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My Little Pomeranians

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Apparently the names that I use online for my children are derogatory, or so an adoptee told me today.

The adopter saw a tweet where I mentioned Nibbles and Bubbles and was irate..

Bubbles and Nibbles? Are they Pomeranians? This is how APs [adopted parents] refer to us. Cutesy disrespectful little names that make us sound like housepets. Or AD4 (adopted daughter age four. AS is adopted son). We are people, not furniture to “place” or accessories to wear like badges.

When I explained that they had pseudonyms to keep them safe, the person remained unforgivingly angry at me.

Perhaps they would like me to use my children’s given names? To leave a digital trail for their birth parents to find them?

There Is Nothing…

.. I would not do to keep my children safe. I am fiercely protective and beautifully proud of my children and all that they achieved given their adverse starts in life.

I have and will continue to do everything in my power to give them a family that loves them and undo the damage that they experienced both before they were born and in the early months and years of their life.

At times I need support, someone to listen to my life, someone who understands the unique challenges of being an adopter. That is why I am on twitter (as well as to offer the same to others when they need it). If you are there to judge me, then please unfollow me. When I try and talk to you, open your mind and listen, rather than tell me that I am only on social media to “exploit my children” to get “sympathy hugs and congratulatory back pats.”

She Is Not You

You shout that your opinion counts because YOU ARE AN ADOPTEE.

Yes you are an adoptee. And as such your personal experience of adoption is unique. And possibly a world apart from that of Nibbles and Bubbles. Not all adoptees are alike, not all adoptions are alike and not all adopters are alike.

It seems I am your enemy based entirely on the fact that I am an adopter.

Today has been tough. I have cried buckets today, so I sought out my twitter family for support. And in amongst the support I gave, came your vitriol.

Bubbles raged today. A symptom of what happened to her before we met, when she lived with her birth parents, when her body, mind and soul were neglected. In those first vital months, when she should have been loved, nurtured, cherished; when she should have learnt that the world was a safe and loving place, she was neglected. Instead, her experience taught her that she didn’t matter, that however hard she cried, no-one was listening, that no-one cared, and her needs went unmet. She learnt that the world was a place of danger, that everything was a potential threat; she learnt to be vigilant and constantly alert.

  • She should have been cuddled
  • Her cries should have bought help, comfort, love
  • She should have been fed when hungry, changed when wet and put to bed when tired
  • She should have learnt that the world was a kind and loving place

Her brain didn’t learn how to control stress, her hippocampus did not learn that if she cried that comfort would come and so it didn’t need to be high alert all the time. That experience should have happened over a thousand times in her first year of life. But it didn’t.

You know nothing of this, because this is not your experience. I respect the needs of adoptees to express their experiences, to share their dismay in the process, their disappointment, their rage.

But stop treating adopters as the enemy.

I am not your enemy. I am willing to learn from the mistakes of the past. Providing you are willing to listen without judgement.

I will continue to keep my children’s identity a secret. I will continue to parent them in a way that builds their self-esteem, that redresses some of the neglect they suffered, that slowly but surely trains their hippocampuses that threats vary in nature and to respond appropriately. To help her stay regulated so that she can be the kind, loving and generous girl that I love and adore.

My children know their life story, they know their parents’ names, their identity, the reasons they were adopted. They are in touch with their foster carers, and I will help them find their birth parents if and when they chose.

There is nothing I would not do to protect them and I am sorry if those pseudonyms offend you.  I am not going to change a thing.

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In Eight Months on Twitter, It Has Given Me

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a partridge in a pear tree… It didn’t, it gave me far more than that.

First Steps on Twitter

For years, opening twitter was like walking into a noisy pub, filled with bubbling conversations, all talking at once, threatening to overwhelm and deafen me in one fell swoop. I didn’t get it; so would post and run.

In April, I swapped white noise for a focus on the adoption and fostering twitterati. Overnight twitter made sense. As I reflect on 2017, a course by First4Adoption (encouraging adopters to blog and share their experiences) was a seed that blossomed into something magical.

The Joy Of Being Heard

Not everyone listens with the intent of hearing you. All too often, they are waiting for you to catch your breath and tell you about their day or to dismiss your concerns with ‘all children do that.’

I wish I was connected on twitter in those first few discombobulating months, when Nibbles didn’t sleep, or when Bubbles was angry and rejected me, when my life was a stranger and I had no idea if things would turn out okay. For those immersive, intensive first few months were lonely beyond belief.

Now I know that someone is always listening, that help is just a tweet away, eliciting perhaps a simple (yet powerful) *hugs* to a more involved response via personal message, and I never need to stew over anything. I have an outlet to be heard.

A Hug of Connection

One of the first questions I asked on twitter was about adopters relationships with foster carers, since we had an ongoing relationship and I wanted to know just how far out on a limb we had wandered.

