The Attachment Post (at 9 months)

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Ariam was cradling plastic baby in her arms, attempting to feed it from a miniature plastic baby bottle last week. She kept trying to jam the little pink n.ipple into plastic baby's mouth but it wouldn't fit. Instead of getting frustrated, she gave baby a very empathetic look, bent over to set the bottle on the floor, tipped baby onto her back, looked her in her blinky blue eyes and quietly whispered...
"shhhh sh sh sh shhhh."

For 9 months that has been our comfort language. "Shhhh sh sh sh shhh" I whisper in her ear when she's upset. "Shhhh sh sh sh shhhh" is the sound I make when she cries at night, it is our mommy/baby language.

Maybe nothing has been more satisfying than watching Ariam use my love language to share comfort and love with her baby.

.....................................................................................................

Like every other adoptive mother that has been steeped in attachment literature and scary adoption trainings I searched those early photos of Ariam. Looking for signs of her past, her early life, and her capacity for resilience and future attachment. I looked and looked and looked.

Her shining open eyes gave me reason for hope.

Then we showed up in person. And I'm not saying it went...badly. No, I can't say that exactly. But we received a child who was tired, plain old tired, of packing up her little bags and moving on. The eyes didn't shine for us. We faltered, there were a few days when I didn't even touch Ariam (I was sick), and while we had initial feelings of adoration for her, we were not sure she would ever like us in return.

Looking back I think we made it all much harder than it had to be. We were serious and sick. We were incredibly sleep deprived. And we had no clue how to be parents. So she was probably just reflecting our own mood.

I will not forget the first time I saw Ariam's face light up, not for food or her bottle, but for a person. I knew then, I just knew that she (in her baby way) loved deeply, trusted, and would attach to us.

On day 14 together, we took a very bumpy dusty ride to Debre Zeit (a smaller city about an hour and a half outside of Addis Ababa.)

Late in the afternoon as we were preparing to leave Debre Zeit the social worker we were with just happened to mention that Ariam had actually lived in a baby home near where we were parked. (News to us!)

She offered to take us by the home and introduce us to Ariam's favorite nanny.

We pulled through the gates into a compound that looked just like a regular, small, concrete Ethiopian home. Washing strung across the yard on ropes. A comfortable front porch. A few women, a few babies.

I carried Ari in and up the porch stairs and heard a gasp of joy. Women began running and calling out in Amharic.

Lovely Alemtsehaye:

This woman cared for Ariam from the first day she left her mother. This woman did not put her in the crib they showed me (on the "Derartu" tour!) but rather slept with her in her own bed. This woman tended to the bug bites on her legs and hung her photo on the wall (it was still there.) And quietly/aside, the social worker told us that Alemtsehaye cried and begged for Ariam not to be moved to Addis Ababa.

I am so thankful for Alemtsehaye and the love she poured over Ariam.
The bond they had, even after not having seen each other for the past 3 months, was palpable. We stayed for a long time,  had coffee, and enjoyed the handful of babies and equal number of nannies. We took a photo of Ariam's first baby photo.  The experience with Alemtsehaye and the baby home was a priceless glimpse of Ariam's early life attachment story.

I know that Ariam lived through trauma in her short life before us. But I know that she also experienced very real care and devotion .

Our attachment story, like all, began WAY before we entered the picture. It began with Ariam. With the people who shaped her and whatever was inside her that stayed aware and willing to reach out.

In my less than expert opinion, I'd like to posit that attachment begins with trust, not with love.

Attachment is not a willingness to love whomever comes along. It is a willingness, based on previous experience and probably just inherent to some personalities, to trust that your needs will be met. It is the desire to put your hand and heart out there and trust that it won't be hurt, even if it has been before.
We were naive, but it served us well in the long run. We had no previous children or experiences against which to measure either Ariam's attachment to us or ours to her.

We didn't instantly love or attach to her. But we trusted that it would happen. We didn't always even like being parents at first. But we jumped when she said jump and as her trust in us grew, our enjoyment of parenthood grew.

For Ariam attachment turned into love for us. I think it happened more quickly for the three of us than it does for most - and for that I am eternally grateful. I can't believe that I wrote this post after being home just one month. (Of course, at the time, it felt like an eternity.)

