[Allisen]

We were recently assigned a baby girl from Delhi, way before we thought it was going to happen. We've been given two pictures of her and a little bit of information. Are we supposed to feel an immediate bond? Do we just trust that she is right for us? We are thrilled about adopting from India and feel so blessed, but since this came so quickly we're not sure how we're supposed to feel. Has anybody had any experience with this?

Would really appreciate feedback. Thank you. Allisen

[crathke]

Allisen,

I hope you don't think I'm barging in, but I saw your post on the "active threads" board and thought maybe I could help.

It's not unusual to lack a "lightning bolt" when you first see your child's photo. It's a huge decision and there are so many variables at play that I think sometimes we're looking for the "sign" that This Is My Child, and when that doesn't happen, we second-guess ourselves to death.

We felt the same way when we saw our photos of the child who became our younger son. After two days of should-we-shouldn't-we, we decided to take that leap of faith and accepted the referral. (and have never looked back!)

I have a friend who adopted 12 years ago from Romania. I asked her the same thing you're asking the forum, and she said that throughout the entire process, all the travel, the court dates, etc...it was as if she was doing it for someone else. It wasn't until her daughter was in "her" crib, wearing the pajamas that had been purchased "for her", etc---*then* it was "real". So I think it's a universal concern regardless of the country.

If you accept this referral, the bond will grow with time. I don't think an "immediate bond" happens very often, whether a child is biological or adopted. There has to be a settling-in period either way. It's a whole new person entering your lives!

FWIW, it became "real" for us when we gave our son his first bath and bought him his own shoes--both of which we did within hours of picking him up.

[spaypets]

First, congratulations! It's unusual these days for referrals from India to come sooner rather than later.

Second, of course you don't feel a bond yet. I know that some people claim to, but it's all so overwhelming to realize that there's actually a child waiting for you. A couple of pictures and brief biographical information isn't a lot to hold on to.

What should you do? First off, make sure you have a pediatrician that specializes in international adoption evaluate the medical records. Your agency should be able to recommend someone. This is important so you know what you're getting into.

How do you know if she's right for you? It's scary to hear, but you don't. But what is right? These things have a way of turning out all right in the end. Part of it is that children are programmed to love their caregivers and to want to please them.


It's completely normal to feel as if the whole thing is a fantasy. We picked up our daughter in May (Mother's Day!) and I don't think it really hit me that we were actually about to become parents until we were at the orphanage.

I'm still not sure I feel like somebody's mother. She's a great kid, but part of me _still_ feels like I'm babysitting. I'm not worried. Feelings evolve. The warm feeling increases every time she smiles when she sees me and when she cuddles against me at night as I sing her lullabies.

Congratulations again!

[Allisen]

Thank you so much. That really helps. It's all gone so fast that we wondered if we had more of the angst we wouldn't be questioning ourselves. Clearly we should see that perhaps there's some destiny involved here. I really appreciate you writing. Allisen

[spaypets]

Well, if it's angst you want...

Seriously, it was about 8 months from referral to travel, with a number of very frustrating (and infuriating) moments for us. I don't know what kind of timeline you'll have but there's still a long road ahead!

[ll_bay]

Hi
Our situation was like yours- the referral came so fast we didn't even have time to blink. We applied in October 2002, were put on a wait list and thought it would be a long time, then got a call two days later that a sibling group had been identified for us! The referral was fed-exed, and when I first saw it, it was a lot like the phone call, in that I didn't even know how to react. So I opted for what another poster said, and saw this as divine intervention, or destiny, or whatever you want to call it. We picked up our children in March and every day the bond changes and grows deeper. Already I cannot imagine life without them, and yet I know our relationship still has a long way to grow....
My best to you. You will make the right decision for your family, I'm sure.
lldb

[Rowan]

Excuse me also for barging in, but if you just discovered you are pregnant and due to have a child (which would be kind of assigned to you - so to speak) how would you know if it were the right child for you? Would you even question it? Why not just take whichever child you are getting like everyone else does when they have a baby and take it from there?

Congratulations on the forthcoming event that you must have waited for for so long. It is natural to worry about the future when having a child about to arrive in your life.

Best of luck

R

[Ann Fleming]

You raise a very important question. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to carefully consider a referral before accepting it. In an international adoption, with few exceptions, you do not have the knowledge of your intended child's prenatal experience, as you would if you had carried the child yourself. You do not have knowledge of your intended child's genetic makeup nor his/her birthparents' medical history. You must consider the medical information you have been provided, even if it is sparse. Find a physician, preferably one specializing in international adoption, and have him/her review any medical information and/or video you have. If you cannot find a specialist in your area, you might want to contact the International Adoption Clinic at the University of Minnesota. Another resource is Dr. Jerri Jenista, a physician and herself an adoptive mom in Michigan. I cannot recall the contact information for either the IAC or Dr. Jenista off the top of my head, but when I needed them to consider our second daughter's referral, I plugged the information I've given you into my web browser and was able to get correct telephone numbers pretty easily. Another excellent resource is a chapter devoted to the referral in the book Launching a Baby's Adoption.

