Health and Insurance

What the heck does adoption dissolution mean? Well, I know what it means but I don’t understand it. Technically the definition of adoption dissolution is: A reversal or voiding of an adoption after its legal finalization. This can occur for a variety of reasons, the most common of which are: 1) That there was not a good match of the needs of the child with the talents and capabilities of the adoptive family, and 2) That the circumstances of the child or the adoptive family have changed substantially since the finalization, which would make a continuation of the relationship impractical or impossible. However, my heart absolutely does not understand this. Just reading the definition is scary because it reminds me that a lot of people don’t feel committed to their adopted children. I mean honestly, how many families formed through biology are in NO WAY a good match for one another or capable of meeting one another’s needs? A lot. And yet they go slogging onward because they are simply committed to each other. Sometimes out of love, sometimes out of hate and sometimes out of inertia but they don’t just dissolve all the bonds of family and disapear.

Some of you may be aware of this as it has made some small sensation in adoption-bloggy land but I, as always, am late to the party. Recently there was this terribly disturbing article about an adoption dissolution. A woman named Anita Tedaldi wrote an essay about why she chose to “unadopt” a toddler after keeping him for 18 months. If you haven’t read the piece yet I would strongly encourage you to take the time. I found very little to agree with the author about. I thought her tone was self-indulgent and her vocabulary inappropriate.

Do I feel that the little boy this story tragically centers around is better off with his new family? I FERVENTLY HOPE SO. Do I think that the “adoption dissolution” and the time he spent with Anita Tidaldi did him irreparable harm? YES ABSOLUTELY. Do I think that Ms. Tidaldi is responsible for the additional developmental delays and emotional scarring of rejecting him and the lost years of bonding he could have had with his true adoptive family? YES ABSOLUTELY.

I think the thing that frustrates me most about this entire situation though is the very fact that we even have something called “adoption dissolution.” When a biological parent places a child for adoption we call it by many names: relinquishment, abandonment, giving up for adoption, making a placement plan. All of those words and phrases though come with a harsh stigma for the original mother, including being referred to as a birth mom for the rest of her life. I really feel that in instances when adoptive parents make the choice to “dissolve” their child’s place in the family, a child that has already been relinquished once before, we need not to lessen the weight of this act by giving it minimizing vocabulary. If first families have to face stark terminology then I think that adoptive families who make this choice need to as well.

Ms. Tedaldi should not be able to merely explain all this away to her social circle by saying that she is “dissolving her adoption” but rather she should have to tell everyone that she has made the choice to give her child up for adoption. After all, that’s the truth.

–Rosemary

Book review day! Since R is out of town, I am the designated blogger for this Wednesday. I have a great book that we picked up at B&N a few weeks ago. It’s the Columbia University Children’s Medical Guide from DK. As with most of their books, it’s heavily illustrated and easy to flip through. It’s very well organized for the non-medical person with simple non-technical vocabulary. They’ve got a nice little breakdown about many common childhood illnesses, from earache to hemophilia. There’s also a nice couple pages on development and milestones, safety and health, and even a little section on “adolescent development” with the nice encyclopedia drawings of the maturing body.

Even for me as a doctor, knowing what to do with a sick baby is a little intimidating. That’s why I love the “Symptom Charts” section of the book, with large flowcharts broken down into broad symptom categories like “fever” “diarrhea” and “painful joints”. These make it easy to decide what your little one’s rash looks like and whether you should insist on an immediate appointment with the pediatrician or not. This is huge, especially for the new parent.

We say in medicine all the time that the technical aspects are easy to learn, but that what we really learn in all those years of medical school and residency is judgment. I think that learning how to be a parent is the same thing – learning what’s a big deal and what isn’t. Hopefully a book like this will help those of us who are new to the game to freak out a little less and save a few copays along the way.

-Brian

When I wrote my blog last week about Adoption Dissolution I was certain it would receive some negative feedback. And it did. Oddly enough though the people who supported Ms. Tedaldi’s decision to place her son for adoption a second time didn’t leave comments on my post they sent me emails instead. Some of them were interesting to read and some of them were just plain ugly.