Somewhere along the line Ariam began to reach for us. Hold our hands against the side of her head and look up, making eye contact and smiling. She began to come to us for kisses with every little bump instead of getting up stoically and moving on without a sound. She began to point and name us and light up when either of us entered a room. She molded her little body onto my hip, found her groove with looping one arm around my bicep, and we...well we both attached and we loved.

Problems? At 9 months I am guessing there's a lot we don't know and have yet to experience. I feel sure that we'll continue to wonder about things - "attachment/adoption issue or normal kid issue?" (Um - I feel compelled to insert here that I wonder this all the time about her huge preference for daddy.)

One thing I've found that adoptive bloggers don't seem to ever talk about though are our own issues.

The attachment discussion on blogs this month, and the interesting representation of daddy preference stories, has made me think a lot about this. What kind of baggage do we bring to the process of attachment and parenting? What expectations/hopes/dreams set us up for fear, concern or disappointment? Do we project and displace some of our own insecurities about attachment onto our children?

I don't say this to rock the boat at all. I'm not suggesting that it's all in our heads. What I'm suggesting is that we bring a lot more "stuff" to the adoption triad than we probably realize. Stuff that helps, stuff that hurts, and stuff that prevents us from knowing how to move our children securely through the massive life change that is international adoption.

I think that a lot of the things we, in our own family, get stuck on have as least as much to do with our own childhood, our own daydreams of parenthood, and our own attachment styles as they do with the actual issue at hand. A conversation for another day...unless you want to respond in the comments! (hint hint...)

Time is a circus, attachment is a river, attachment triage, goodness there are so many great metaphors and talented writers exploring attachment this month.
I find myself ending this blog without any profound conclusion.

I recommend you head over to Claudia's blog to read all of the gathered attachments posts and form your own conclusions.

~A

Enter Guardian Angel

The benefit of having a blog is, if done right, it keeps a person honest!

I can easily go back and visit March 1-3, 2010.
If I didn't have those feelings in writing, it would be very easy for me to say, a year later, that we knew immediately that Ariam was our daughter - that we recognized her.

But the truth is that I didn't write our  referral post until 2 days after we first layed eyes on baby "Derartu." I post-dated it when it was uploaded to the blog on March 3rd.

You see, Derartu looked scared and hollow. Her eyes told a story I wasn't sure I could handle. Her thin little arms floating in that yellow shirt looked so breakable. Neither of us were sure. I felt unspeakable fear that this was not the baby I had prayed for when I asked God every day to give us a joyful child...
(To be honest, I was worried that I had gotten us in over our heads and that J, who had been so reluctant, would not be able to bond with this little traumatized one...)

Enter Guardian Angel.

I wrote about her briefly in this post and how she sent us the words we needed to say yes and the photos that made my heart leap.

I promised that I would post her words someday....

A,

Please don’t think that I am in any way stretching the truth to make you feel good but Derartu has been hands-down my favorite babe for the whole time I have been here. When I read her name this morning, I thought surely things couldn’t be so perfectly aligned but it turns out that they are just that.
Her crib was in the same room with a baby that I have been doing physical therapy with many times daily.(Tariku! For those of you who follow his mom's blog.)

 She is so distinct in both her behavior and her looks, that to my eye, she just glows.

I would catch her watching me closely from in between the bars of her crib. When I would catch her eye, she would be watching me patiently, waiting for me to notice her. Not only would her eyes smile, but her whole face would just open up in pure joy when our eyes would meet. She is so calm in her demeanor and watchful. She has such a patient temperament and quiet bemused way about her. She keeps this little smile on her face as just her way of being at rest, like all is right in her little world.

The first day I was able to pay her one-on-one attention she grabbed my finger with such a grip that I have never felt on any of the other babies. Because she is so calm in her way of being, it had never occurred to me that she would have such a grip. When I have had to leave her, I have actually asked other people to stand in for me to have them take over holding her hand. For me, she is one of the most difficult babies to leave behind.
I don’t want you to think from my description that she doesn’t have gusto and health. This girl can squeal with laughter and will reach her arms up to be picked up and will wave goodbye when I say “ciao.” She is completely aware of her surroundings and tuned in to what is happening to her and around her.
The head nurse was getting her stuff ready to be transported to (another home) when I left her 30 minutes ago.
Please feel free to contact me at any time and I will do my best to respond. I will stop in and see how she is adjusting on my way back tonight. I also took photos of her that I will do my absolute best to upload to you. She is just magical. A picture will never do this child justice.
She sent this picture that night. And I don't know how to explain it but the best I can do is say that the minute I opened it I recognized Ariam. I saw her face and it was the face I had been waiting for. Eyes that reflected a heart open to love.