I also wanted to comment on Rowan's post asking why adoptive parents do not simply accept the first child referred, as parents giving birth to a child do. First of all, it is a fallacy that parents giving birth accept the child they are carrying sight unseen. This is one of the ways in which adoption, especially closed and/or international adoptions, differs most significantly from the birth experience. A family expecting a biological child in the U.S. has access to prenatal care including genetic testing which can determine a host of anomalies. Some families, knowing what their resources are, make the very difficult decision to terminate pregnancies in which the health of the child is in question. Furthermore, a woman carrying a child knows what her child's prenatal experience is, including nutrition and exposure to drugs and alcohol. A family adopting a child in a closed or international adoption must accept that the level of prenatal care their child and his/her birthmother has had access to may be substandard or nonexistent. The birth experience itself may have been at home (as were both of our daughters' births), and may have been traumatic without this information being provided when the child comes into institutional care. Adoptive families need to consider the information they have been given very, very carefully -- because it is so much less information than they would have if they were giving birth, and because information about the prenatal and birth experience can be so important to an overall understanding of a child's health picture.

I will close with a sad but illustrative story. We accepted our first daughter as our first referral, and were so happy to have been referred a healthy infant with only mild concerns related to prematurity and low birthweight. She is now a happy, healthy, almost six-year-old. Our second daughter's adoption was very different. She was not our first referral. Our first referral was for a beautiful little girl who had suffered a significant stroke prior to arriving in institutional care. Her orphanage, an excellent one, had ordered a CT scan and we had access to these results. We spent a frantic 24 hours forwarding all the medical information we had to Dr. Jenista as well as to specialists locally and to our family's general practitioner. All the physicians consulted concurred that the little girl had substantial loss of brain function and would need extensive intervention, possibly 24 hour care for the rest of her life. Because both adults in our family must work to maintain healthcare coverage for the family, we knew that we would not have an at-home parent to offer this child and might possibly experience gaps in insurance coverage during her childhood. We decided we needed to decline her referral. It was grueling, and we still retain a picture of this little girl and consider her to be "our child" in some way. We went on to accept our second referral, also for a little girl who had a stroke prenatally, but with much less significant long-term issues. She is now our beautiful, healthy, almost-two-year-old daughter, with speech therapy and physical therapy going very well. I stay in touch with our India program specialist and saw her this past weekend. I asked about our first referral. She is now almost two, and she has only brainstem function. She cannot see, cannot hear, and has only involuntary muscle movement. She often appears to the observer to be in pain and makes involuntary sounds, much like that of a person who has experienced a severe brain injury. No amount of intervention will change this picture. The orphanage director, after having cared for this child for two years including daily access to physicians and physical therapy, has made the difficult decision not to treat the next infection this child experiences, in other words, to let nature take it's course, providing pain management for her as she declines and eventually dies. I am confident, having seen the orphanage, that she has suffered as little as possible during her first two years, and that she will not suffer during whatever her final illness will be. I offer my love and support across 8500 miles to the caregivers who have fought for her thus far and who must now lose a child. Should we have accepted this referral? I wonder whom it would have helped. This severely impaired child would have been in a vegetative state in a home without 24 hour access to doctors and possibly without appropriate pain management, and the beautiful child who became our second daughter might have remained in an institution as a result. Please show appropriate respect for the difficult and often heartwrenching decisions both birth and adoptive parents make on a daily basis, if you plan to continue to post to this list. Thank you.

[lathasmom]

I agree that you do not know if the first referral you look into is always the right one for you. Before I accepted my daughter's referral..my husband and I had looked into adopting 2 other children...after taking some time to think the decision through we decided that neither of them were the right ones for us. Both of them were special needs and we both felt that we were not the right parents for them. Luckily I found out that both of the children have found forever families and we found our child as well. So, it isn't always this lightning bolt moment...it takes a lot of consideration before you say yes. You must also consider your circumstance and know (if the child has special needs) if you would be able to care for the special need both emotionally and financially. That is why most agencies tell you to take the child's information to your doctor and have them evaluate it...this is not only good for health reasons...but also to have a unattached opinion of the situation. Some of us parents have been waiting for so long...we would be willing to say yes to some circumstances we may or may not be ready for. When you do say yes to the child that is to be yours....I have been told by many adoptive parents that when you first hold them in your arms...you know they were meant for you.

[Allisen]

I just want to say thank you to everyone who has responded. It's been so helpful. We've decided to adopt the little girl. She's at Missionaries of Charity in Delhi. We got the medical report on her (not a lot of information) but the doctor seems to feel she's fine and healthy. She's small, only 12 pounds at 7 months. Our local doctor is taking a look at the report even though there's not much to go on. We're excited though and grateful. Thank you again. Allisen

[spaypets]

That's wonderful.

In addition to your local doctor, you might want to use the services of a pediatrician who is experienced in evaluating children in orphanages. Also, your agency probably has an Indian growth chart, which would be helpful for your pediatrician to have.

Is she still 7 months? I thought referrals were going out much later these days.

Are you planning to travel? If you can swing it, I highly recommend it. We were hinky about the trip, but now we're so glad we went. It truly was a fabulous experience and I think one of the reasons that attachment has gone so well for us is that we were the people who picked up our daughter, not an escort.

Northwest Airlines offers deep discounts to adopting families who travel. They even gave my mother a reduced rate!

We stayed in Bombay, so I can't give you any help about hotels etc., but do go if you can. You will be so glad you did!

[crathke]

Allisen,

I am so happy to hear that you accepted the referral! Congratulations!