Third Trimester… Will This Baby Ever Come???

So here we are in the third trimester of our paper pregnancy!

  

The time when we wait and wait for our little one, all the while growing immense… in anticipation, at least.  The morning sickness of paperwork is done with… except for occasional bouts every now and then. We have found out that it’s a boy and that he has the cutest little face. We have felt him move and squirm. We are ready for him to start his new life with us… beyond ready!

And labor pains! Well, they are labor pains of the heart. How we miss our little boy! If I could do anything to bring him even a little sooner, then yes, I would. But just like a real pregnancy, we must wait. We don’t know when exactly in the next four to six months that our son will come to us... but that doesn’t stop us from counting the days, the hours, the very seconds!

However, there is a very real growth process that needs to happen during this time. We cannot rush this process… as much as we may want to. Just as a baby matures in the womb until the time comes for it to enter this world… this adoption must mature and go full term before our little boy legally becomes part of our family.

First, U.S. immigration must finalize his citizenship so that the moment he sets foot on U.S. soil, he will become an American. The paperwork to make this happen is already in their hands and they are working at all the necessary governmental paper pushing. Being a governmental paper pusher myself, I know that this can be a lot of work. Governments all over the world seem to love forms, documents, signatures, and the whatnot. So all of this is being done… while we sit here twiddling our thumbs. And praying… praying that the work goes swiftly and without errors.

When the U.S. finally gives their approval, then the Bulgarian government… who loves paperwork as much as ours does… will take their turn with the necessary paper pushing. I would love to fuss at the bureaucratic process – the hoops we have to jump through, the red tape we need to cut – but I know that each step is bringing this little man closer to being our very own son. Each signature signed, each box check… they are laboring to bring my little one into my arms and for that, I am eternally grateful. So while all of this is being done… we will sit here twiddling our thumbs. And doing some more praying….

 Once all of this is completed, our lawyers in Bulgaria will apply for a court date… sort of like our caesarean section date... and with the court's final decision and approval of our adoption, this little boy will be pulled out of fatherlessness and from being a ward of the state and breathe the air of sonship for the first time. Oh, what a day of rejoicing that will be for us! But he won’t even realize anything is different. He will still be in the orphanage. We will still be strangers that visited him months and months ago. We won’t even be there. He will not know that his life will be forever changed by this one day.

But the battle will be over. The labor finished. On that day, he will be ours. We will pack our bags (and one for him too!) and go and get him. All that will be left is the trip home from the hospital!

Language

Little did I know all those years ago in my language acquisition class, that I was learning material that I would be later using to bring the gift of speech to my own little child. Yes, Ian and I were linguistics majors in college – the few, the proud, the unemployed. (Hey, it’s in the top ten unemployable degrees in the nation!) As much as I enjoyed it, I have many times thought that it was a worthless degree. I never have and probably never will obtain employment because of it.

But now I have a little boy who, in spite of his three years on this earth, has only a handful of words. His development level in speech is about the age of a 12-15 month year old. But this doesn’t mean that he is lacking intelligence in any way – in fact, we found that it was quite the opposite – he was a little sponge – quickly soaking up new situations, information, sounds, experiences, etc.

He babbles – it is quite adorable – it sounds like a little language all his own. Really, it is a baby’s way of working out sound combinations within a language. Can the “sss” come before the “k” and can a word have a consonant and then a vowel and then a consonant or is it consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel? Who knew babies were such analysts? Of course, this is all in Bulgarian, so he will have the additional challenge of figuring it out for English too.

His language delays are probably the result of several factors.

First, he is visually impaired. Children who have sight problems from birth generally speak at a little latter than sighted kids. This is because part of the information in the equation is missing… yes, they hear all the words, but do not see what the words are referring to. Even coming to understand that language has the purpose of communication comes a little later. It is hard to work out one-on-one associations and fine tune definitions. Mommy calls a little toy a “car” and the big thing he sits in to go places is called a “car” too. How do you reconcile that when you don’t see that both are the same shape, with different sizes, having the same features like wheels and mobility? You would have to understand the concept of a toy too… which he doesn’t. It takes extra effort and insight to teach a visually impaired child these things.