Turns out, not far at all. I had lots of responses, many having experienced excellent long-term relationships with foster families, some wishing their foster carers would keep in touch and yet another that stuck firmly in my mind: ‘We hope that her foster carer will walk her down the aisle.’

That first question and answer session was enough to convince me that I was not only in the right place, but had now tapped into a world of experience that would benefit me in ways I could not even imagine.

The Helping Hand Of Those Who Have Gone Before Us

Yesterday I received illuminating advice to change toothpaste as it might be aggravating (if not causing) my daughter’s painful, recurring mouth ulcers.

But my children and I have personally benefited from advice this year on topics as diverse as planning holidays, anxiety in school, how to spend pupil premium, approaches to regulate emotions and more. You have saved me hours of searching online for advice that might not be relevant in an adoption situation.

And in return I have shared my advice or thoughts with others too – memorably with a family whose child was unsettled on that first exhilarating night. The twitter voices used different words, but sung one song: comfort him. Reading them, my heart responded with joy, for I knew that that chorus was a warm voice in a dark, strange place, bringing succour to one concerned adopter.

Normalising The Strangeness

Adoption is a world of strangeness. And before you all start, yes it is full of things that other parents experience too – like a child pouting over a sprig of cauliflower, or a nappy exploding, or a tantrum in a supermarket. But in order to protect our children, we are often forced into a level of secrecy or anonymity that creates a distance and a not-normalness that people can be quick to dismiss.

I have no birth stories to share, no secrets on how to breast feed, no miracles for sleeping in the third trimester. But I have stories about choosing a toy, creating an audio book, writing letterbox contact, about panel and matching that I want to share with others too, so they can feel that this strangeness is normal.

A Tribe of Understanding

The second someone tweets that they too have experienced the same thing, that they understand what you’re going through, that they have come out the other side at least partly intact, I breathe again.  Because it means that there is a solution for the complexity I see before me.

It might not be a simple, wrapped up neatly in a bow solution like changing toothpaste. It might be a drip, drip, drip, month on month, year on year solution that scares me a little. It might take more energy than I can imagine to change the situation, yet simply being understood, having someone acknowledge what is going on, to nod their head in recognition, is a powerful healing in its own right. *hugs*

A Voice In A Choir

At the Adoption UK conference, I met (and sorry, ignored) some of the adoption twitterati – it was wonderful to meet them in person, to put a face, a shape, a tone to the letters online, to share a smile that is more than 🙂 and see the twinkles in their eyes.

It was a connecting experience and I loved feeling surrounded by a larger tribe, a huge chorus of voices, to be part of something bigger than me. Twitter gives me that experience in microcosm every day and I love it.

I might be just one voice. Just one adopter sharing my experiences, sometimes asking for help, sometimes giving it, but a mere eight months after starting again on twitter, I have found a community that sustains me in ways I could not have imagined this time last year.

Thank you to all the friends and connections I have made this year on twitter, for your advice, for your support, for your encouragement, for your links and blogs and podcasts.

I love you

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What I Wish I’d Known BEFORE I Adopted

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Dear Prospective Adopter

I remember being where you are now – the heady excitement of what is to come, the giddy nerves of the all-important Panel, the heart-melting magic of Matching. It is one fabulous adventure.

When I took my children home I was over the moon and under prepared.  If only I had known then what I know now, those first few weeks would have been easier and more joyful – which is the aim of this blog.

May it help you through the first unsettling months when it’s weird and your life feels unreal and you’re not yourself and keep wondering why won’t they just eat their tea/ sleep/ stop screaming/ love me?

1. GREAT SLEEP IS YOUR TOP TRUMP

The children are important.

But they need a parent who is confident, capable and can access all their brain.  And that only happens if you’ve had enough sleep. A half-asleep, over-caffeinated parent with the emotional stability of dynamite is destined to create a day where you end up blubbing “that could’ve gone better” as you scrape pizza off the ceiling and tears off your chin.

Grab sleep greedily and without apology whenever and wherever you can.

  • Your child is napping?  Nap.
  • Your child is in bed – go to bed early.  7.30pm early if you need to (I did).
  • Your child is watching TV?  Snooze on the sofa.
  • You keep waking up in the night?  Use earplugs if you need to.
  • You can’t get back to sleep once woken?  Put your partner on night-duty.

Get as much sleep as you need to wake happy and raring to go.

Sleep is more important than ironing, hoovering, tidying, watching your favourite TV shows, mowing the lawn, answering emails, cleaning the bath, painting your nails, shaving or going on Facebook to let people know you are still alive.

The best mum or dad you can be is a well slept one.

2.  YOU ARE NOT ALONE

God bless Twitter.

I was a bit “meh” about twitter until I discovered the adoption and fostering twitterati (thanks to @First4Adoption).  If you are struggling with any aspect of parenting, adoption, Panel, Matching, Introductions, food fussiness, sleep or potty training, there is someone who will help on twitter.

