Crazy Guest: Preparing For Craziness

So many times in life we spend months and months even years preparing for a BIG DAY: a birth, a wedding, an adoption, a graduation that we forget that life continues after that moment has passed. It’s great to be prepared and excited about milestones and I believe that we should cover all our lives in prayer, but I think we tend to forget what happens next.

You might have had the most beautiful wedding dress that was hand-beaded by a master beadstress and tulips hand delivered from Holland and a horse-drawn carriage that would have put Cinderella to shame, but odds are in the grand scheme of things it won’t matter one little bit. You and your husband will still argue about whose turn it is to wash dishes in August when your air conditioner and dishwasher are both broken. Your toilet on the second floor will clog and overflow while you’re at work and the resulting flood will soak through the ceiling and ruin the carpet in your living room. Life goes on no matter how pretty or memorable that moment was.

My husband and I have become parents three times over (just one…or two…more, honey, please?!) in the last four years, twice by birth and once by adoption. Each time we spent nine months with prayers and preparation getting ourselves to the point where we could say with confidence “We are Ready” even though we knew you can never be ready-ready. And each time, we have walked into our house with our new child and said to each other “what happens next?” Despite our best intentions and despite the fact that we learned something that helped us the next time we were still left feeling a little (or a lot) dizzy that the preparation stage was over. It didn’t matter anymore. Maybe there were some great photos or maybe not. But no matter what we had to carry on because life wasn’t going to pause while we caught our breath and figured out what the next move was. (You just pray on the run!)

Our toddler adoption is less than two months old (at the writing of this post) and so there are lots of moments that I am still praying on the run, wondering what’s going to happen next, and thinking of things that I wish we would have known or done not so that our “moment” could have been better, but that would have given us a little more peace and direction afterward. Because it turns out that what happens after an adoption is…..LIFE!

So these are my Top Ten Tips for Easing Into Life Post-Adoption (they are not in order because I am not that organized. My apologies.)

1. Schedule your appointments: These will vary by situation but you will have multiple appointments in the first three months with your pediatrician, international adoption doctor, early intervention specialists, social worker, therapist, and a specialist or two. It will be much easier to make phone calls and think clearly BEFORE you have your child home. Schedule them in advance and write them on a big calendar.

2. Gather your friends: You need a friend who listen to your complaints without judging and without trying to fix them, she will cheer you on and marvel at how wonderfully you are coping, a friend who will listen to your complaints and then help you problem-solve through them, a friend who has been there before you and you can say anything to her, a friend who will be there after you and you will have words of advice and encouragement for, a friend who will meet you for coffee, and a friend who will come over and clean up your kitchen and serve you coffee.

3) Be aware: You might come home and everything will be sunshine and lollipops and then again, maybe not. It would have been so helpful for us to have resources lined up for when we started to have trouble. Have an actual list printed up that has your social worker’s phone number, your agency’s phone number, the pediatrician, an attachment therapist, an international medicine doctor, your pastor, early intervention, and any adoption related services in your area. Pray that you won’t ever need it, but be prepared in case you do.

4) Line up inspiration: Being a parent is hard under the best of circumstances and I’ve found it so helpful to have something that lifts my mind and my mood immediately available to me. I have index cards with Bible verses on them throughout my house, I have music that makes me want to dance, music that cheers up my soul, etc readily available to me. It’s great just to walk into the hallway and see some Scripture taped to my wall or turn on iTunes see a playlist of my favorite hymns. I even had my parents write out some of their favorite verses for me because it cheers me up to see their handwriting.

5) Relax: You’ve just got to be able to relax. Have a cup of coffee, watch your favorite movie, leave the house and go for a run, whatever it is that makes you feel good before your adoption will make you feel good after your adoption. And you need to do it whether you think you need it or not. You might not realize how much you needed it until you do it for the first time and you feel yourself take a deep breath and let your shoulders drop below your ears.