Secondly, all children need lots of input to learn language. They need to be constantly surrounded by language from birth to acquire language. In normal childhood, this isn’t a problem. They get goo’ed and ga’ed over, sung silly songs to and are in constant conversation with their primary care providers – Mom and Dad. In an orphanage – even a “good” one like the one our little boy is in – this is just not the case. Lots of kids need care and speech is limited to “Stop wiggling” when clothes are being put on and “Go to sleep!” when a child wakes everyone up in the middle of the night screaming. Without the raw material to analyze, babies just don’t figure it out. Acquiring language is a little like creating a library – a room full of shelves is not a library. Babies are filling their language “shelves” with books (language/speech data obtained from listening to the language around them). If fewer “books” are available to put on the “shelves”, then it is going to take longer for them to fill up – and this needs to happen before they can start talking and become little fluent native speakers of a language.

Thirdly, our little boy may have had some brain damage at birth. We think that this is highly unlikely – we did not see any symptoms of it when we visited him. But it is possible that some of the shelves of his “library” of a speech center in his brain have been damaged and the “books” of speech data are just falling off them. Unlikely, yes, but it is common that adopted children sometimes have unknown special needs that become apparent over time. If so, we will cross that bridge if we come to it. But once again, this is not evident from our observations of him – it’s just a remote possibility. And even then, there are things one can do to bring a child to his or her full potential with language.

So how does one help a little child with a speech delay?

First of all – call in the professionals! Speech therapists really know what they are doing and can make a world of difference! Our little boy will have a special speech therapist friend for sure!

But there are other things that we will be doing to help him learn and grow in language.

We will talk and talk and talk. We will talk to him, we will talk around him. This is the best thing. We want to be sure that he has as much speech data as possible to fill up those little shelves in his brain.

We will talk out life – as we do everything, we will describe what we are doing out loud. What he cannot see, we will describe. If the wind is blowing, we will say, “O how the wind does blow!” and if we are cooking pancakes we are going to be talking about how we measure, stir, and flip! And eat! Mmmm… pancakes!

We are going to read to him. Not only do books capture the interest of a child with stories, pictures, and rhyme, they provide repetitive language. If you read the “Hop on Pop” every day for a year, soon enough, you will find your child not only hopping on pop (poor Ian!) but talking about hopping on pop.

We will also be teaching non-language thinking skills like association and anticipation. In order to grasp language, you have to understand how things can and do correlate to one another and with language. If your teddy bear has eyes, nose, and mouth, and you have eyes, nose, and mouth and mom has eyes, nose, and mouth… you make a connection that all eyes, even fake ones on a teddy bear, are all the same thing and can be called by one word… and that if you see a dog for the first time ever, you can recognize that he has eyes too!

We are really looking forward to helping our little one grow in his language… maybe he will even grown up to be a language lover and linguist like us… we would be so proud! But then again, maybe we should steer him towards a more, well… profitable area of study. I bet he would make a great nuclear physicist! But first, I think we will work on those language skills…

The Long Wait Ahead

Depending on the nature of things, four – six months is not a very long time. Six months at a job? You’re still a newbie. Six month married? You’re still a newlywed. Six months practicing a musical instrument? Amateur.

Six months waiting for your child to come home? Eternity.

We left him there. He is there without us, his mama and tati. We will have no contact until we pick him up to take him home. We will fade away in his memories – maybe we already have. He loved us yes – but most likely did not understand the significance of our visit – the significance of our hugs and kisses and love. They were just nice and then vanished. We pray that this is not so – that God revealed to him that we were his family and that we were coming back for him to free him forever from fatherlessness.

God imprinted on our hearts this little boy, with his little giggles and mischievous smile, as our son. We are missing him, longing for him, desperate for him.

We are eagerly working on all the paperwork that will enable us to bring him home.

Once that paperwork is done and we are just waiting for everyone else to complete their part, we will start working on our preparations... setting up his crib in our room so that we will be close when he cries in the night. Setting up his play space with toys and filling his closet with clothes (so excited that he wears a 3T - it means he is a big, healthy boy!). We will toddler proof our apartment. Once all of this is done, we will have a final homestudy visit. Even the State of Virginia wants to know that we are ready for him!

We are also starting to get together the homecoming plan - which doctors to see and figuring out maternity/paternity leave and adjusting our finances as much as possible to enable us to stay at home as long as possible with him to make sure we are bonding together as a family.

