Mommies Don't Give Their Kids Away

Sydney, September 2014

Sydney will soon be eleven years old. She lived her first ten months in an orphanage in Russia. In Russia the law at the time of her birth was that an abandoned child had to wait six months to make sure no relative came forward to claim them before they could be put up for adoption. We got Sydney’s picture in August of 2004. She had just become available for adoption and our adoption agency wanted to know if we would like an invitation to visit her. The adoption process took eight weeks between our initial visit, which they scheduled for October, and the adoption date in December. We stayed two weeks when we visited Sydney, actually seeing her only twice, spending an hour or two each time. We came home and returned in December for the adoption. That trip also took two weeks but most of it was spent with Sydney in our care. I have many blog posts I could write about those two trips and I plan to. I’ve touched on some of this before. See: A Sparkling Personality

Sydney has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, thus making it hard for her to understand difficult concepts and retain things she has learned. I have often told her the story of her adoption, explaining that I did not give birth to her but got her from a hospital (which doubled as an orphanage.) Even so she continues to forget and ask me about her birth sometimes as if I were her birth mother. Because we adopted Sydney at a young age and she has no memories of her previous life in Russia I have not spent a lot of time reassuring her about being in her “forever home” as I would have a child who was adopted later in life. I wrote a book for Sydney when she was around five or six years old to help her understand. She loves to look at it and she loves it when I read it to her. She has a paper copy and I keep a copy on my computer. I update it from time to time, making it just a little bit more detailed and adding a new picture or two. I’ve attached a copy to this post.

I dread the day Sydney finally realizes that she had to have come from somewhere and not just originated from a crib in an orphanage. I dread the day she asks me just whose tummy she did grow in. I’ve thought about the things I can say. “Your first mommy loved you so much she wanted you to have a better life with a mommy who could take really good care of you.” How does that sound? It might be the truth. Maybe. Perhaps, “I don’t know” will be what comes out of my mouth. Or maybe, “Go ask your dad.” I love that little girl so much I don’t want to hurt her or even plant a seed that might someday grow into hurt.

I was motivated to write this blog post this evening when Sydney did ask me a question that knocked the wind out of me. I thought she understood the concept of adoption and family, even if she does not understand the origin of life. Out of nowhere this evening Sydney asked me what happens to kids when their parents have to move to a new house. I must have looked at her a little funny because she went on to say, “Like, if you and dad move to a different house, do you find someone else for me to live with or do you take me with you?” For a second I could not breathe. I had no words at first. I reached over and pulled her onto my lap and said, “Sydney, you are my little girl. You go wherever I go. Mommies don’t give their kids away.” Then I choked up again because I remembered she had already been given away. Thank God she’d been given away. Given to me. I only wish I had been the one to give birth to her and to have been able to nurture and cherish her as she deserved those first ten months.

As the hours have ticked by since Sydney’s question, I have considered where it could have come from. She does have friends who live with grandparents instead of parents. She knows children who have their custody shared by two households. She has asked me in the past to explain why some kids have stepsisters and stepbrothers. Sydney even had a friend briefly a couple of months ago that was in foster care. I THOUGHT I had done a pretty good job of explaining these things to her.

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Loving Chaney

Tate was our sixth child. He was born in 2001 and long-before we knew he had autism, we decided our family was complete.  Shawn started his own business that same year and we felt like our plates were full. I was secretary, receptionist, and dispatcher, as well as wife and mother. Then, when Tate was two, I got a huge surprise. I found I was expecting a seventh child. Unplanned or not, we were THRILLED and I hoped and prayed that I was carrying a little girl.

I had the usual visits to my obstetrician. At the first visit the nurses teased me about my “surprise” and my age. I was forty. At my second or third doctor visit we heard a heartbeat and everything seemed fine. At sixteen weeks we did the normal blood work to rule out all the things doctors like to rule out. I’d done it all before and was not worried. However, this time the test results came back saying the baby had a one in ten chance of having Down’s syndrome.

My doctor was very concerned and urged me to get an amniocentesis. One in ten did not sound that alarming to me. And then I talked to an Obstetrician friend of mine and did some reading. The results normally come back as one in several thousands. My friend told me that test results like mine probably meant my baby had Down’s syndrome.

I prayed over and over that my baby would be born without a disability. I always added to the prayer that I would miscarry if my baby had a disability. I wanted God to have my baby in His care if she was to be born with a disability. I knew that Shawn and I would have no issues with loving a child with special needs. I was just terrified of all the unknowns and the things that would be required of me if I had a child with special needs. I was afraid of all the time and attention a special needs child would take from my other six children. I really did not think I had what it would take.

