Just because I was not pregnant with my son, does not mean I was not expecting. I understand with most women, you can SEE when they are expecting and so they get the excited, “Happy Mother’s Day!” from many strangers while they are out and about on that weekend or day. It usually comes from other moms, who are excited to see that this woman is going to soon have an arrival that she will finally get to hold in her arms. I think that is so wonderful and it should happen that way. As an adoptive mother, I know that this is no different than the excitement I was feeling the Mother’s Day before I got to hold my son in Guatemala. Just, in my case, no one could actually SEE it. I did not have sonograms, but I had photos on my fridge from his doctor’s appointments emailed to me every month. I did not feel him kick, but I had an ache in my heart every time his cute little chubby face came up in my mind (which was more often than not). I didn’t have morning sickness, but I felt ill every time I thought of him being so far away and every time I walked past his empty room with all his toys waiting to be tossed around and ultimately destroyed. I felt it all and I had that urge, that I would think every mother has, to see their child in the flesh and finally get to hold them, and not let go (well, until he’s at least 80).

People don’t see it, but adoptive families know it. We know there are tons of expectant moms out there who feel they shouldn’t stand up at Church when the Pastor asks all the moms and expectant moms to stand. You have worked hard for days, some of you for years, to make this happen, and maybe you feel overlooked. So let me just say, “HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!” to all those ladies out there who are already in love with their son(s)/daughter(s) that have just not arrived yet. Your day is coming. The time gets closer every day, every hour, every minute! Allow yourself to enjoy your special day!! You’ve worked hard for it.

No matter what part of the adoption process you are currently in, beginning, middle or nearing the end; you will be tempted to think about the “What if?” questions. They are the type of questions that can stress out some and for others, it can actually be a deciding factor if they should continue on or not in their process.

What if it takes ____ years long? What if we don’t have enough money by the deadlines? What if I say the wrong thing at the home study? What if the paperwork gets held up? What if, what if, what if… Funny how we never really do the “What If?” game with happy things. What if he/she are even cuter than the pictures? What if we over estimated the process and save on fees? Our minds naturally want to worry, but we need to stick to God’s directions. Phil 4:8 says it all, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” What is true for you at the moment is you are following God’s leading to create a family through adoption. You are making a history right at this moment that will be told over and over again throughout your son/daughter’s childhood when they ask for their story. God gives good gifts. That’s true.

There is nothing wrong with questioning or analyzing your decision to adopt. There are a lot of natural questions that you have to face. For examples: What type of adoption you would like to have? Open, closed, local, or international? Are you willing or able to adopt siblings? Are you willing and able to adopt a child with special needs? What age of child are you willing and able to adopt? Answering those questions and others ahead of time is using wisdom, but there are some questions that you can’t worry about until they happen. It will come down to having to trust that God will guide you for anything that may come up during your process.

What you really want to be careful of is getting caught on what I call the “What If Train of Fear.” It will try to take your mind on a ride to worry about things that have not and probably will not even happen to you. It is so hard to fight because a lot of things are unknown throughout the adoption process, depending on what type of adoption you are doing. So there is no thinking, “Well that’s an irrational thought” because it might not be so irrational. Almost everyone of my friends who have adopted, have a totally different story than ours. There is no cookie cutter testimony. This adoption is going to be a great test of faith no matter how smooth you are promised of a process, especially if you pay too much attention to possible problems that can happen during an adoption.

“What if?” can take your mind places that will unnecessarily add extra stress or anxiety. Vain imaginations consumed me early on into our adoption process. And it seemed no matter where I turned, I had people helping me along in the wrong direction with my thoughts. What if you don’t get that pink slip in time and your visa expires? What if there are fees you did not realize you had to have? What if the birth mother changes her mind? I actually had someone ask me “What if you find out after the adoption that your baby has an illness. Is there something you could do about it?” My answer was, “Yeah, we could get our baby the best treatment there is out there just like any parent would do for their child.” I mean really?! They wanted to know if I had some sort of “return policy” on my child? And lastly, during the “adoption yard sale” we held, I had people bring up Madonna and Angelina Jolie and all the problems they were supposedly having with their adoptions. So all that to say the “What If?” is not just an internal fight but you could be tempted by others.