I am sad when I look at her referral photo. We don't often look at that little baby, laying on her back. When I see it, it strikes me that I don't recognize her because she was still part of another world. Her eyes and heart were still completely with someone else and not ready to let go.

~A

Then the morning came...

and with a simple phone call and this photo you were mine and I was yours.

~A

Beautiful Girl

One year ago tonight you needed a mama.

And one year ago tonight I needed a baby...

Best Friends

If a blog post were to have a thesis sentence this one would be:

Ariam has two best friends and neither of them is me.

Her best friend and idol is J.

There is much irony in this. Throughout the years we wasted arguing over whether or not to have children, one of the central themes of J's arguement was that he believed the child and I would bond and leave him out of our special circle.

Now guess who has a special circle?

I'm not sure how to feel about this. We spend 2-3 weekdays together (and weekends) which means that she's with me far more than him. Yet she asks about "daddy??" no less than once every five minutes. She points at where his jacket should be. She begs to talk to him on the phone. When I reach for her after her naptime she asks "daddy??" with hopeful expectancy. When he gets home the mutual joy is adorable. And...irksome.

Yeah. I'm a little jealous. Yesterday Ariam had a fever. I picked her up early from daycare, brought her home to cuddle with some apple juice on the couch, was the receptacle for her vomit-fest, and babied her for hours. Daddy was the only one she wanted all evening. She actually had a melting screaming tantrum when he handed her to me.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I thought our bond was supposed to grow? Theirs has by leaps and bounds. Sometimes when J and I discuss this Ariam reaches out for me (from the safety of his arms) to pat me on the shoulder and give me a "man, that's tough kiddo" look.

Her other best friend?

The white baby doll. She received two wonderful brown babies for Christmas. When the white baby with the hard plastic legs arrived the other dolls were promptly rejected. New white baby has to be with her at all times. Last night Ariam was sleeping with us with hard plastic baby in her arms. I'm pretty sure plastic baby poked her in the eye with a rock hard plastic finger. Ariam woke up screaming and promptly rolled over and smacked me in anger. Apparently white plastic baby's unruly behavior in bed is my fault.

Sigh.

I know that all kids go through stages. I don't really think that she is unattached to me. I just think she is in month 8 of her preference for J and there is no end in sight...
~A

I heart daycare, I feel like a hypocrite, and our failing health

It's been too long since I've written about the little stuff. The stuff that seems small but makes life tick.

Daycare Update:

I really love it. I so so so love Ariam's daycare. Moving her was a really good choice, even though it means we have less cash each month.

I admire mothers who stay home. Those SAHM (never knew what that stood for until I became a parent and started reading parenting forums!) who homeschool, and cook amazing meals each night, and keep the house sparkling, and who manage to love on and teach and nurture their children every minute of the day are unbelievable. My heroes.

It's just not me though. This whole stay at home mom thing. I had some daydreams about being a SAHM before Ariam came home. You know, we would just be clean and pretty all day together. The fridge would always replenish itself with carrot sticks and organic milk. We would frolic in green meadows while memorizing the periodic table and playing with each other's hair. There may have been derndle dresses, a guitar, and frocks I sewed by hand from green flowered curtains in said daydream.

Then the daydream turned into a nightmare last summer and fall when I realized that I could not maintain a meaningful career, cook healthy meals, keep up with the laundry, and nurture my clingy toddler. Successfully. In one day. (Let alone run errands, go to doctor's appointments, load the dishwasher, and  handle conference calls from the car.)

Then we found the dream daycare (preceeded by the not so great, average daycare) and ever since I have been able to breathe again.

Not all daycares are the same. And we couldn't afford this one full-time. So I'm not saying that everyone should run out and enroll their toddler in the nearest daycare.

