Not Just Another Sunday

As an adoptive parent I think that Mother's Day comes with a lot of extra emotional stuff.  As much as I want my kids to just think of me as Mama and as much as I love them just as if I had given birth to them, the reality is I am not their first mother. Heck, I'm not even their second mother.  They all have a birth family out there in the world somewhere, missing them and grieving for them.

Congo--one year ago

I never intended to be a mother. If you've known me or read this blog for very long you know that Brian and I had planned to not have kids of our own. We were both teachers, we had 100 kids a day, that was enough for us. We came to the unexpected decision to adopt in 2005 and Grace came home in January 2008. Suddenly I had a new holiday to celebrate.

Mother's Day 2012--the day we arrived home from DRC--scroll to the bottom for this year's pic!

Surely Mother's Day feels a little bit different if you're a mother through adoption. It's not just my day. I share it with several birth mothers, some living some dead, and a foster mother.  Sadly my day of joy and celebration comes at the expense and loss of these other women.  I've been thinking about my kid's birth mother's a lot the last few days. Two of them we know are deceased. Four of them are probably not. All them were brave.  My children are mine because of a series of terrible and tragic events.  

Why were my children given up?  I don't know.   But I do know that all six of my children were loved enough to be delivered into this world and into my arms. They could have been aborted. They could have been left to die.  They could have spent several years in an orphanage before aging out and moving to the streets. They could have been statistics, but instead they are treasured gifts.

So on Mother's Day I am beyond thankful to all the women who saved their children and gave them a chance to be part of my family. I am also eternally grateful to the extraordinary foster mother who cared for my kids in Congo. I know without a doubt she loved them like her own, nursed them back to health through some serious illnesses (all five of my kids from DR Congoi have had malaria), and mourned their loss when they had to leave her care.

Last year Mother's Day became extra special because it was the day we arrived home from DRC with Katriel and Louise. So this year's Mother's Day was also the first anniversary of being a mother of six. SIX. Holy Moley!  It was a sweet and gentle day.  I got gifts and my favorite meal.  But most important, I got to spend hours holding and kissing and laughing with my amazing kids. 

 

 

Mother's Day used to be just another Sunday.  Wow!  Not any more!

Mother's Day 2013

Checking In and Catching Up

I never intend to go this long between blog posts, but the last couple of weeks have been those kind of weeks: long, emotional, stressful, sleepless, and every once in awhile sweet and wonderful.  Here are a few of the highlights:

• Katriel had her 18 month well baby visit.  We knew she had grown, but holy smokes, she is one big baby.  She is the 99 percentile for both height and weight.  That means that out of a 1000 babies her age all but two of them would be smaller.  She is healthy, and smart, and happy, and oh so beautiful.
• Grace also had her 6 year well kiddo visit.  We had a bit of a scare with Grace.  The doctor heard a heart murmur.  She said it wasn't anything to panic about, but it didn't sound like any heart murmur she had heard before (yeah, that won't make you worry) and she wanted Grace to have a follow up echo-cardiogram.  Well, the follow up showed there really was nothing to worry about.  She needs to do follow ups every six months or so for awhile, but she is also healthy, smart, happy, and beautiful.  Oh, and the doctor predicts that she will probably be no more than about 5'2".  Go figure, we got a tiny Chinese girl.
• For the past week I've been suffering with a case of food poisoning or stomach virus, or who knows what.  But it knocked me on my butt!  I really felt like I had been poisoned.  It was scary, and of course, highly inconvenient for my poor husband.  It it never good to have a sick parent in the house when you already have 6 little people to take care of.
• In the midst of my food poisoning apparently Brian was starved for attention so he tried to cut off the tip of his ring finger one night while preparing dinner.  I gave it my greatest effort not to throw up while he rushed to urgent care and get it stitched back on.
• We got our taxes back and we were able to pay off the last of our adoption expenses and JoJo's tonsillectomy.  With the exception of our house we are now debt free!!! At least for this week.  Next week I have to go in for a possible root canal.  There is always something.
• On the tax issue, we did not get any adoption tax credit back.  We actually make so little money that we did not have enough tax burden to earn the credit.  Now that it is a non-refundable tax credit the adoption credit does us no good.  It was zero help on our last adoption.  So keep urging your legislators to switch it back to a refund and not a credit.
• Louise has had a severe case of insomnia for the last 2 weeks.  I'm going to do a whole post about that (if I ever get any sleep).
• Grace's heart murmur really threw me for a loop and I have been in a bit of a "live for the moment" frame of mind ever since that doctor visit.  So with a little bit of our tax return we got new bikes for Grace, Manny, and Haven.  JoJo inherited Haven's bike.  After a few days of sticking to the driveway and sidewalk we took the whole crew to the park on their bicycles.  I can't explain why, but it was an absolutely magical moment for me, watching all of them ride along the trail to our park, bicycle helmets in place, training wheels squeaking.  I took up the rear with Kat and Louise in the stroller.  The moment felt like a perfect picture of our family.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you!

