Expect the unexpected

I confess that I was a very bad blogger this summer and I hope I still have few faithful readers. Last year when I started my blog, I was so excited to be able to share all the steps of our adoption journey. The road to get our son was so long and difficult and my hope was that our experiences may help other families who were in a similar situation of us. Last November, our referral happen and then we went in Ethiopia for our court date and meet our son for the first time. In the last fews months, my entire life was dedicated to prepare myself to become the mother of my son. I found the last fews weeks before we could left for our second trip so hard. At that moment, we made the rational decision to leave when my school year will be done. Now, knowing what happen after our gotcha day, I am really happy with this decision but last June my brain was more emotional then rational so it was really hard to deal with this wait time.

For many years I have read a lot about adoption, grieving, attachment. Books, blogs, discussion board, meeting with other adoptive families, courses. I knew having our son will be not easy but my homework was done so I was assuming that everything will be ok for us.... after all these waiting years we will be a forever happy family. Well, things did not happen the way I was expected at ALL. Maybe because it was my first child or maybe just because our son is what he is. The true is that the first three weeks were AWFUL. Even thinking about these first weeks still bring tears to my eyes. I love my son, I love him very much. I could not see my life without him. However, my love for him does not forget how hard was the first weeks with him. I was undecided about disclosing this reality or not on my blog. When an adoption process is complete people expect to see a happy family. In our case, we were a destroy family. Our personal boundaries were broke and we were three strangers looking to know how we could learn to live together. After waiting all these years, the true is our son was not waiting for us. Yes, he was prepared that we will become his parents but deeply inside him this idea to have to start his new life again in a whole new world was something very hard for him. Before he could attach to us he has to grieve about his lost and we also had to grieve about this son we had imagine but never be able to know until now. I cannot fully explain how hard were this first weeks but I know that they have deeply changed myself, my ideas, my life philosophy. Today, when I look back I am happy to see the positive we all have get from what we went through. However, I wish we had not need to experienced all this pain but now I understand that it was part of the adoption package deal.

Tomorrow we will celebrate our second month as a family. We have spend the last two months isolated from our regular social life. Our summer goal was to spend time all together (my husband, my son and I) and give us the time to know each other. We went through a lot of "first time" as everything was so new for him. We laugh today when we remember how it was hard to put him in his car seat but at that time it was pretty awful. We choose to protect our son's feelings instead of our relatives or friends excitement toward him. Majority of people have respected and understand our family boundaries by not holding our son or feed him but some have choose to not do and this situation add new conflicts we had to deal with. I understand their happiness to finally be able to meet our son but knowing that my son is constantly dealing with adaptation and attachment issues I could not ask him to do more then I knew he could do. That bring me to tell you some uncomfortable situations we have being trough recently : Staring and weird questions.

I think staring is what bother me the most. Every time we go out people are staring at my son. Yes, he is cute, charming and he has two caucasian parents but he is also like everybody else he have feelings and staring at him make him uncomfortable. Weird questions make me also very upset. Why people are not thinking before asking us weird questions in front of our son. Knowing that my son understand now French and English language I need to be really careful in the way we choose to answer. In the weirdest questions prize list we got recently I think the one about the colour of his inside hands (and asking my son to show his inside hands) is the one upset me the most. What ???? My son is not a little zoo's attraction or a little puppet we look in a living room. We also does not answer questions regarding the cost of our adoption process, his ethiopian relatives, his emotional trauma or personal struggles. It is appropriate to ask a stranger if they have hereditary diseases in their family ? No, it the same for us. Fortunately, majority of our family and friends are not like that so we are bless to have be able to share wonderful time with them during this summer.

So the last two months have been really busy for our family, trying to know each other and handle in the same time people weirdest reaction toward our son. I am so proud to have our two first months done. I know the next few months will bring new challenges but at least I know now I can go thought it.