Our Attachment Plan - Part One

With our second and final trip to Ethiopia just around the corner, the time has come for us to share our post-adoption plans for when Lillian is finally home! Ultimately, our desire is to be a well-connected family of four and for Lillian to be a securely attached child who recognizes us as Mommy and Daddy and seeks us for comfort. The concept of a permanent family, however, is going to be foreign to her, as she has only been attached to a series of rotating caregivers. In order to break this cycle, we will be implementing our "attachment plan" which we will detail in another post. Our plan is certainly not going to be perfect but it has come from many hours researching attachment issues, attending conferences and seminars, gleaning advice from others' experiences, discussing it with each other and other close family members, and most importantly giving it all over to the Lord. Our adoption friends, the Darlings, couldn't have said it better than they did in their post here. "Please understand that this is our plan. It is not necessarily the best plan, but we do feel it is the best plan for our family." In addition, we're stating that it is our plan for now. We're planning on being very flexible when it comes to being attentive to Lillian's attachment needs. We'll watch and take our cues from her and will make tweaks and changes as we feel necessary.

Let me back up a bit to explain a little behind-the-scenes stuff with our girl. She spent about three months in an orphanage in the Ethiopian region of Wolayta before being transferred seven hours away to our agency's transition home (where a completely different language is spoken, mind you) in October. Since her time at the transition home, we have on record over eight respiratory illnesses including pneumonia and bronchitis, plus other health issues, and round after round of antibiotics. Lillian is only 10 months old now. And the first 10 months of her life have not been easy. She has passed through too many different hands to name. She has had to endure a LOT of trauma and there are obvious signs that point to that trauma.

I know we're very behind on blogging about our trip, and we haven't had the chance to describe in detail the afternoon we met Lillian. Our Meetcha moment was amazing and surreal and magical. And everything we expected. Because we also expected it to be hard. And hard it was. Lillian was absolutely terrified of us. Our poor baby cried for an hour straight before falling asleep out of exhaustion. When she woke up, she was still very scared. She clung to us, she cried some more and wanted to be held very, very close. Our hearts broke for how truly frightened she was.

Day 2 was a little bit better -- still crying, but slightly less than the day before. You should have seen her face when she saw us come into the room for the first time on this day. It was hilarious. It was kind of like, "oh crap, they're back!" Lillian is one smart, very aware little girl. Later that day we met with Lillian's pediatrician at the transition home, and one of the nannies got a teeny-teeny half smile out of Lillian, but she promptly hid her face in the nannies shoulder. It was a perfect demonstration of how guarded she is. Such a little stinker!

Day 3 was even a teeny bit better than that -- again more crying and obvious signs of deep emotional needs, but whenever she woke up after falling asleep on us, she would be much more relaxed.

Day 4 was right after Josh and I got violently sick from a restaurant we had eaten at the night before, so we were already on shaky legs. When things didn't go as well as they had with Lillian in the days prior, we weren't totally shocked -- we knew we weren't ourselves and didn't think much of it. We expected it to be an up-and-down journey, and we were hopeful for a better day next time.

Day 5 was a different story. It was difficult for all of us. It seemed to be a few steps back from the progress we had been seeing, and on top of that she also seemed sick. She cried (a LOT). I cried. It was hard. That was when reality really sunk in and the rose-colored glasses fell off. We had yet to see a smile from her all week long. Other families seemed to be having a much more easy time with their kids, and I think Day 5 was the low point for us.  

Day 6 was our last day there and also the day of our court day. I have to admit that we weren't even overly worried about passing court -- we just wanted to have a good last day with Lillian. We prayed all that morning, and after we left court (and didn't pass), we headed to the transition home. This time baby Yado was sleeping, and we practically begged the nannies not to wake her up because we were afraid of what would happen if they did. :) We hovered over her bed just taking in her sweet face, and then suddenly her eyes popped open....and the crying began. But this time it was different! The cries weren't as loud and they didn't last very long at all. After a couple minutes, she immediately fell asleep on me again and slept for another hour. Poor honey was tired! When she woke up, she was the most relaxed and calm we had ever seen her. She looked around and explored more than ever. Transitions didn't lead to meltdowns. She played with my earrings and even stood up with Josh's help. It was a really, really good day! We didn't get to see a smile, but we left the transition home on such a high that day. We were so thankful the Lord had allowed us to end on a good note.  

  
Last week we had a phone call with our international adoption doctor at CHOP who mentioned that she had seen our Meetcha Day video. She told us that when she saw Lillian cry when she was passed off to us, she said, "YES! She is attached to her caretakers!" Our doctor couldn't be more right. Lillian is extremely attached to her nannies, which is a very, very good thing in the adoption world. Our doctor reminded us that when a child is attached to her caregiver, she will be able to transfer that attachment to us, though there will be a time of grieving for her. It will be hard to see Lillian grieve her loss (and I think we already got a picture of that the week we were there), but we are praying that through the Lord's strength and by implementing our family's attachment plan, we can help heal our hurting child's heart.

In our next post, we will share what exactly our attachment plan will look like.