Laurel Feierbach
The Little Things
On this journey of adoptive parenting, I’ve noticed that the little things become so huge. You celebrate every little tiny triumph, every little sign of attachment. You have to or you get discouraged. The journey of attachment is long, bumpy, and full of regressions. So you have to make sure you notice all the little steps of healing and you have to celebrate them with your partner.
We celebrated when J-Man started facing toward us when we rocked him at night. He did not want to be held intimately for a long time. For a while, he would only let me hold him when I was standing up, but as soon as I sat down, he sensed a level of intimacy he wasn’t comfortable with and he was done. Then he started letting me rock him without having a fit the whole time, but only if he faced away from me. I can’t even explain the feeling I still get when he faces me as I rock him. His body relaxes into mine and that moment is huge for me.
We celebrated the first time J-Man fell asleep on his daddy, which took months. It showed a level of comfort we had not seen up to that point.
We celebrated when J-Man started hanging on to me when I carried him. For a long time, his arms were always up in the air when we carried him, in a sort of relaxed “Y” position. He wasn’t attached to us, and he didn’t really want to be held by us. Finally, he started to rest his hand on my shoulder when I carried him and eventually he started to grab onto my shirt.
I’ve noticed my friends’ children who grab onto their mommies every time they’re carried and I wonder if their mommies even notice this precious little gesture. Do they just take it for granted because their kids have always done it? Do they notice when their babies’ gaze follows them around the room, which is a sign of attachment? Do they feel the significance when their crying child is comforted by Mommy’s hand on his back in the middle of the night?
It’s something I’ve come to love about adoptive parenting. I don’t take anything for granted. Every time my child crawls into my lap on his own or even makes eye contact with me, I celebrate. I am filled with gratitude and amazement at God’s healing power.
So whether you’re an adoptive parent or a biological parent, may you notice all those little things. May you not take any of them for granted.
And if you are an adoptive parent, may you watch for those little signs of attachment and healing. May you allow yourself to be encouraged and to hold onto those moments in the midst of all of your hard work and discouragement.
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Laurel Feierbach
Laurel and her husband adopted their first son in 2010 from Ethiopia and are currently fostering to adopt their second son. With two 2-year-old boys, they are always hopping! Chris is a pastor and Laurel is a stay-at-home-mom. You can follow their story at God Found Us You.
You Were Adopted
Many from the last generation seems to recall the “big reveal” in their lives; the moment they were told they had been adopted. Since then we’ve learned that it benefits a child to grow up always knowing this part of their story so they can’t remember the “conversation”…they just always knew. Those of us with conspicuous adoptions (maybe transracial so everyone knows you are an adoptive family) don’t have much choice in this matter anyway!
That’s what I want for my kids, though. When they’re older and someone asks, “When did you find out you were adopted?”, they’ll say, “I don’t know.” There are several ways we let them know this part of their story even now.
Books. There are some great books you can find, written for children about the topic of adoption. Two of my favorites for babies/toddlers are:
A Mother for Choco
I Love You Like Crazy Cakes
“So glad we adopted you.” Before we brought E home, an elderly woman at our church told my husband she had always rocked her children and told them, “I’m so glad we adopted you.” So, I do this every night. I tell both boys, “Mommy and Daddy are so glad we adopted you.” It brings adoption into our conversation and lets our kids know, from Day 1, how much they are loved and cherished.
Make a Lifebook. Lifebooks come in many varieties, but the idea is simply to tell your child’s story with pictures (and maybe words). I’ve heard of many families making this book with their children when they are older. When your kids are young, though, you can make it and read it with them. I made E a scrapbook that starts on Mommy and Daddy’s wedding day, shows his referral picture, documents our trip to Ethiopia to bring him home, etc. We have looked at it together several times, and I tell a very simplified story of his life. I still need to make one for J-Man, and I think this time I might just do a really simple, less delicate album (something sturdier so he doesn’t have to be so gentle with it). I have also made a 3 Picture Story for E, which is very easy to do. You just need 3 pictures, one of your child with his birthfamily or previous foster family or at the orphanage (whatever his life was before he came home to your family), one of “the handoff” when the previous caregiver handed him to you (we don’t have a pictures like this so you can use any picture of the day you met or the day he came home), and one of your family now (showing both parents and the child). This is the most simplified version of your child’s story and can be helpful to look at together.
Gotcha Day. Many adoptive families have a certain day they celebrate pertaining to the adoption. We celebrate E’s Gotcha Day, which is the day we picked him up from the orphanage. With J-Man, we are planning to celebrate the day we finalize his adoption as that will be a more significant day in his story. Some families celebrate the day they received their referral or the day their child came home. It’s a beautiful thing to choose a meaningful day like that and celebrate it every year. It also provides a specific day when the conversation is intentionally opened up pertaining your child’s story. Questions can be asked, tears can be shed, whatever is needed. For E’s first Gotcha Day celebration last year, we made his favorite meal for dinner, looked through his lifebook, and gave him a small but significant gift. I’ve also heard of families lighting a candle for birthfamilies on this day or visiting a restaurant specific to the culture your child was born into. Do whatever works for your family.
You Were Adopted. I can’t remember if I read this or if it was part of our adoption training, but I found it quite significant. Rather than the phrasing, “You are adopted,” use “You were adopted.” Your adoption was an event in your life; it doesn’t define who you are as a person. People will often say, “My son is adopted,” which implies this is a defining characteristic for him. We should say, “My son was adopted” as in there was a day in which we adopted him.
