Elephants have a gestation of 22 months. That’s a long time to be pregnant…can you imagine the swollen ankles and trips up at night to pee for months and months on end for the average pachyderm? But the result is so worth the wait.
Today my sister in law’s “pregnancy” ended—gestation of 64 months…over 5 years. Beat the elephant by a mile. I’m a new auntie, as her arms were at last filled with the little one who has been waited and longed for. It’s a beautiful picture that I’ve looked at dozens of times today when it was emailed from halfway across the world. There she is, with the biggest grin on her face, the faces of the rest of the family just glowing…even after 2 1/2 days of travel immediately before.
B, like many adoptive moms, has not had the pain (and privilege) of a sore back and stretch marks for this child, but has the very different pain of unexpected delays, repeated form completion, “just one more step” more times that can be counted, more unexpected delays, multiple layers of bureaucracy to adopt her little girl. It was an ordeal to wait much longer than had been originally anticipated, and she and my brother have anxiously checked websites and talked with others to gain what information they could as they waited and waited and waited….and waited some more.
I’ve learned much about the experience of waiting for a chosen child over the last months. Indeed over the last years, I’ve watched my brother, his wife, and their children as they wait. I’ve had other friends wait for children from Ethiopia, or China, or Haiti and the US. I’ve worked with families experiencing infertility and adoption anguish. But these last months, there are times when I myself have felt such longing for my niece that I’ve found myself spending hours at a time floating around the blog world of the adoption experience, reading and soaking up much information about the topic. It was a little way I could feel a little less lonely and a little more connected to the little one. I realize my situation is not nearly the same as a parent’s, but I’ve been waiting for her too. It’s been alternately heartwarming and gutwrenching to read of the experiences
Highlights of what I’ve learned:
1. The adoption triad: The birth parent(s), the adoptive parent(s), the child. Each member of the adoption triad has different joys, challenges, and pain.
- For many birth parents, giving up a child to be raised by another set of parents involves insight, wisdom, and an ability to see beyond the immediate pull to know what is realistic and optimal. It is an act of selflessness to release the child into the arms of another. The loss of a birth parent continues for life. I was moved by adoptive parents recognizing and acknowledging the joy they receive is as a result of extremely painful life situation of the birth parents (death, illness, poverty, limited resources).
- The adoptive parents have longed for and desired a child. Many, though not all, have also undergone the challenges and pain of infertility for years before the arduous decision and process of adoption. Adoptive parents undergo a rigourous examination of their fitness to be parents that many birth parents would be horrified by. They are forced to be vulnerable in exposing many facets of their lives to social workers, and to make difficult choices about what sort of child they would accept. It seems the only consistent thing about adoption is the inconsistency of paperwork and process. Misunderstanding abound as there is multiple languages, cultures, and political systems involved in layers of beaureacracy in multiple countries. Waiting is a skill that all adoptive parents get plenty of practice at.
- Children: At the center of it all are the children…deeply loved. Some have been in orphanages for varying amounts of time, with varying levels of funding and, therefore, child care support. These children, while having great opportunities for health care, education, quality of life, and incredibly loving parents, are pulled from the familiar environments and must adjust to living with people who are initially strangers, often speaking another language, serving different foods and so on. No matter how loving the adoptive parents are, many still feel a gaping hole in their souls where the connection to the mother who carried them for 9 months and then perhaps more was severed. That longing for the place and people from which they came can be present for a lifetime in an unutterable fashion.
2. Adoption blogs abound. Each member of the adoption triad has something to write about, and many, many blogs are well written, poignant stories of waiting and wanting by adoptive parents, longing and regret from birth parents, and confusion and sorting out by adopted children, now adults. People like to write about adoption, to tell their stories. There seems to be healing in sharing the ups and downs…there are higher highs and lower lows during this process than can be imagined. There seems to be significant clusters of people that spontaneously and organically form that support each other as they share similar experiences, the same adoption agency, adopt children from the same country and so on. The support they give each other is incredible to virtually witness. People can be incredibly kind to one another.
3. Adoption is something that continues to make many people uncomfortable. My little niece is utterly beautiful. She’s also clearly of a different ethnic background than my brother and his wife. From what I’ve read, well meaning but uninformed comments will be spoken to them that will emphasize her differentness, set her apart, or ask question which will be naïve and potentially hurtful. Many adoptive parents work hard to be gracious, but imagine the punch in the gut a woman feels when she proudly enters the store with her child in her arms after waiting for years and someone asks: “Where do her REAL parents live?” Ouch. Imagine the confusion of a child who is very much a part of a family and a culture, yet at various times is reminded that s/he is not like the others. Many bloggers would “blow off steam” with some of the outrageous things they heard.
4. Attachment is huge. At Bergen and Associates Counselling, we operate very much out of “attachment theory” which suggests that we as human beings are wired to connect very closely to our primary caregivers, and that that close connection is key to helping us feel safe in a world which can be scary. That primary caregiver works with the child to help discover their world by being a secure base from which to explore the world. These attachments are critical in setting us up for healthy friendships and marriages in life. Many in the adoption world understand the complexities of attachment, the way in which our brains are wired for and by healthy attachment, and are incredibly aware that adoptions need to occur with secure attachment/secure base needs of a child in mind. The willingness to explore and understand brain science, child development, and healthy faciitation of that in creative ways is incredible. I so admired the lengths adoptive parents go through to help their child bond with them, providing incredible levels of support and security to children who struggle with the terror of so much change in their young lives.
I could go on and on about the profoundness and complexity. But I’ll stop. Not only do I have to go look at the beautiful photo of my niece surrounded by the members of her immediate family (one more time, or maybe 2 or 3), I have to check the blog of a friend for updates, who you’ll note in my August 22, 2010 blog entry, wrote a comment that she has just received her referral. This is after 10 years of waiting…five and a half times as long as an elephant’s gestation! I don’t believe ecstatic is a word that accurately describes her level of jubilation. Congrats, big time, R!
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