the twins from school and shuttling them around. But my heart was finally in the right place, and that felt good.
Another aspect of being an adoptive mom that has been consuming me is worrying that M is where she needs to be developmentally. Sometimes it seems like she spends a lot of time shaking the same rattle around on the floor. I've been trying to get her interested in some different toys. Yesterday and today I have been trying to get her to take toys out of a little container with windows and doors. Shouldn't this be something a 13 month old can do? The twins were dumping their toys, emptying my kitchen drawers and trying to open the front door at this age. Yesterday M wouldn't have it and would eventually tune out and insert thumb. Today, if I put the favorite rattle in she would grab it out. Progress.... she has a favorite toy (a set of plastic keys) and she recognizes it and gets excited when she sees it. So we walked around the house with her Fisher-Price walker and she sat sucking on a block while I built some stuff with the rest of the blocks. A little while later I peeked around a corner to see her knocking the blocks off the coffee table. Finally! Good girl! I know I shouldn't worry, but it's hard not to compare her to other babies. I know I should enjoy this baby stage but sometimes I get anxious for her to grow up a little just so that I can see some developmental milestones and know she's okay. I wonder if it will be like this for me throughout her whole childhood. I hope not, but I expect it will come and go.
I pulled out the nice handbook of articles my placement agency sent to me and found the article on developmental milestones and what to expect. And the most important development going on during the first two years of childhood is.... attachment. I know what I need to work on.
I have seen progress. She doesn't pick at the floor as much as she used to. She's crawling from room to room. She feeds herself. She is making consonant babbling sounds. She is taking steps. She is anxious to please us and is incredibly responsive to smiles, attention and affection. She snuggles in to me when she needs comfort. All of this is new since we took her into our arms not quite three months ago. She arrived with no independence or confidence. That is what I want to encourage and develop.
I think I need to go to the park, or get into some mommy/baby classes or some kind of activity where she can be around other babies. I think she misses seeing children her own age. When we went to the aquarium with the twins a month or so ago, she lit up when we were in the baby play area. She approached the other babies and tried to touch them and communicate with them. Poor thing, it was like she missed her friends from the orphanage. A couple of days ago we were at the park and I was showing her how to go down the slide. Scary! She didn't want any part of it until a 2-year-old boy got on the slide and slid down a few times. I've rarely seen her so engaged. Then she was able to give it a try again. I think she's used to observing other children her own age and learning from them... it's everything she's known. She learns from us, but even C and K are now 'big' kids that she can't quite identify with developmentally.
Last week she stayed with her first babysitter, just for a short while with C and K while I went to K's parent-teacher conference. Everything went fine. Our babysitter is the greatest! She's going to come the next few Thursday afternoons for a couple hours so that I can get to the gym. I hope it goes well. And then maybe Kevin and I can get out to see the new Bond movie. What a treat! In the meantime, I will struggle with trying to give her a secure, safe environment here at home balanced with all the holiday parties and gatherings that are coming up. Thanksgiving is going to be interesting because she will be going to a lot of large family events. I hope it is not too overwhelming for her. We won't be spending the night away from home, but I've found that when she's tired and the noise level is high that she either tunes out or gets very upset. In a few years though, she'll be contributing to the mayhem like all the other cousins.
Yes, the days are long, but they pass quickly.
Credits: photos taken by ipm during a visit to her home back in early October. ipm also deserves all the credit for helping me to create this blog back in March 2006. Thank you!
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10 comments:
You're making good progress. And I think it's so good that you're being candid about it. Way too many blogs sugar coat all of these steps.
I know what you mean about allowing yourself to really love her like a mother does. I love Slugger, but for a while he was a stranger when he came home. I love him so much now, but there's still a piece of me that holds back a bit. It's hard to describe. Luckily, one of my case workers from my agency adopted an older boy who's very like Slugger and she feels the same. Attachment is a process and it grows over a long period -- for both the kids and for us. For some people it happens quickly, for others it takes a while. That's OK. Slugger is at those pre-teen years -- a time when kids pull away from parents developmentally. Forming attachment at such an age is difficult.
I also know what you mean about the developmental milestones. Emotionally, in many ways, Slugger is more like a 3-year old than an 11-year old. In fact, he's so similar emotionally to my best friend's 3-year old daughter (and my best friend's 5-year old daughter is leaps and bounds ahead of Slugger in that area). Physically and cognitively Slugger is where he should be developmentally, but when he first entered foster care (at age 5 1/2) he was seriously delayed. He caught up though.
You're doing a great job with M. My guess is that you'll see long plateaus where she doesn't progress much developmentally and then you'll see huge spurts of development. And, you're right, attachment is the most important thing right now and it seems like she's making good strides in that area.
oh, she's just so lovely, and the words you write are heart rending...
like you said, right now it's about attachment, but I can imagine it's hard to separate that from awareness of where she is, what she should be doing.
maybe like falling in love... careful with our hearts, until no longer we can be. for you both...
Maggie always has the right words to say. You are making huge strides that you will notice when you look back on all of this. And be candid with what is going on. It's ok to not be in love with your child the second she enters your life. It is a transition for both of you. I still have moments where I think, it would be just so much easier if I didn't have a child. But then "mommy" comes from behind me and makes me so happy that I can't stand it.
Don't worry about milestones. It took me a long time to get over that. But I must say I'm a little guilty of comparing. A friend of Oleg's is 2 months younger and reading already. Both boys are of the same excelled intelligence level, but Oleg isn't reading yet. But Issac has known English his whole life. Oleg just learned it 2 years ago.
My husband compared falling in love in an adoption to an arranged marriage. The excitement, hope and dreams are there but the love takes time. Thank you for being candid.
Great pictures of the two of you. You both look really happy in them.
It took me months before I truly felt like Izzy's mom. MONTHS!
I was just talking with some adoptive moms this week and was surprised when they all said that their husbands attached right away with their child but it took them longer. I was glad to hear I wasn't too abnormal.
Adoptive parenting is often known as parenting plus. So many additional things that you don't think about with your biological children (or so I'm told).
You're doing a great job. I can't believe it's been nearly 3 months.
After first meeting Rita, and the first months home, I felt strange because I didn't feel this overwhelming love like I thought I should. And like I've read on other blogs. I know it's part me (I'm guarded at who I open up to) but it's also the process. I find that my love for Rita growing everyday. And sometimes I just look at her with "new eyes" and amazement ... wishing I had these feelings way back when I met her. But that's just the process ... like Ronda's comment on this being an "arranged" relationship.
I feel the same about development milestones. I know I compare Rita to her peers but I also totally appreciate how far she has come in the past 8-9 months.
Thanks for such a thoughtful post.
Thanks for this post. We're in Stavropol right now and just had our second and final day of court today. We're adopting two (age 8 and 9)and it's good to see what we are up against. Bonding with one of them looks easier than with the other who is very reserved and insecure. It's going to be a long road for him and us.
Well, the part that makes it tolerable is that I have an electric blanket on my bed, so sleeping is nice and toasty. It's when I have to get up and out of bed that things become problematic :)
In response to your question on our blog, I did not notice a scanner in the business center of the Euro Hotel in Stavropol anywhere. However, I think there was one in the photo developing place in the old soviet mall around the corner (not the Gallria, the other one) on the first floor in the front.
Also, as an FYI... for the last half of our time in Stavropol the computer in the business center could not display anything from any of the blogger sites even though the rest of the internet was available there... maybe it was blocked?
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