I refused the amniocentesis because of the risks involved. I was deeply in love with my baby and did not want the baby harmed. However, I did agree to a level two sonogram. The doctor said it would give us some detailed measurements and probably tell us almost for certain whether or not the baby had the measurements that came with having Down’s. The heart was to be examined closely as well as other things.

We left that appointment greatly relieved. The doctor was so encouraging. He believed the baby was developing as it should with no problems. The measurements looked completely fine, and the heart looked healthy. We also got to see that we were having a girl. She moved around and wiggled for us on the monitor and appeared very active and healthy. We had a name picked out and we began using it. Her name was Chaney Nicole. We had about two weeks of absolute joy. And then… I went in for a regular OB check-up. I was a little nervous when the doctor had difficulty finding a heartbeat. The longer he tried with no results, the more afraid I became. The doctor took me down the hall to get a sonogram, and our fears were confirmed. There was no heartbeat. My precious little girl was dead. Less than two weeks before, I had seen her heart beating, her little body moving and I had heard a doctor say she was healthy. I was in shock.

The next morning I had labor induced. One day, I was halfway through my pregnancy and very excited about our new daughter. The next day I was sobbing uncontrollably in a labor and delivery room, dreading the end of the day. All of the nurses were very patient and kind. Because I insisted, they brought in a monitor and we listened for a heartbeat one more time. In a few hours I delivered a tiny baby girl. Chaney was perfectly formed. Her tiny footprints were one inch long.

I could hold her in one hand. She was seven inches long and weighed less than four ounces, although she had weighed almost twice that when we saw her on the sonogram two weeks before. She had probably died shortly after that sonogram that gave us so much hope. Touching and holding Chaney helped me so much. I had been crying for hours before she was delivered, but holding her helped tremendously with the closure I needed. Shawn held things together for me throughout the labor and delivery and about the time my tears stopped, his began. That time we spent with Chaney's body in the hospital was so valuable to me.

It is so hard to know what to say to someone who loses a baby. There is no one-size-fits-all comment for sure. Many sympathetic people came to call after Chaney died. Some said hurtful things without ever knowing it. One Christian friend commented, “God must have thought you didn’t need any more.” This person did not mean to hurt me and probably believed the comment to be true.

Some people assumed that because I was the mother of six living children, losing Chaney would not hurt as badly. I could not understand that. Having the other children around me was comforting, but my loss was the same as any other mother’s loss. Did people think my grief was one- seventh of the intensity of a mother who loses an only child? Would that also mean because I am a mother of seven, I have seven times the amount of love as compared to the mother of an only child? I don't think so.

Two older women from the congregation where we worship had also lost baby girls in similar situations. They each told me their stories and that helped me so much. They let me know that I was not alone. Both of these women had boys when they lost their baby girls and never got the opportunity to raise a daughter. I realized how blessed I was in comparison to those women. I had two little girls at home, as well as boys, when Chaney died.

I was sad for a long time after Chaney died. I think about her often still. I know she is in a much better place than I could have provided, but my arms still long to hold her. Chaney was not my first miscarriage but the others I had were much earlier and did not cause me the amount of grief that losing Chaney did. Perhaps it was the bonding time I had with her. I have felt some guilt from time to time. Did I deserve to be Chaney’s mother? I had prayed that she would die if she were handicapped so I would not have to bear the burden of raising a special needs child. Did God answer my selfish prayer? For indeed it was a very selfish prayer and I had many lessons to learn.

Chaney’s short life did matter. Because she lived and died, we made a decision to “save” another little girl. Several times I had seen footage of international orphanages on news programs. I wanted to give one of those children a Christian home and a mother’s love. My husband had never shared my yearning to adopt a baby. Then, when Chaney died he felt we had already made room for one more in our hearts and our home, and that space needed to be filled. We knew we could not replace Chaney but Sydney has definitely helped to fill the hole that was left in our lives and in our hearts. Chaney was here for a short time and she “paved the way” for Sydney to join our lives. You see, while I was praying that God would not “burden” me with a special needs child, I already had one with autism who had not even been diagnosed yet and Sydney was lying in a crib across the ocean needing a mother to love her. God knew. He knew I could handle a child with special needs. He knew I could handle two. And I believe he knew that I had a whole lot of lessons to learn. I thank God that I now fully understand that children with disabilities are not a burden, but a blessing. 

“…glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Rom. 5:3-4).