Open an account – with some vague name like “adopter73.” No-one will ever know who you are (and your social worker can relax). Then load twitter onto your phone, follow a few people (I’m @emmalgsutton, check out who I follow and follow the ones whose posts you like) and join in.

Just recently a brand new adopter, on day 2 of her forever family asked if it was normal for her children to “feels like little strangers”.

The Twitterati replied that it was normal for them to feel like strangers and that love takes time. Maybe that helped her sleep at night, maybe it just took a worry away, maybe she could then step back and think “that is totally normal, we are going to be fine”.

  • If you want to know what to feed a fussy child – ask twitter
  • If you are having a bad day – tell twitter, we’ll sympathise and send hugs
  • If you want to know if continued contact with foster carers can work – ask twitter
  • If you feel like something is out of kilter  – tell twitter and we’ll share our experiences

Sound off, ask for support when you are feeling low, share your concerns, your worries, your hopes, your dreams and build a community of people who know what you are going through.

I only wish I had found them four years ago when I started my forever family, they would have made my life so much easier.

With Twitter, you don’t have to do this on your own.

3. LOVE IS NOT LIKE MAKING A CUPPA

Loving your child isn’t as quick as making a cup of tea. Your family appears “ready-made” when the children come home for good, yet love takes longer to blossom.

As giddy as I was about dating my husband (way back then), it took months for us to truly fall in love, and it will take time for you to love your child/ren. There’s no timetable. There’s no rush.

My daughter loved my husband and rejected me for a while. Despite my confident assertion at Panel that we would ‘deal with any one-parent attachment issues as they arose’, it still had me crying in the morning when she shouted at me to get out of her bedroom.

  • You might love one of your children first. That’s okay. The love will come.
  • Your partner might fall in love before or after you do.  Still okay.
  • Your children might love one parent before the other.  That’s normal too.
  • With two parents and two children, one day you will all love each other to bits, but it won’t happen on the same day nor overnight.

Let love grow.

4.  WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT YOU GET

During Introductions, the children played contentedly on their own. They were content, happy and only approached their foster carers Ken and Mary when they needed help or food.  They pottered around the house and we shadowed their move from one area to another. They read, played in the sandpit, chatted to us, not all that bothered whether or not we joined in. They were independent, confident, outgoing.

Yet children we’d seen in their video and at the foster carers’ house were not the children who moved into our house.

They became dependent, cautious and stuck to us like chewing gum to hair. They whined and Nibbles went ballistic when we said No, spinning around on the floor like a Catherine-Wheel whilst Andy and I stared at each other in awe and shock.

The move changed our children.  And we hadn’t expected it.  I naively presumed that we could transfer the children from the video to our home.  But they needed more reassurance, more attention, more of us than they had ever needed during Introductions and that took some getting used to.

It took months before Nibbles and Bubbles were like the children we saw in their video.

5. ONE THING AT A TIME

It is all to easy to try to create a perfect family from the moment they move in. Don’t.

I tried to be the best possible parent I could be – with homemade cakes, delicious and nutritious meals made from fresh ingredients, lots of playing together with stickers and playdough and trips to the library and park, with little TV, no shortcuts, no giving in, clear boundaries, walking places without using the pram, whilst constantly battling the influx of toys into every crevice of my house (and even once in my bra).  All from Day One. I made myself miserable.

Choose happy over everything: laughter over tidiness, bouncing on their bed over fears of them falling off, messy fun over tidy boredom, reading over ironing, cuddles over clean clothes.

  • So what if you feed them spaghetti hoops for every teatime for a week or a month?  In ten year’s time will that have caused any long-term damage?
  • So what if you let them watch TV for an hour every morning so you can shower without an audience?  Yes I know you don’t want to set a precedent (I can’t tell you how many times I worried about that), but is it really setting them up for a life of crime?
  • So what if they don’t have a bath for a week because you don’t have the right bubble bath?They might pong a bit, but baby wipes work wonders and do you really want to fight that battle just before bedtime?

Don’t let reporters in the Daily Mail stoke your guilt about feeding them fish fingers and drinking wine of an evening. Do what needs to be done and leave the rest until you have got this bit sussed.

Build your family one solid foundation at a time, and start with love and laughter.

Go for happy.  And that includes YOU.

YOU MATTER

It’s easy to focus on the children when they turn up in your family.  How can you not, when you’ve waited this long to become a mum or a dad?  Yet when we forget about ourselves, when we let our own needs slide, then we are doing our family a disservice.

Sleep, food, laughter and love. Those things matter far more than how much you spend on a pram, or how tidy your house is, or if your ironing gets done.

Make your life simple.  Make it easy to be happy.  Make your kids and yourself smile, as often as you can.

What do you wish you’d known before you adopted?  Comment below and they might make it into “what I wish I’d known… part two”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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