I haven't blogged in almost a year, but today is the Joint Council's We Are the Truth Adoption Blogger Day. So much bad news in the wake of the tragedy of Artyem, the young boy sent back to Russia by his adoptive mother, that JCICS asked parents to blog about their adoption success stories.
So here is mine.
Owen Loc has been home with us for a year and a half, and he is a happy, bright, beautiful little boy who brings tremendous joy to his family. We're blessed to have him. Every day is an adventure -- an exhausting but thrilling ride. I love the little person he is becoming, with his own opinions and likes and dislikes and worldview.
He's doing great. Doing well in preschool, happy most of the time, smart as a whip. He's growing (finally), healthy, and extremely active. He's incredibly verbal -- he has no problem expressing himself.
He's a mommy's boy right now, and I wouldn't have it any other way. We have a bond that feels ancient, not a year and a half old. Neither of us can bear to be apart from the other. And the three of us -- me, Ray, and Owen -- are such a happy trio. For the first time in my life, I truly feel like I'm part of something bigger than myself.
I don't profess to know what Torry Hansen was going through, but when I think back to our first six months with Owen, it wasn't a piece of cake. I went into this with my eyes as open as they could be. I remember an adoption medicine doctor telling us bluntly, "Kids don't end up in orphanages because they've been well taken care of. You've got to be ready for problems." It's so easy to forget, as you're pursuing your heart's desire to become a parent, that this whole process isn't about you.
So when I accepted the referral of a boy in the 0 percentile height and weight-wise, with little medical information and no knowledge of what he might have gone through before entering the orphanage at 15 months, I repeated my mantra, what I always come back to when I'm in a high-anxiety state and in danger of fear getting in the way of something I want. "I will move forward," I tell myself, "come what may."
We had a lot of challenges to overcome. He was terrified, waking up screaming and taking hours to calm down those first six weeks or so. He got out-of-control anxious indoors, particularly in small rooms. He spoke no English and didn't understand us. It started to get easier, but we had a lot to overcome. He had been in starvation mode for so long, he didn't know how to eat enough to be full. He was on such sensory overload that he bit me several times a day minimum, sometimes up to a dozen times a day. For the first 9 months he was home, he never slept more than 4 hours at a time.
But we hung in there. We worked hard. We got the help he needed, and the help we needed. We loved him like crazy, but we also knew it would take more than love to help him make the transition. I'm grateful for the therapists and other professionals who helped us, and all the professionals and fellow adoptive parents who prepared us.
Today, he bears so little resemblance to the frightened, underweight, nonverbal little boy I brought home. He's thriving beautifully.
I don't know what the future holds for us. Maybe there are challenges lurking under his placid, happy surface that will only reveal themselves as his world becomes more complex with school and friends and growing up. But I'm in this for the long haul. That's the promise I made to him when I accepted the referral.
He's brought us so much joy.