The Rocky Road to DRC

Yesterday the US Department of state issued the following statement regarding adoptions in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

Alert: Democratic Republic of the Congo Immigration Authorities Suspend Issuance of Exit Permits to Adoptees

On April 29, the Congolese Ministry of Interior and Security, General Direction of Migration (Direction Generale d’Immigration, DGM) informed the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa that the DGM has temporarily suspended issuance of exit permits to adopted Congolese children seeking to depart the country with their adoptive parents.  This suspension is due to an ongoing investigation of an adoption that may not have complied with Congolese law.

The suspension of exit permits for adopted Congolese children applies to all intercountry adoptions and is not limited to adoptions by U.S. citizens.  These exit permits are required in addition to U.S. immigrant visas in order for children to travel to the United States.    

The DGM does not expect to issue exit permits to any adoptees during the investigation.  We will post new information as it becomes available on adoption.state.gov.

I could almost hear a collective gasp from the hundreds of families that are in process to adopt a child from DRC.  I know that reading this took my breath away and my kids are all home safe and sound.  But I have several dear friends and many lovely acquaintances that are waiting impatiently to bring children home.  At the very least this will mean another delay in an already long and bumpy process.  At worst, it points us in a direction of DRC closing down adoptions for good or, at best, indefinitely.  This is something that a lot of us have feared for a long time.

Early rumors sound fairly optimistic.  It sounds like this halt to exit letters is not because of a case of falsified documents or bribe paying or other common adoption corruption issues.  It sounds like an adoptive parent (not from the U.S.) who technically should have never qualified to adopt from DRC in the first place, somehow managed to slip through the system.  Or not completely slip through, considering this pending investigation.  I hope the rumor is true and it is simply a case of one isolated situation.  If it is true that means that DGM is doing its job.  It is providing the last security check in a very complicated process.

Right away when I read this news alert I thought of a friend who is bringing home a 6 year old girl.  She has no parents, no extended family to go to, and she has lived in an orphanage since birth.  Since BIRTH to SIX years old.  It makes me cry just to type that.  If she is not adopted she will NEVER have a family.  She will NEVER be able to look into the eyes of another woman and say to herself “This is my mama.”  She will be fed; she will have a place to sleep.  She will probably go to school until about grade 6.  She will live in a building filled with other children just like her.  New babies will arrive.  Some children will finally rejoin their families.  Others will die.  Six years will turn into seven and eight and nine….But everyday will look about the same as the last.  Just as lonely, just as hopeless, just as empty.

Grace spent her first 9 months in an orphanage and we are still trying to repair that damage.  What kind of damage does a life a spent in an orphanage leave behind? Prospects are grim for someone who has never lived in a “normal” family setting.  The likelihood that their future might include prostitution, forced labor or early marriage, drug or alcohol abuse, and suicide go through the roof.

I pray that DRC does not follow the same path as Vietnam or Guatemala, or Cambodia.  I pray this six year old comes home before she turns seven.  I pray that every family involved in international adoption takes a stand against the unethical practices that cause countries to close their doors.  I pray every night for all the children in the world who don’t have mamas and daddies. 

Maybe you could say a little prayer for them tonight, too.

