We had our second home study visit on July 29th. The main topic of our discussion was the grief of the orphan. I had a fear that I had been thinking about that the baby would not love me. I told our agent about it and she said “well, of course she won’t love you, you are taking her away from everything that is familiar to her. You don’t look or smell like anyone she spent her life with.” She explained that love and attachment are processes, not events. It will take a while for the baby to build trust with us. She showed us some pictures of people meeting their babies for the first time and in the pics, the adoptive parents are just beaming, it is one of the happiest days of their lives. But the babies are crying, tense, or just shell shocked. For them, it is the worst day of their lives because everything they know to be familiar to them will be gone.
It really made me think. In my head, I realize now that I had high expectations. I pictured our baby just being so happy and loving us and rainbows and blue birds, etc… but it won’t be like that. It will take time for the baby to trust us and for us to attach to the baby. We need to think about the grief of the baby. NOT “attachment issues”. She said that she thinks that “attachment disorder” is like the ADHD of the adoptive world. People focus way to much on “attachment disorder” rather than the grief and loss of the child. Think about a child who lost his parents in a car accident or something. That child then goes to live with someone else. That child would not be expected to love his new parents. You would not think about “attachment disorder” or “why doesn’t this child love me”…. Absolutely not. You would address the GRIEF that this child has experienced. I had never thought of it that way. I am so glad she addressed that issue. Now I feel like I will have a more realistic expectation of meeting our baby.
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