Letter to an Adoptive Mom

Dear Friend,

Congratulations! After all those months and years of living on pins and needles, you are finally a mom. Now that the home-study is over, the selection process complete and the placement finalized, you deserve to take a deep breath and relax with your little one.

Here are a few lessons from another lucky adoptive mother.

DON’T feel bad if you find motherhood exhausting and overwhelming. All moms get tired and wonder if they are up to this job–no matter how they get their babies. In fact, feeling this way shows you actually are a REAL mom.

DO smile and be gracious when someone says, “You look really good for just having a baby.” They don’t need to know your new-mom-tummy really came from eating chocolate chips and Doritos!

DON’T get all hung-up on the unknown genetic pool. Sure, it is tricky not having a full medical background and you’ll always worry about some DNA surprise. But, look at your own family tree–there are probably all kinds of medical (and mental!) problems hanging from the branches. If not on your side, then definitely on your husband’s! The bottom line is: no baby is health-risk-free.

DO buy the book “Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born” by Jamie Lee Curtis. Read it often.

DON’T feel left out when other moms share their pregnancy and delivery war stories. You labored just as hard to get your baby, in a different way. Smile, nod, and change the subject.

DO keep in touch with your child’s birthparents. Aside from the grandparents, no one else in the world will be as happy to receive photos, cards and updates. As your child grows, you will want to have information to share with him/her. Keep the lines of communication open.

DON’T listen to everyone’s prediction that “Now, that you’ve adopted…you’ll probably get pregnant.” Statistically, it just isn’t true. Besides, it makes adoption seem second-best.

DO get involved with other adoptive parents. Make sure your kids have a few other “adopted” friends. Volunteer to help at your adoption agency. Be willing to mentor adoptive candidates or to talk with prospective birthmothers.

DON’T get your feelings hurt when people say tactless things. “Someday you might have a child of your own.” “Do you keep in touch with his real mother?” No parent owns a son or daughter. All children are on loan from God. Once we recognize this, a lot of the unimportant details just don’t matter.

DO write your child’s beginnings in a Once-upon-a-time storybook. Keep the details simple and add pictures, if you can. Read it often and use it as a conversation starter as your child grows older. Answer questions openly. Let your child feel proud and safe about the way your family came to be.

DO sing lullabies. DO blow bubbles. DO run in the sprinklers. DO lick the spoon together. DO savor these precious moments. You waited a long, long time for them.

Love,
A Real Mom

Gabi Larson, the mother of 4 children, lives in Pennsylvania. She writes at The Gab Blog.

Relax and enjoy

{This letter is really a talk given by my great-grandmother about motherhood}

When Dean asked me if I would give a short talk on harmony and beauty in the home, it really startled me. I remember I said, “Harmony! Dean, didn’t you know my husband? Because we had companionship, spirituality, love, beauty, excitement and loads of fun but I think harmony would have been the last adjective anyone would use to describe the Brockbank home.” So he thought I could perhaps give the young mothers some advice, and that I’ll try and do, because there isn’t any experience you will be likely to have that I haven’t had.

First, relax and enjoy your children. 99% of them turn out all right anyway. Just let your memory go back to all the obnoxious little boys and girls you used to know and think of them now. They’re not delinquents. They’re married now and going to work each morning, coming home at night to work in the yard, play with their children, go out with friends. They don’t get their names in the papers as the 1% who are delinquents do, but they are the salt of the earth and yours will be among them, so love them and stop worrying.

Especially ease up on the oldest one. My, we expect a lot of the first one. We set out to show the world what we can do, and it is a wonder they survive at all with our constant, erratic, unreasonable supervision. It is a good thing that children are resilient and so loyal. They forgive us and love us anyway.

The second thing is don’t hold grudges. Let what happened yesterday go. There’ll be another crisis tomorrow you can put your mind on, so let the old ones pass and don’t be afraid to say you are wrong. It’s no disgrace. It only shows that you are smarter today than you were yesterday, and besides, it disarms your opponent.

Three, try and see the child’s point of view. They have one and it may well be as good as your own.

Four, the really biggest problem, I think, to a mother, young or old, is trying to help her children over the trials and disappointments that come in everyone’s life. It is all right to say trials help us grow, but it is cold comfort to a child who is hurt either in body or spirit. The greatest help and comfort here is prayer. It is surprising how early and completely children will accept the fact that God loves them and can and will help them and how often he does. Once they have this assurance (and God is very cooperative) they will learn to accept what trials they must face with their shoulders square, knowing that things will be all right.

Five, they must be taught to be kind and to share, and there is nothing as good for this nor as easy as a big family. I hate to say that, with all the current talk about the population explosion, but it is true. They discipline each other and they help each other. A family is the best place in the world in which to learn to get along with other people.

Well, there are days you think you can’t live through, and then suddenly it is all over and you are babysitting your grandchildren….Of course, your children know you very well and may not regard you with the respectful awe they might if you were not their mother.

Elsie Booth Brockbank (1894-1978) was the mother of nine daughters and 50 grandchildren