But this one really does meet our needs. This is how I know:

1. Ariam gets excited on "school" mornings. She bounces, she carries her shoes around, and she points at her jacket and screams "CHAK et!!"
2. When asked if she wants to go to school Ariam responds with the sign for "Friends" and says "YAY!"
3. When we get to daycare she knows the routine - how to peek in the front door until it unlocks, which door is hers, where to hang her coat. She doesn't cry or cling anymore.
4. A kiss and then she's off! But when we pick her up at the end of the day she gives a lot of hugs and smiles and is ready to go.
5. Since starting daycare Ariam is gentler, she does like to use the word "mine" a little too often, but she knows how to share. She can take turns. She's more communicative. And after a day at daycare she's nice and tired. In a good way.

The daycare is bright, colorful, clean and full of fun activities. The two workers are consistent and always greet Ariam with hugs and smiles. It is just a good place. I'm so happy and in love with it. We have decided to move her up from 2 days/week to 3 days/week. (More on this later.)

Now, on to feeling like a hypocrite:

Last year I made a bit of a fuss about transracial families who put their children in monkey costumes for Halloween. It just felt....wrong. Too much history there/monkey being used as a term to demean, belittle and hurt for too long to make it all ok and easy now.

I have had a really cute onesie folded up in the drawer for a few months.
Last week I put it on under a sweater and when I picked up Ariam from daycare she had the sweater off and just the onesie showing.
It's a lovely onesie. Puffed sleeved. Two toned aubergine color.
Just one thing. It has a monkey hanging from a tree branch plastered right on the front.

And here is what I've decided.
I don't care. The onesie is cute. I like the color on her. And she doesn't wear monkey themed apparel in general. So there. I've decided that in our city, where we never get strange looks as a trans-racial family, a monkey here and there is just fine.

Now, in other cities, like Washington, DC, I wouldn't even go there. When we traveled in DC in September we got stares from African Americans city wide. I don't think I'd like to open myself up to monkey-themed criticism on top of being a conspicuous family. But here, in our neighborhood, at daycare, oh well. A monkey onesie is not going to hurt anyone. Yep, I feel like a hypocrite. I am outing myself and saying that maybe the November monkey post was a bit over the top.

Finally, a health update. Which will lead into my next post about healthy adoption:

J tore a ligament in his knee on New Year's day. He lay in bed for a week. I was VERY jealous.
He had surgery. I wasn't so jealous.
He is now recovered.
I'm planning on tearing something next.

Cassidy has lung cancer. As you all know.

I have been sick off and on for two months with a recurrent fever, lots of phlegm, and huge amounts of lethargy. Yesterday the doctor finally prounced me medically ill enough to receive drugs.

Ariam's head is "too big." According to medical science. So she has to have an MRI next week.
I personally feel she is just fine and I would know if something were wrong.
She's just very smart. And big headed. And her curls are hard to squish down when they  measure.
Fine, whatever, it's 50 cm and growing. It isn't even on the charts it's so big.
But we'll take the MRI and prove that there is simply a great big brain in there and maybe the doctors will stop bothering us.

End of the updates.
Next post will be on something I've been thinking about for a long time. Healthy adoption/special needs adoption.

~A

"Just don't tell her."

That's what the vet. oncologist said to me after she gave a prognosis of 1-2 months this morning. After she showed me the x-ray of Cassidy's chest. The tumor taking up all of her left lung and pushing up her heart.

I sat at the vet hospital this morning rubbing her shoulders and fighting back tears while we waited to be seen. Well meaning receptionists kept petting her and commenting on how young she looks. One tried to convince me that it's not too late to microchip her. It is. It really is too late.

I had to bite my lip until it bled. I had to think of shark week on animal planet. Anything horrifying or pain/anger inducing to overpower the sad just to get me from waiting room to private exam room.

I'd like to not tell her. But she already knows. I think my sobbing and clinging to her neck while wiping snot on her long curly ear might have given it away today. We drove home in doggie/human silence. I attempted to make a few "it will be ok" promises but she had very doubtful eyes coupled with low hanging ears. She knows.