Do I think you should be educated about all possibilities that can happen? Yes. Do I think that you can learn from things that unexpectedly happened to others during their adoption process? Definitely yes. But once you give it thought, then move along and don’t dwell or allow those negative thoughts to consume you.

We had a situation in our own adoption experience. We had been told one child was to be our son, we flew to visit him and the first day of our visit, we received a phone call saying that he was not adoptable because of one document that was missing, and they couldn’t get it. They came and took him the next morning. Trust me, there on after the “What if Train of Fear” kept after me to jump aboard, but I had to hold on to Phillipians 4:8. I cannot tell you how many times I think back on that now and ask my husband, “Can you imagine what we would have missed out on, if we gave in to the fear of “what if this happens again?” and thinking that we couldn’t handle that chance.” That would have been the worst mistake of our lives. God has blessed us with an amazing son! So trust me, don’t give in to “What if?”

Here > 6 OWAS NWSLTR MAY2

U.S. non-immigrant and immigrant visa application fees have changed as of April 13, 2012. The fee for Immediate Relative and family preference applications (processed on the basis of an approved I-130, I-600 or I-800 petition) decreased from $404 to $230.  All visa applicants must pay the fees in effect on the day of the payment, not on the day of the visa interview.  Therefore, anyone who hasalready paid the combined $404 fee will not receive a refund even if the fee decreased by the time of their visa interview.

For further information, please refer to the press release issued by the Department of State, Office of the Spokesperson, on March 29, 2012, regarding visa processing fees.  The change reduced the immigrant visa application fee to $230 from $330 and eliminated the $74 immigrant visa application surcharge that had previously brought the total fee to $404.

6 OWAS NWSLTR APR 2

One day, thankfully not after too many washes, cuts or combs, I noticed that the hair that replaced his soft baby hair was very coarse and grew straight forward. I realized then, that my son was crying because when I was doing his hair, I was moving it up or backward against the natural way his hair was supposed to go. I had been cutting my husband’s hair for 8 years by that time, and I never thought cutting my son’s hair would be so different. I did not take into account that it was different in texture and never considered the direction in which it grew would matter since it didn’t with my husband’s hair. As I talked with more adoptive parents, I found that, I was not alone when it came to misunderstanding my child’s hair type and the care it needed. As adoptive parents, we need to be aware of these things.

If you do a search on the internet for cutting children’s hair, hair care tips, and caring for different ethnic hair types, you can find several resources. I found articles at rainbowkids.com, voices.yahoo.com, adoption.about.com and more, but I only included a few below that I found most helpful.

In the October 2009 issue of Adoptive Family Magazine there was an article titled, “Hair Rules!” It is a great resource for parents of children who need to learn African, Asian, or Hispanic hair care. I am so excited that they still have this article available. You can view it at the following link

http:// www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=1956.

There are many tips and links within the article, to direct you to places you can purchase certain products for your child’s particular hair issues. Another helpful article is, “Caring for Your African American or Biracial Child’s Hair,” by Mahisha Dellinger at the website adoption.about.com. She goes through steps in how to care for your child’s hair through product suggestions, hair tools, techniques and points out common mistakes to avoid.

One of my favorite tips comes from a really cute article, written by Catherine Anderson, titled, “My Little Man.” She gives an account of how she decided to give her son a haircut the day before his school picture and ended up giving him a head full of bald spots. This was due to the fact that she didn’t realize his type of hair could not be cut while wet. She was given the tip to go to the local barber shop that specialized in african-american hair. It was a great experience for her son not only to get a good haircut, but to be in an environment of men who shared the same heritage.

You can view this article by the following link, http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=2057.