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A Sparkling Personality Has A Price

When my first six babies were infants, they were held for hours upon hours. They were talked to, sung to, cuddled, and snuggled often. Almost every noise they made was acknowledged and responded to, if not by me, then by another family member. My babies were socially educated from the minute they were born and they developed personality very quickly. Of course, the first five babies were typically developing and soaked up everything around them like a sponge. Tate did not. He could not. His brain was not able to understand much of the communications or the social world around him. I saw some of the evidence of this early on and one thing that was different about Tate from infancy was that he did not like to be sung to. He did like to be cuddled, held and rocked but he wanted silence. Unlike my other babies, he did not enjoy hearing mama sing. My voice isn’t the most beautiful voice but I can carry a tune and my other children have enjoyed being sung to immensely. Not Tate.  The louder I sang, the louder he cried, so I stopped singing and learned to rock quietly. If he was hurt or upset and I gently said “shhhhh” as I tried to comfort him he took great offense. The “sh” sound was NOT allowed either. I had to warn people not to “sh” Tate and once in a while one of us forgot and he would wail. It was one of the many quirks we lived with and I chalk it all up to autism. 

This blog post isn’t really about Tate and his quirks today though. I have been thinking a lot of about the “what-ifs” concerning Sydney lately. Sydney laid in a crib for most of her first ten-and-a-half months. She was not talked to, sung to, cuddled or snuggled. She was not carried around. She was changed and fed on a schedule with a bottle that was propped. In an earlier post I discussed her feeding schedule and how I changed that immediately upon taking custody, thus helping her stomach issues tremendously. What if, she had been fed appropriate amounts for her small stomach in much more frequent feedings? What if she had been changed as needed, bathed more often, not tortured with the itch of scabies, talked to, held, and carried around sometimes? What if she had not been neglected? So many of Sydney’s behavioral issues are blamed on the diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and probably rightly so. However, would the FAS be so severe if the neglect had not been there? I will never know for certain because I will never get to go back and give Sydney those hours and hours of interaction that my first babies were given. Would Sydney have been much like Tate: unable to understand, in spite of all the attention? After all, her brain had been damaged by alcohol in the womb. Of course I believe Tate would be so much more handicapped if he had been in Sydney’s situation for the first ten months of his life. So therefore, the reverse must be true. I doubt there are too many people who would argue. We saw how fast a little attention could result in a lot of progress before we had even finished the adoption process. 

When we were in Russia to visit Sydney in October of 2001, one of the first things we noticed was her lethargic personality. I said more than once to Shawn “she doesn’t have any sparkle behind her eyes.” We assumed she had brain damage but did not know much about FAS. We did ask if her birth mother had consumed alcohol and were assured that she had not. The second time we visited Sydney in the orphanage we were with her in a playroom full of children. Sydney was probably the youngest in the group and she was not usually included in playgroups. That was for the older children who were crawling and walking. At eight-and-a-half months Sydney wasn’t sitting up, crawling or even cooing or jabbering. She was silent. When she cried, she just hummed. During that visit we met a girl working at the orphanage who was from Germany and could speak English very well. I was able to ask her some questions and she asked the nurses and interpreted their answers for me. We had noticed a baby, close to Sydney’s age or a little younger, sitting in a bouncy chair across the room. That baby was very interested in her surroundings, trying to make eye contact with anyone who would look her way, and she was making a lot of happy noises. I asked the nurse why there was such a difference between that baby and Sydney. She told me that Sydney had never had a visitor, while the other baby had a mother who visited her and fed her a bottle every evening. THAT baby had known a mother’s love. Sydney had not. We told Sydney’s doctor later that we were concerned about Sydney’s lethargy and the fact that she was not being given any individual attention. He told us if we left him one hundred dollars he would hire someone to hold Sydney and play with her for an hour a day until we returned for her on our appointed court date, two months later. Shawn immediately handed the man a $100 bill. When we returned in seven weeks to take Sydney from that place, she was a changed child. She had personality that we had not seen before. She was active and much more engaging. She also had seven new teeth. When we had visited her two months prior she had none. She still didn’t make any noise other than a hum but she had some “sparkle.” Shawn and I will always say that it was the best one hundred dollars we ever spent. Of course, that fee was a drop in the bucket, compared to all the other adoption costs but it was one that jump-started Sydney’s personality and slowed down the effects of all the neglect.      

If only those first ten months of learning and growing emotionally and intellectually had not be stolen from Sydney. If only she had been handed to a mother who would love her and nurture her from day one. Every baby deserves it. 

Sydney, before we added the "sparkle."