One woman said that in the years since their adoption took place they have had a lot of difficulties and she could really relate to Ms. Tedaldi’s story and she felt grateful that someone was talking about it so honestly. She said that post adoption depression is very real. It was interesting to read that email because I agree with that sentiment completely!! I totally believe that post-partum and post adoptive depression is a natural and obvious condition that afflicts many families. I am reading a book now about post adoption depression so that in case it is something Brian and I face later we can know where to start dealing with it. I also wish more people would talk about their experiences honestly – I guess everyone is afraid of being called a “bad mom”. However, all that being said, I don’t think that has anything to do with adoption dissolution. Lots of great, fully committed families face post-adoption depression, special needs children and many other stressors (like spouses on active deployment) and don’t dissolve their child’s place in the family. Commitment does not mean doing something as long as it is easy.

I also got several incredibly SNARKY emails from adoptive mothers which basically all said the same thing “You haven’t even brought your child home yet. You don’t know how hard adoption is. Maybe your kid will be perfect but maybe the whole thing will be awful. I think Ms. Tedaldi had every right to do what she did.”
Hmmmm…. How to respond to that?
It’s true our son has not joined our family geographically yet but it doesn’t affect our love for him. It’s also true that I don’t know if he will be an easy child to raise or a difficult one but that doesn’t matter either. I am his mother and I am not expecting him to be perfect (nor would I even want that) I am committed to him no matter who he is. The same idea that these women all expressed to me was “You don’t know how hard adoption is.” Of course, that is 100% true! However, I feel that the better reality is that I don’t yet know how hard parenting is. But I am expecting it to be hard, just like marriage can be very difficult but ultimately rewarding, and full of love. I am not going to give my husband away and I am not going to give my kids away either. They are my family and they are allowed to be difficult.

–Rosemary

Dear Button,

Today is your first birthday!! Congratulations on being such a big boy! We are so proud of you and we love you so much. We wish, more than anything we have ever wished for, that we had been able to be with you on this very special day but we celebrated your life and your other parent’s lives and we sent all our thoughts and prayers to you. Since you can’t be with us for this birthday we are glad that you are getting to spend it with your wonderful foster parents who love you so very very much. We are also happy to know that, since we are still apart, at least you were able to spend your first birthday in beautiful Thailand!

We want you to know that we think of you every day. Really every hour. But you have never been more in our thoughts and hearts than on your birthday. What a celebration!! The day that your beautiful mother brought you into the world. We are so grateful to have you as our son. Our first-born son. No parents have ever been luckier.

Happy birthday, Button!
Love,
Daddy and Mommy

As you know from our recent posts, last week was our little boy’s first birthday. While it was heartbreaking for us to be away from him on that special day, we were very excited to have sent him a birthday package, which he hopefully got sometime around his birthday. Our agency, Holt, has recently tightened their restrictions on packages that PAP’s are allowed to send over to their waiting children. We’re basically only allowed to send something every two months, and it must be flat, noiseless, and fit into a gallon Ziploc bag.

So, of course, my brilliant wife has found a way to stuff two gallon freezer bags in the past two months, packing them to the absolute breaking point while still leaving them relatively flat and noiseless. The birthday package we sent off about a month ago, which was less than two months after our initial package, but they were very generous to us because it was his birthday and we wanted him to have something from us. The way the mail works to Thailand, it hopefully got there around his birthday and he had some presents from Mom and Dad. We did manage to squeeze in a disposable camera, which hopefully will have some good pictures on it. Rosemary’s favorite, though, were these little shoes which she said he NEEDED because he will be walking soon:

We can’t wait to meet our son!

–Brian

So I’m sure that by now you’re all sick of hearing about Button’s birthday but your first child only has their first birthday once so cut us some slack! All our family is very far away and we still don’t really know many people here so, unfortunately, a party wasn’t really in the cards.

So how did the proudest parents in the world celebrate Button’s birthday proper? Build-a-Bear, of course! We purchased a very cute stuffed owl. R was convinced that a stuffed owl was much cooler than a plain old bear, and she managed to convince me, as she usually does. R felt that the owl looked ridiculous in any of the available outfits so she just “accessorized” him for quite some time. I have to admit though, it did turn out pretty cute. We put the little voice chips in his paws (wings?) – one sings happy birthday, and the other is our recorded voices saying, “We love you, XXXXXXX”. If any of you haven’t been suckered into Build-A-Bear yet then allow me to explain that you create your bear (owls?) birth certificate when you are done. When we filled out the certificate for Button’s owl we named him “Nok” which we believe to mean “bird” in Thai. Cute, huh? We’ll save his Owl to give him after he gets home with us but we hope it will be a sweet memento of his first birthday for him to keep.