I hope you are able to find some good ideas from these resources. My son is a few years older now, and the only one crying about his hair is me when he won’t sit still long enough for me fix it or when we arrive at church and half his head is fluffed out because he decided to stick it out the window while we weren’t looking on the drive there. But at least those times are all his fault.

“Feeling tired was by far the largest predictor of depression in mothers who adopted,” said Karen J. Foli, an assistant professor of nursing who studied factors that could predict depression in adoptive mothers. “We didn’t expect to see this, and we aren’t sure if the fatigue is a symptom of the depression or if it is the parenting experience that is the source of the fatigue. It also may be reflective of a lacking social support system that adoptive parents receive. However, a common thread in my research has been an assumption that if the mom didn’t carry the child for nine months or go through a physical labor, the parents don’t need help in the same manner as birth mothers do.”

Other predictors of depression in adoptive mothers included expectations of themselves as mothers, of the child, and of family and friends, perceived support from friends, self-esteem, martial satisfaction, and parent and child bonding. These findings, published this month in Advances in Nursing Science, are based on survey results of 300 mothers who had adopted within the past two years. The average age of the children at the time of the adoption was 4.6 years.

There are nearly 1.8 million adopted children in the United States, and Foli’s previous work found that unrealistic and unmet expectations related to parenting, bonding with the child, and support from family and friends were common themes related to depression. She also co-authored the book “The Post-Adoption Blues: Overcoming the Unforeseen Challenges of Adoption.”

Research has clearly established the importance of mental health, particularly depression, in birth parents as a correlate of behavior and emotional problems in children. Knowing what factors trigger post-adoption depression can help plan effective interventions, she said, to help avoid these problems for children who are adopted. For example, nurses, whether working in a pediatric setting or the mother’s doctor office, could assess for fatigue in adoptive mothers. It’s also important for health-care professionals, family members and others to realize that not all adoptions are equal, Foli said.

“Bonding with the children often comes up in post-adoption depression. If adoptive mothers cannot bond to their child as quickly as they expected, they commonly report feeling guilt and shame,” Foli said. “These parents have the expectation to quickly attach to the child and they see themselves as superparents. But what happens when the child they adopt is a teething toddler or unknown special needs surface? It’s a difficult stage for a parent who has known that child for two years, let alone someone who is establishing a new relationship with the child.”

The study also showed that depressive symptoms were more likely higher for mothers who did not have the complete background or biographical information about children, who, after placement, were considered special needs children. However, depression was not correlated with parents who were aware they were receiving a child with known special needs.

“We also found that mothers of children with different ethnic or racial backgrounds did not report more depressive symptoms than those mothers who did not differ from their children’s ethnic or racial backgrounds,” Foli said. “Interestingly, these moms did report perceiving that society was less accepting of their adoptive family.”

Foli plans to look at post-adoption depression in a long-term study to better understand issues related to maternal bonding with the child and marital satisfaction. Foli is supported by the School of Nursing in the College of Health and Human Sciences, and she worked with the Journey to Me, an online support organization for adoptive parents to collect the data.

Study co-authors are Susan C. South, an assistant professor of psychological sciences, and Eunjung Lim, a research associate in the School of Nursing.

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, 765-494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Source: Karen Foli, 765-494-4023, kfoli@purdue.edu

Check out these beautiful picture frames that are being produced by one of our incredible families. These frames will help display that first “Gotcha Day” moment. The quotation is “One gets only a day or two in an entire lifetime as incredible as the day we first saw your face”.

The creator of these frames can easily make adjustments for any country in Africa by moving the “heart” to the appropriate place. Additional countries will be available for these frames such as China, Brazil, Haiti, India or any others that have that distinct country shape.

Below are pictures of a couple of the frames and that are available. There are two sizes of frames:

Large, a 12×12 frame with a 5×7 opening for $40 (shipping included)

Small, a 7×9 frame with a 3×5 opening for $25 (shipping included)

Send us an email at Alex@oneworldadoptions.org if you are interested in purchasing one of these frames to help fund the adoption of two very special little girls. We can then pass along your information to the creator of these frames so you can place an order with her directly.