World Malaria Day

Babies shouldn't die from mosquito bites.  Can you imagine what it would be like if that happened here in the United States?  We’d never let our children play outside.  If they had to go out we’d dip them in buckets of DEET.  There would be a huge industry for giant net tents that would cover our whole house and protect us from the horrible little attackers.

Thankfully, here in the US mosquitoes are mostly just irritating and mostly not deadly.  But for most of the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world mosquitoes equal malaria and malaria can be deadly.

Today is World Malaria Day.  The purpose of this day is to raise awareness about the danger of malaria and to let people know that it is completely preventable.

Malaria is bad.  It is scary. It is deadly, but it is treatable and preventable.

All five of my Congolese children have suffered from cases of malaria.  A sixth daughter that we named Lisette died before we could bring her home.  So even though malaria doesn't happen here in the US, for me it is very personal.

So here comes some awareness raising:

• Malaria is a parasite that lives in a mosquito and is transmitted through human blood.  When a mosquito bites a person who already has malaria, the contaminated blood is passed on to the next person they bite.

• Malaria can lie dormant in your blood and liver for a long as 4 years.

• Malaria kills over 1 million people per year.

• Between 300-500 million people suffer from cases of malaria each year.

• Children under 5 years old are most vulnerable to the effects of malaria.

• In Africa, a child dies every 30 SECONDS.

In my experience with malaria, treatment costs almost nothing, but more than most orphanages can afford.  So countless numbers of children die without ever being treated.  And if you live in a place like Congo or Vietnam or Haiti, it's not if you get malaria, but when and how often.

So what can you do from the comfort of your nice, cool, mosquito free home?  Raise awareness!  Share this blog post or the link at the top of the page.  Have a conversation about malaria.  Mention it on FaceBook.  If you can, donate to an organization like Our Family in Africa, that provides things like bed nets and medical treatment to children in orphanages.  And the next one is really easy--

For every video view of HBO Films’ MARY AND MARTHA trailer on April 25th, World Malaria Day, Malaria No More will provide a full course of treatment for a child with malaria.

I wish I could send all of you to spend a week in Congo (after you had started taking your anti-malaria drugs, of course), to an orphanage to hold a baby suffering from the fever and dehydration of malaria.  I wish I could make it personal for you.

Because babies shouldn't die from mosquito bites.

Nope, there's no Tooth Fairy either!

About a week ago Grace lost her 1^st tooth.  We’ve waited quite a long time for this monumental event.  She was six already and that darn tooth had been loose for weeks.  Plus, her 2 front bottom permanent teeth had already come completely up behind the baby teeth so she was starting to look like a shark.

But alas, out it came one night just before bedtime, with a  small yank from Mama.  There was a little bit of blood, a small amount of trauma, and then Grace suddenly remembered losing teeth comes with a payoff. 

Now even though we don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus (You might remember my views on Santa from this earlier post.), Leprechauns, or The Elf on the Shelf, Grace is a very pragmatic girl.  She is not going to be cheated out of presents or surprises just because we don't celebrate fairytale characters like other families.  She lost a tooth so she was fully expecting a present under her pillow.

And not money, a present!  Grace doesn't place much value on money yet, but she loves surprises.  So I needed an actual gift to put under her pillow.  I started to panic!  It was 9pm.  I was getting ready to put Grace to bed and I was already in my PJ's, too.  Where was I going to get a gift.  Then I remembered my secret stash of China gifts.  When we traveled to China to bring Grace home we brought back 18 years worth of little presents to give her each year.  Some little toys, some clothes, and some more sentimental like a string of pearls for her wedding day.  We were going to give them to her on each Gotcha Day, but Gotcha Day turned out to be Christmas Eve, which was too close to the frenzy of Christmas gift giving.  Plus the whole idea of Gotcha seemed a little weird after awhile (but that's a subject for another day). So anyway, a China gift seemed the perfect way to commemorate this 1st tooth loss.

I snuck in after she fell asleep, slid the surprise under the pillow, and looked forward to morning.  When she woke up she immediately reached under her pillow for this:

A sweet little China Girl puppet for my sweet China Girl!  So how many more teeth do I have to go?  I better start planning ahead!