After Build-a-Bear(Owl), we tried a new Thai restaurant in town, since none of the other ones we’ve been to have really impressed us. In an auspicious turn this one was excellent! Great food and nice ambiance, with very friendly Thai staff (not all of the Thai restaurants in small-town Virginia have Thai waiters or even cooks) who we talked to for a long time.

All in all, it was a good day. We hope our baby boy had a good day, too. We were very grateful on that day for his foster family, who have given him a loving family home to spend so much of his first year in and to celebrate his first birthday with.

–Brian

I have struggled over whether or not to write this post but here I am. We decided to do this blog both as a record for Button and to actively join in the adoption community. In light of both of those goals we feel that this is important but I am going to work hard to maintain our son’s privacy and not share too much.

You may have noticed that my regular blogging schedule has been interrupted in the past 2 weeks. That was partially due to a terrible work schedule but mostly due to a real emotional crisis that Brian and I were facing. In fact, I don’t think I have ever been so frightened, so helpless, or so utterly without recourse.

Somehow we received Button’s 9 month update extremely early. It came in long before expected and before most of our fellow PAP’s updates arrived. At first we were thrilled to hear we had an update! We’ve been waiting months for new pictures of our son!! I couldn’t wait to pass them around. But then several things were… of concern. Without reporting anything that could damage Button’s complete privacy, we became VERY WORRIED that he was showing signs of a condition we knew he could easily have.

Everyone at Holt has really been amazing! We talked to Marissa several times and she has been nothing but kind and helpful. Working with our pediatrician, we sent a (short) list of simple, easily translatable questions to HSF to gain more information about our son’s developmental status and they promptly responded with answers that have reassured us greatly. We are waiting for more info to come in soon, however, we feel much better now and we are expecting our God to continue to do great things for Button as He already has.

I want to say this though: Nothing could or would stop us from bringing our son home. Button is our child and that relationship is not contingent on his being in good health or being a genius or behaving well. It is simply a truth that cannot be erased. Button is our son whatever sort of little person he may be.

Thank you so much for your prayers, support, and all your positive thoughts. We are bringing our healthy, smart, brave little boy home by Christmas. We refuse to believe anything else.

–Rosemary

Guess what I found? Well, fine then, don’t guess but at least look!

This cute little book just flew off the shelf at me and, of course, I had to have it for our Button. It’s completely adorable! All the buttons are on brightly colored ribbons and toddlers can pop them in and out of the page’s cute counting themed pictures. I’m thinking it will be a fun way to start learning his 1-10 in english.

–Rosemary

Well, I have fallen down on the job this week with my blogging but we’ve been busy. Plus one of my old college roommates and her delightful husband were in town before heading out to their new post in Hawaii so we really wanted to enjoy our time with them!

That being said, I am (ever so slightly) overdue on a book review. I’m making it really easy on myself this week though. I didn’t exactly have to read this one. But it is a book so it counts. Honest it does!! I bought this a couple of weeks ago and I still haven’t stopped liking it. It has plenty of useful purposes for parents of every age but especially for the slightly freaked out new mom. Allow me to introduce you to Your Family Health Organizer by Jodie Pappas.

This trusty little binder is fantastic for adoptive parents since many of us are welcoming children with medical needs, or have medical needs ourselves, and cataloging all those documents can be a nightmare. The binder has different colored tabs and pocket folders for two parents and three children but you can order more sections and page refills. Each kid’s section includes: medication records, medical appointment records, medication instruction forms for school/daycare/camp, growth charts, food allergy diary, and a child’s identification profile for fingerprints, hair sample and photograph.

It’s a great little size and will be easy to carry with us when we travel or leave on the counter for babysitters or grandma. It has a large section in each person’s file for notes and it will be no problem for me to pop it in my diaper bag and take it along to all those pediatrician and early intervention visits in order to organize Button’s medical files. So if you are facing a lot of health issues or are easily overwhelmed by the complicated but IMPORTANT process of organizing your family’s medical paperwork please allow me to highly recommend this little book.

–Rosemary