The steward on our flight back from Guatemala was wearing his feelings on his sleeve the day we were finally heading home with our son. There were a number of adoptive families traveling that day and he was clearly upset with seeing all these children being brought out of their birth country. He made several comments to different adoptive parents as they passed by him to get to their seats. When it was our turn to pass by him, he mumbled in annoyance, “at least teach him Spanish.” He didn’t realize that in our minds, we were not leaving Guatemala that day, but instead we were taking a part of it with us. Initially, we were annoyed at the audacity of this man to try and ruin our moment. Then we realized that he did have a point. He may not have expressed himself appropriately, but there was something to what he was saying to all of us. All his comments were pointing to his fear that these children would not grow up knowing about their heritage.

As I was thinking about this recently, I felt an urge to research more and make sure I was doing all I could to include our son’s heritage in our lives. I found there are many different camps throughout the U.S. that help with this. There are heritage camps, language camps, camps from places like Pact, An Adoption Alliance and Holt International that help transracial families learn how to deal with racism, adoption, and identity development. These camps don’t just help the children but the whole adoptive family. Besides these camps, there are also agencies that help you take trips to your child’s birth country. The Ties Program (http://www.adoptivefamilytravel.com/) is one organization that I have read about recently that help you take homeland tours. They seem like an incredible resource in helping your family get the most out of your trip.

After reading about all these resources, I began to see so many different reasons why we should teach our children about their heritage. Some say it helps solidify their identity. Others have shared that it helped those, who were in a situation where they may never meet their birth family, find some sort of connection. However, like with anything else in our lives, there needs to be a balance. I want my son to know that his heritage is something to be proud of, but I do not want to focus so much on it that he feels like some sort of “outsider,” or become ashamed of being different. But we also don’t want to be so nonchalant that he feels that it’s not important. So how do we handle it? A must-read is an article by Lisa Milbrand at http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/heritageathome.

The thing I most agree with Lisa Milbrand’s article “Heritage Starts at Home” is about making it “part of the fabric of your daily life,” and not just the holidays or special events. My husband and I have always wanted to blend in some of the Guatemalan culture into our family life style just like we did with our own backgrounds when we were married. For the past 13 years, our family formed through bits and pieces we took from each of our families’, and how we were raised. This didn’t effect just the big holidays or birthday celebrations, but it has created our own way of how we were going to live our lives and raise our child. I was so excited to learn the different ways we can do this with our son’s Guatemalan heritage.

Besides the different camps, special holidays, big events, or trips to their birth country, we can incorporate simple things like recipes, crafts, books, toys and games that reflect his heritage in our everyday lives. Not making a huge deal out of it, just enjoying it. Some other things I’ve tried recently is searching for an hispanic church for our family to visit on a regular basis. So far, there is nothing remotely close to us, but I know that can change at any time. We also intend on taking Spanish together at some point as a family. We discovered that sometimes there are restaurants which are popular in your child’s birth country that have a franchises in America. Our “Family Day” is coming up soon. We were curious and did a search for Pollo Campero. Pollo Campero is a chicken fast food restaurant that we frequented in Guatemala. Guess where we’re going to eat on our family day this year?! I am so excited that I found one! Our son has only seen pictures of us there together in Guatemala when he was a baby. Now he gets to experience it (even though it’s in Boston). I have also looked up successful Guatemalan authors, actors, athletes, politicians, etc. Just in case there are days when he’s older that he may face any sort of prejudice/racism, I want his mind already protected with the knowledge that his heritage is not inferior in any way and does not play a “handicap” whatsoever in his life!

