Last week we had our second of three post placement visits with Amanda (our original social worker), during our adoption process she had adopted and took several months off to bond with her daughter. It was nice to have her back in our mix. She asked me to share our journey with her and I did, she told me our experience was not on the normal scale of how things typically go down in an adoption. There is so much that I left out on this blog because of several reasons, some of you whom I talk with often know most of it but in short, there was a lot of stuff that went on that shouldn't have and there were services that we paid for that we did not receive. Our experience should not have been what it was and during our match it was emotionally difficult to imagine we'd actually be on this end of the process. Thankfully we are!! Other than that, we are super blessed and grateful for our little man and madly in love with him.
He's over 2 months old and even though he's still on the small side (not yet 10lbs), he seems so much bigger to me. I think he's a little pudge, considering he was only 5.11 when he was born - I think he's doing quite well. The breastfeeding is going great and I still sometimes think back to all that pumping wondering what on earth I was doing and don't believe I did all that. I'm sure glad I did because it's super cool to be able to breastfeed him. I like that I can be an advocate to another adoptive parent who wants to try and breastfeed their adoptive child. He's smiling more and more, he's cooing and I know his cries and what they mean. He is very easy to sooth, except for when we drive to go pick up Lola and he sometimes screams his head off and I can't do anything about it, that breaks my heart, but he's getting better. Big sister Lola sits next to him and on the way back she helps sooth him - it's sweet!
I've encountered some experiences that I read about in our adoption books and learned about in the classes but of course wasn't quite prepared for. Two different times, two different women whom darn well know I wasn't pregnant thought that I gave birth - nope I wasn't prepared for that. I felt the need to correct them and advise them that we adopted him. It was my initial reaction and I never really thought someone would think that I gave birth to him, knowing my husband too?! Another woman the other day was looking at him, telling me how cute he was and then asked me if his father was black. I was totally caught off guard and explained that again we adopted him and no his father is not. As soon as I got home I opened one of my books and it had that exact scenario in it and it suggested that all I should have said was no his father is not. It's real easy to read about how to handle these individual situations but when you catch yourself in them, caught of guard, it's not that easy. Joe and I definitely need to get our answers straight and locked in our heads because we need to get used to knowing how to handle these things when they come up. When we are out in public and people want to question - it's not our story to share anymore - it's his. As he gets older and understands that he is adopted he might not want to blurt it out to strangers so I need to know how to back people off when they inquire. I need to be armed with how to shut them down before they pry too much. We knew this would be a challenge - it's definitely a new experience and not sharing everything is something I've never been that good at. I just need to practice.
