God is always so faithful. I got a few questions answered about what all is involved in the next phase and I was right about having a lot of it already finished. We do still have things to accomplish, but at least I'm starting to get my questions answered and not feel so overwhelmed.
Plus, you know that stack of library books I got? Well, one of the books is called Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections. It was exactly what I needed tonight! A new friend had recommended the book to me when I asked her how she knew so much (Phil and I had visited her and her husband during our time on hold with Sammy to talk about the process and left their house feeling like there was A LOT we didn't know!) and it was one of the books I ordered from the library right away. Anyway, I got out the books tonight while Titus is soaking in the tub, trying to vaporize a cough out of him.
The first book was a how-to adopt book... it really wasn't hitting the spot. Then I pulled out the parenting book and within just a few paragraphs I knew it was what I was needing. There's no preamble or fluff or yada, yada... it immediately cuts to the chase and dives right into the meat: sleep philosophies, theories on "crying it out", concepts from "Baby Wise", and so on. As soon as I started reading, it was like a huge sigh of relief.
I'm a why kind of person. It is who I am. I need to understand in order to function. A lot of the conversation in adoption circles revolves around concepts I'm not familiar with and want to better understand. People talk about attachment. I understand attatchment is important for an adoptive family to figure out... but I didn't understand the reasons behind it. I mean I understand the basic reason of needing to belong to each other. But what I wanted to learn about is why there needs to be a change in how I parent just because a baby isn't biologically mine.
In just a few short pages, I learned a few things. It's a 500 page book and one that I'm thinking will have to be a purchase and not just a perpetual library book.
Notes:
Sleeping/Crying (the first few pages)
Institutionalized children are accustomed to nighttime/sleep meaning fewer staff - less availability to meet their emotional and physical needs. "Nighttime/darkness becomes an unpredicable, unsafe place where being left alone (or waking to find a "new" parent) is always a possibility in their mind."
Babies abandoned in China are often left during the night or the early morning hours since it is illegal. The book says, "while some of our children escape that early imprint, many do not."
Those two quotes alone help me better understand the comments I've only recently started to hear about parents/adopted baby sleeping together or rooming in.
We've heard that many orphanages are eerily quiet from babies' cries because the babies have learned that cries go unanswered. "What goes out of a baby left to cry is trust: trust in his ability to communicate and trust in the responsiveness of his caregivers." I've never let my babies "cry it out". I watched Dunston Baby Language - a dvd teaching about the universal baby language that newborns have around the world when my first was only a few weeks old. I've never heard any of my babies crying for no reason. As a newborn, I met the need that I heard in their cry and as they got to be bigger babies, their communication grew so I could continue to meet their needs. The books says, "Something goes out of parents as well when baby is left to cry it out. Parents lose sensitivity." What I find interesting, is we may have to help Sammy learn like a newborn that we will meet his needs. The problem is that instead of starting from square one with neutral trust, we could very well be starting with distrust.... and that I would guess would be something that could pop up throughout life.
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