1-2 months is far short of my hopeful self-prognosis of 4-6 months. 1-2 months passes in a blink of an eye in our household.

I read somewhere online that it helps to tell your dog her life story, chapter by chapter, before the end.
Her life story is our first 13 years as a couple.
I am having trouble getting past the part where I tell her about the sunny summer evening and her bounding leaps across the yard to meet us. So I think I'll write the story. It's more for me anyway. I might post pieces here. We'll see.

Thank you for all of the kind and loving comments. Knowing there are many people who care or who have gone through the same thing helps. It really does. The first thing I did when I got home today (after feeding Cassidy large quantities of happy-inducing peanut butter and drugs) was log on to read comments.

~A

We are losing our first love

How to say what I have to say?

It is nearing the time when we have to say goodbye to our first baby, Cassidy.

I can look back and see some of the signs now, in hindsight.
In August we took her on an easy hike. Before we even got started I had to go back to the car for something. She clawed her way up into the front seat and didn't want to come back out.

We took her to the Platte this fall, on a warm day, to paddle in the shallow areas. She stepped in, stumbled a bit, and looked to us to see if she (our water dog) could get out and sit quietly by the side of the river.

She growled at Ariam this fall when she came too close to her dog bed.

I've been finding little last bites of food uneaten in her dog dish.

Over Christmas she began to gag and cough. It didn't go away. I pretended she had a cold and was clearing her throat while quietly googling and denying.

This is Cassidy. This is our special girl.
http://at-the-watershed.blogspot.com/2009/08/great-dog.html

Yesterday the vet confirmed that she has a large tumor growing in her chest and pressing on her bronchii. Thus the coughing/gagging.

I feel like we are stepping off the road of happiness and onto this awful little detour. We know where it will take us but not quite when we'll get there or how to navigate the way.

I am waffling between grief and denial.
Cassidy's bed is moving into our room. Dinners are being served with sides of homecooked goodies. Jeremy, the vegetarian, bought her a Wen.dy's double stack burger yesterday.

A future life without Cassidy. I can't imagine it. She's been quieter and quieter but she's still a huge presence in our lives and whenever I need to feel young or need a reminder of our best days I just put my arm around her and it all comes rushing back. Where will I find that? Where will she go? Where will our memories be?

I'm choking on the pit in my stomach. The knowing. The not knowing. It is terrible. When she is gone she will take a part of me with her.

~A

She's just so pretty

She wears her lovely inside on the outside.

~A

A Rocky Relationship

The blog and I have been through a rough patch. We haven't been speaking this week.

I've been trying hard not to think about it, while of course it worms it's way into my mind at all times of day and night.

I've wrestled with the 'call of the blog' all week and come to the conclusion that Watershed blog and I are in a complicated relationship.

I expect to come to it with all of my thoughts and feelings, from the mundane "hey, blog, I think I should potty train Ariam this month-your thoughts?" to the complex "hey, blog, what does healthy infant adoption mean anyway? And why is the word healthy pushing all of my buttons these days?" From the intimate "umm...blog...I find myself getting teary at random emails and comments more than I'd like" to the public "Genna celebration next weekend!"

So, I expect to bring these issues to the blog and in return the blog will support me, back me up, support comments, and cooperate when I hit publish.

But my blog broke up with me last month. We'd been together over a year and a half! Suddenly it pulled away. First it was my left column of slaved over photos and widgets. Then it reorganized my owl on a tree limb cartoon at the bottom. Then it hit below the belt - it stopped accepting comments!! COMMENTS! The lifeblood of the blog relationship.

Watershed blog and I broke up. It took a lot of work to restore, what is really a shell, of our former relationship. We're back together, but it is very tentative. I feel reserved. I feel like I could be betrayed again at any moment. I don't know if I am just wasting my time with this relationship and therefore I can't create new widgets, or export my old archive. We've lost our former friends. I sometimes feel like we're getting sideways glances. My guess is that we've been removed from blogrolls - nobody believes we will last!

~A

PS. Ok, on serious note, if you were one of my previous followers and still read here on the new blog site could you just hit follow and start commenting again? I even allow anonymous comments again (please just keep them nice or sign or your name.) I miss you guys! I promise to start writing again. I *may* even add more to the left column if we can make it to February.