6) Don’t judge: Don’t judge yourself, your husband, your child, or other people. This is actually a good life lesson, but whenever you can put it into practice is good. We all know what we have in our heads as “The Way It Shall Be” and maybe it will come to pass and maybe it won’t, but the chances are that you’re going to be okay anyway. This really is your LIFE that you’re living and even if you thought you’d never ever ever let your baby cry for ten minutes until you’d been home for ten months you might find that you just really need a shower and ten minutes of your own cry time and it will be okay. Will it be perfect? Nope, but perfect is for heaven. Maybe you thought that you would be on a precise schedule and your baby would just fall into place and it turns out that schedules stress your baby out and you have to go loosey-goosey. It will be okay. Will it be perfect? Nope, but perfect is for heaven. Learn to give and receive grace.

7) Stock Up: Seriously! Do! This! Buy in bulk before you think you need to because sometimes your timeline speeds up and all of a sudden you have thirteen days instead of three months to bring your child home…. Toilet paper, canned soup, diapers, wipes, paper towels, feminine supplies, crackers, Oreos, ice cream, Kool-Aid, soda, etc., by the time you NEED these things it is too late and inconvenient to go and get them. I don’t care if you stuff them under every bed in your house and the cashier at Costco thinks that you’re stocking up for a delayed Millennium disaster. You will be so happy that you have these things in advance. I can’t even explain to you how great it will be to tell your husband there are Ramen noodles under the guest bed if he’s hungry and while he’s up there to please grab you another pack of Double-Stuff Oreos. It will cover a multitude of forgotten things.

8) Practical Help: We live (sob sob) far away from family, but we do have a great church that helped us out. It’s really great to have one person who will tell you in advance that they will be in charge of scheduling your meals and arranging any other help that you’re going to get from church or work. Give that person a map to your house, tell them what time you usually eat and when is too late to call and let them manage people who want to bless you. If you have close friends or family who want to help you with things like cleaning or carpooling again, please let them, you can return the favor later. Let someone be the Go-To Person and tell them in advance what you need help with whether it’s carpooling your kids around, folding a load of towels, or bringing you frozen dishes of lasagna. I wish in our practical help that I would have asked some people to bring us Ethiopian food from a restaurant more often. I wish I had prepared more of it in advance. See if you can find someone to bring a little bit of “home” into your child’s new home in the days before it’s easy for you to do so.

9) Plan on Quiet: I think that it’s just respectful of the immensity of adoption to give the kiddos a quiet introduction to their new family and new life. Keep it low-key as far as outings, visitors, and welcoming. Even if you have a chill baby/child who doesn’t seem to mind don’t forget to look at what’s happening (and what’s been lost) from their point of view. Let them get used to the immediate family and the house and slowly branch out from there at a pace that is manageable for them. Our lives in the western world include so much that I think with even our best efforts at peace and quietness fall somewhat short and our tendency will be to overwhelm.

10) Know Your Stuff: Don’t skimp on the adoption book reading. Some of it is intense and scary, but there’s a reason for that…adoption can be intense and scary. Hoping that it won’t be isn’t an excuse not to be prepared. Pick a few techniques that you want to try and make plans on how you’re going to use them: ASL signs and regression to bottles were two that were helpful to us. Expand your horizons past the literature that’s from adoptive parents and read about what adult adoptees have to say, read and listen without judging because you haven’t walked in their shoes. Know your child’s culture as much as you can without having lived it, have respect for that culture and be able to talk about it in a positive and honest way. Do you have any connection to people from your child’s racial background in your local area (I hope so!) but be ready to integrate that culture and those resources in your life as soon as possible. Know what’s out there and make use of it. Know about grieving and what it looks like in a child of your child’s age. Know what post adoption depression looks for and what you’re going to do about it. Know your Bible verses. Take advantage of the time you do have to prepare because it will be shorter than what you think and you will wonder what you did with all your “free-time” once you have your little one home!

Remember that it’s not just about preparing for the first time you see him/her, or the party at the airport or a baby shower three days after you’re home. You are preparing for the long-haul, preparing for the hard times, but praying for the best of times. You’re preparing not just a nursery, not just for your adjustment, but for easing the aching heart of your little one and for the sweet life you’re going to share together.