Adoption is part of our natural rhythm of life; it’s not some taboo topic, but simply a lovely part of our family. How do you keep that conversation open in your family?
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Laurel Feierbach
Laurel and her husband adopted their first son in 2010 from Ethiopia and are currently fostering to adopt their second son. With two 2-year-old boys, they are always hopping! Chris is a pastor and Laurel is a stay-at-home-mom. You can follow their story at God Found Us You.
So Much More Than Worth It
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1.27
This is why we adopted. How can you get more clear than that? God says religion, this whole Christian thing, is about taking care of the helpless.
When my husband and I decided we were ready to have children and wanted to do that through adoption, we researched all of our options. We wanted an infant for our first child and felt that the greatest need was in international or foster care adoption. After researching foster care infant adoption, we decided we wanted to go international this time around. Social workers we talked with told us that we could foster an infant for up to 2 years before he/she is up for adoption or placed back with the birth family. For our first child, we didn’t want to wait 2 more years and then start the process all over again. We wanted a child now though we still hope to foster, Lord willing, for our next child.
We began the process of adopting our son from Ethiopia. The entire process took 18 months and brought us to our then 8-month-old baby boy in February 2010. For me, and I think for my husband, the hardest part of the wait was the Christmas before we met him. As we near the holidays, I am reminded how difficult they were for me then.
Christmas 2009, we had received our referral, we knew who our son was, we became his legal guardians on December 16, but we still had to wait. We had to wait for our travel date in February, for paperwork to be pushed, for legalities that didn’t seem important enough to keep our son in an orphanage halfway around the world for another minute.
Christmas night. My husband and I were driving home from my in-laws after a long day of splitting time between our families. I broke down. And cried. And cried.
The hardest part was at my in-laws house as we sat around watching our nieces and nephews open their gifts. Once kids come into your family, holidays become mostly about them, as you know. Both of my husband’s siblings had kids already and each had a child the same age as our son, the son we had but didn’t have. So, my husband and I sat on the couch and watched these babies open gifts, play, get excited, be loved. We watched their parents delight in their smiles and laughs. And, our hearts broke. All we could think about was that big-eyed boy in the photos and the fact that he didn’t have us yet.
Perhaps there is a reader who is there right now? As we go through this holiday season, my heart goes out to you. Knowing that it probably won’t ease your pain or your longing, I still want to tell you that you’ll get there. You’ll hold that child in your arms, and you’ll belong to each other in every sense. The wait will end, the process will be complete, you’ll arrive home with that bundle of life, and you’ll know that every second, every piece of paperwork, every phone call, every prayer, every tear was so much more than worth it.
Because this moment cannot be explained. This moment is enough to fill a thousand Christmases with joy.
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Laurel Feierbach
Laurel has been married to her husband Chris for 3 years. They adopted their first child almost a year ago from Ethiopia and plan to begin the process of adopting through foster care in the next couple of months. Chris is a pastor, and Laurel is a stay-at-home mom. You can follow their story at God Found Us You.
A Year
It’s amazing the difference a year makes. Chris and I often find ourselves awed by the differences we see in Ephraim over the course of the last year. They say that first year home is often the hardest. So much work has to be done in that first year. I will cherish it, but I’m glad it’s over.
So we notice the differences a year has made. The genuine laughter that so often fills our home reminds us of that fake little forced laugh that we heard for his first few months with us. He took a two hour nap this afternoon and I am reminded how he used to take two twenty-minute naps a day for quite a while after joining our family. Our routine is thrown off and he bounces back for the most part, whereas for a long time, a change in routine meant he didn’t sleep well for days. I could go on and on. Some differences are obvious and some are only noted by Chris and I because we held him on those nights he wouldn’t stop screaming for two hours. We did silly things to coax a moment of eye contact out of a baby who insisted on looking away during feedings. And we feel his little arm wrap so tightly around our necks and we know that he is attached and that we have formed a connection and that that itself is a miracle.
And that is what inspired us last weekend to reprioritize our next adoption. There’s so much going on in our lives right now and so we have pushed it down on the priority list. But God has reminded us why we are filling out this paperwork, and attending more trainings, and getting fingerprinted again, and getting our home up to foster care standards. It’s because of the difference a year makes.
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Laurel Feierbach
Laurel has been married to her husband Chris for 3 years. They adopted their first child a year ago from Ethiopia and are in the process of adopting through foster care. Chris is a pastor, and Laurel is a stay-at-home mom. You can follow their story at God Found Us You.
The Year of the Boy
The moment we met
What was different in your life this past year? For me, 2010 was this: only one thing changed but that changed everything.
You know what I mean?
2010 was the year Ephraim joined our family. We picked him up in Ethiopia on February 1st. That’s it. That’s really the only big thing that happened.
But you know what followed that?
No sleep for 9 months.
An incredible amount of love.
Laughter up the wazoo.
The inability to leave the house very often at all without a baby and cereal.
Giving away our dogs because that just wasn’t happening.
Toys all over the floor every single day.
The best kind of cuddles.
I could go on and on.
The boy changed it all. And, I will always thank God for that boy. That exact boy.
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Laurel Feierbach
Laurel has been married to her husband Chris for 3 years. They adopted their first child almost a year ago from Ethiopia and plan to begin the process of adopting through foster care in the next couple of months. Chris is a pastor, and Laurel is a stay-at-home mom. You can follow their story at God Found Us You.
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