There are what seems like endless ideas and resources to help us in this journey. The current edition of Adoption Today magazine focuses on summer camps, and culture. I haven’t gotten the magazine yet but you can bet I will be looking for it this month. Below are a few links to Adoptive Families magazine website as well.

http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/heritage

Here, you can find an online list of many resources for exploring your child’s culture, a list of heritage events, and a huge list of additional articles for all different situations we find ourselves with adopting outside of our own heritage, whether it was an international adoption or domestic.

http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/calendar

This link will bring you to a calendar that you can search events in your particular state. Not just heritage events but general adoption events. Enjoy looking through it all and coming up with the best ideas that fit your family life style.

There are so many times that I just want to scream, “I LOVE ADOPTION!” Yes, that’s overly emotional, I know, but I’m used to it now. I was not always an emotional person. As a young adult, I became a Christian which stirred my emotions. Marriage made me extremely gushy. Then I became a mom. Can you say “No holds barred?” I cannot stop kissing my kid’s face, squishing his cheeks, and coming up with tricks to get hugs or cuddles throughout the day. I do anything and everything I can to be as close to him as possible. I cannot help it. He’s getting to the age now where he sometimes rolls his eyes and says, “oh mommy,” but still smiles and gives me hugs and kisses. Unfortunately for him, that just makes him even cuter. I LOVE ADOPTION!

I love that God chose more than one way to build a family. I love that He chose my husband and I to be a part of something so incredibly awesome. I know people think that it is because of our infertility that my husband and I adopted, but that is just not true. I’m not saying it’s wrong for infertility to grab the attention of some to pursue adoption, and I’m not saying that God didn’t use it in some way to encourage us when things during the adoption process got tough. I am just saying that it was clear when the Lord spoke to my heart about adoption, that infertility was not on my mind. It was during a church service where our Pastor was talking about adoption in regards to how God adopted us then I saw it as God’s plan. I was captured by the sermon on the level of love God has for us, as His chosen, adopted children. There was no doubt in my mind that I was created to be a mom, and it was supposed to happen through adoption. Not because it was secondary. God doesn’t have “secondary” love! Being a mom through adoption was His plan. His plan is not for me or anyone to be infertile, but we know He uses all things for the good of those who love Him. Only God could take something as horrible as infertility and allow it to encourage us into one of the most amazing adventures of our lives. I LOVE ADOPTION!

We are currently doing a Bible Study called The Parent Adventure, by Rodney & Selma Wilson. It’s begins by stressing the nature of being a parent, chosen by God, to guide our sons and daughters into the world as a torch bearer for the Lord in the short time we have them. It also stresses that we do not “own” our children. No matter if they are biological or adopted, they are God’s children and we are chosen by Him to guide them in the short time that we have them. I had some quiet time the other day to sit and think about this. I feel so inadequate sometimes as a mom. Will I be able to know naturally how to care and protect him? This day I ended up thinking about how God chose Mary to be Jesus’ mother. Mary was chosen by God. That is clear. Then I thought, “He knew she was going to lose Jesus that day in Jerusalem for three days and He knew that she was going to be a mother with human error.” How about that. He chose a nonperfect mother to His one and only perfect son who was the Savior of the World! God could have chosen another way to come into this world, but He didn’t. He chose for part of himself to come as a baby to be raised by imperfect parents. They were chosen for Jesus, and we were chosen for our child, and any future children we have. God does not make mistakes. I LOVE ADOPTION!

If people could grasp the amount of love that pours out of my husband and I when we start talking about our son. I feel so sorry for those who buy into the “blood is thicker than water” mentality. I imagine they are missing one of the best feelings God created. Do I claim to know the love a mother has for her birth child? I was only pregnant once and for a short time before I miscarried, so “no, I don’t claim to know if it is different or not.” But let me tell you this, I cannot imagine a love any more intense. Honestly, if there is some other level of love out there in this world, my heart will not be able to contain it. I can tell you without hesitation that I would lay my life down for my son. I can’t imagine there is any love greater. Matter of fact, the scripture is clear there is no greater love than that. Every night before I turn out my light, I check on my son to make sure his covers are over him (he always kicks them off). I look at his cute little perfect face and I have to fight it back again… that urge to yell out, “I LOVE ADOPTION!”