PLAN A

My experience of becoming a mother has so far been comprised of nerves. I hope I’ll be a good mother… I hope I’ll be the mother my mom was to me… I hope I don’t royally screw this child up…I want to be the mom that “has it all together”. Since my daughter is not officially mine until next Monday, I haven’t yet had thoughts of “Oh God, what did I get myself into”?

So, the last 6 months or so we’ve taken classes - mostly me, because I’ll be a stay-at-home mom. We took the obligatory adoption education class together, which overwhelms you with any and all challenges that may come with an adopted child; we’ve taken a course on how to talk to your child about adoption; I took a course on CPR; and, I attended a women’s bible study at my church called Wisdom for Mothers. This study includes a great workbook Denise Glenn put together as part of her Motherwise series, and I learned a lot from the other moms in the group. I admit that I was a bit scared of all that was shared among the moms, but it gave me a reality check. First of all, I was glad we were adopting only one child. I’ll be 36 next month, and I think I’d like to have 3 more children (to Trav’s one more), but I think it’s best not to rush into having too many children too soon. Also, I hear that my love for cooking anything that takes over 15 minutes is going to go by the wayside. I’m still in denial over my get-ready routine in the morning. I understand I won’t be going to the bathroom by myself for a long, long time. Well, like the billboards say, there are opportunities everywhere to connect with your child.

This trip I brought 3 books: The Bible, Freedom for Mothers, by Denisse Glenn (I’m missing the first several weeks of my newest bible study and the spill-your-guts portion shared by moms), and Baby Signs, by Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwin. I received Baby Signs as a gift at my shower a couple weeks ago, and although I’ve always brushed off comments about using sign language for children, my inner-self told me I needed to consider it. Travis and I have learned some Russian, and we thought that it would be helpful to our daughter in communicating. In reality, it acts only as a small comfort for her to hear her native language. We learned from her caretaker that she is able to make the sounds that begin to make words. The other day, her sign for wanting to feed herself more food was to arch her back and throw her head back in indignation. At that moment, I thought, how are we going to COMMUNICATE? Words are not helpful to those who can’t speak, and our daughter could not speak Russian or English. Like comedian Bill Engvall says, ‘Here’s Your Sign’.

So, the authors, both PhD’s in the field of Child Development, speak about their two decades worth of studies in this field and the results. The science behind baby sign language makes sense: we come into this world with 100-200 billion brain cells (neurons), but baby’s neurons are unconnected. The connections enable us to organize thoughts, to see relationships among things, to remember past events and to master language. When a child has an experience that allows him to provoke thought and he is able to take an active role (through signing) to communicate, the child’s neurons strengthen much faster than if he had to wait to speak. The benefits studied of children who sign also include: reduced frustrations with communicating (i.e. less tantrums and crying), an increased child/parent bond, increased emotional and intellectual development as compared to the average child, and an increase in the child’s confidence. Sold!

Yesterday and today (Visits # 5 and 6) we got to see our daughter, and we practiced a few signs with the things she has been most interested in: eat, light, more and book. She is pointing a lot, and can already identify the giant teddy bear in the room when you ask her in Russian “Gdye Mishka”? Hopefully by the time we leave Russia, we will have a few signs down so that we can communicate the important things.

Yesterday was by far the best day yet. She was smiling and laughing a lot, and she is making a lot of eye contact. She still does not enjoy being left by the caretakers, and sometimes seems too happy when they come to get her, which admittedly is very hard for me. But Travis reminds me that this is very good for her to have such strong attachments to the people here, and that it will be like that for us one day too. And, he’s right. This morning she was a bit tired, so I held her for about 30 minutes after she ate and played with us. I had to stand and rock her back and forth like a baby, because that’s the way she wanted it. My arm muscles were tired, but when I started to sit down she let out a few peeps to let me now that I was not allowed to do so. If I’m spoiling her, I really don’t care. She deserves it right now.

We don’t know when we’ll be returning again, but there are 2 other families here with Children’s Hope and we understand that Alexei, Masha and Dima are very busy driving everyone around here and there to get things done. Luckily for us, one of the new couples here have a son at Konakova, so we’ve had more visits this week than we expected. We can’t begin to describe how amazing it has been for us to have close relationships with the adoptive couples we’ve met at the hotel, and it’s a blessing that we’ve become like an extended family. Every couple we’ve met are Christians with their own adoption story, and it’s evident that God’s hand has been a part of this whole experience for all of us. The one statement that blessed us most this morning, maybe this entire adoption process, was something that Jennifer said, and that was this: many people may feel that adoption is Plan B. But God intended it all along as Plan A.