We will start preparing for our second trip - what we will bring, where we will stay, and all of those details. 

We are hoping that this will all keep us busy enough to not miss him too much. 

Quite honestly, I doubt it will work. I am going to miss him every day until I have him in my arms again. 

I did not think that it would be like this - I thought that the wait was going to be a breeze. I am not an emotional person. I thought that I could "handle" this. I used to read the blogs of other adoptive moms during their wait crying in the middle of the supermarket when a child reminded them of thier own far distant little one and think - "Not me, I'll be fine." 

I was wrong. I can't handle this. I am crying at the supermarket. I long for the smell of his hair (like puppy dog fur, strangely enough - the little nursery rhyme was right - What are little boys made of? Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails). I yearn for the sound of his voice. I have a gapping hole in my heart - in my life - and sometimes can barely function because of it. 

So if you ask me how I am, and I say I am fine - chances are I am not. If you find me wiping away a stray tear or staring at the little boy on the bus with a pained expression, bear with me. Have mercy and grace and patience with me - I will be ok - when he comes home, that is. If you ask Ian - he is not much better - he misses his son just as much as I do... except he wouldn't cry in the supermarket. So until he comes home... God have mercy on us.

We Met Our Son!

He is so wonderful and strong and handsome and smart and silly and fun and…

I could go on for a while and often do. But let me say just say that he is the perfect little boy for us and we love him very much! I will write in detail about our trip in the coming weeks but let me give you a quick summary of our week:

We met him one lovely morning in a little office filled with people… He walked in with his Baba (a very nice lady from the town that comes and plays with him almost every day) holding his hands! He was big too – a full sized three year old! And loud! He was so excited and babbled away… not shy at all. I had expected a cute, cuddly, quiet boy… and he is still cute, and sometimes cuddly, but not quiet, no way!

We went for a walk with him… he loved to prop his feet up on the front bar of the stroller – he is so flexible. We sat down on a bench and pulled the stroller in front of us. We spoke loving words to him though he wouldn’t understand, of course, as he does know English yet. We told him about how we loved and wanted him and how he would eat at our table and be our son. When we were finished, he reached for Ian – for his tati (Bulgarian for daddy) – to pick him up. Just like that. Like he understood all that we had been telling him and that he was eager to join our little family.

The next day we went back. We met in a spare room at the orphanage and were astounded at how well he could see… he proved again and again that the doctors were wrong about his sight. Yes, he still has a great deal of visual impairment, but he can see! We also learned that he hates the gruel they feed him – once again proving he could see by artfully avoiding the spoon! We spent the afternoon in the park with him, walking about, playing with his toys, and singing our favorite songs to him.

The next day, he was so sleepy… I don’t think he slept well the day before. We went to another park. He was extra cuddly and extra cranky... he had his own special way of being sweet and grumpy all at once. We bought him some clothes as the ones he was wearing were old, too small, and smelly. What a big improvement to have him dressed in clean clothes that fit. And we found out he is very particular about his clothes. No rolled up sleeves for him! He is stubborn and opinionated – he will fit right into our family!

The next day we went to take his picture for his visa – he had to sit all alone on a little stool and look up at the camera. He was so frightened and would not raise his head, so everyone started calling his name to make him look up. This made it worse. You could see him thinking on how to get away… he called for his Baba, but she did not come. Then he called for his Tati and Mama! Oh, to be called “Mama” for the first time! As he called out he looked up and the photographer took his picture and I was able to swoop him up and love on him! We then took him to a nearby church and played at the park next door.

The last day… so sad. We had to leave our little boy. We loved on him and snuggled him and sang cute little songs to him. He must have sensed our tension because he was more agitated. Soon the time came for goodbyes and then he was swept away by a nurse. We left him with a photo album, a recordable storybook with our voices telling him how much he was loved, a snuggly blanket, and our hearts.

We used to be a couple and it felt fine and normal. Now being a couple feels incomplete. During those short few visits, God joined our hearts together as a family and now it just feels wrong to be without him. We miss him terribly. I wonder if he is missing us…

We will travel to Bulgaria again in four – six months. We will pick him up and take him away and he will be our son forever. We will bathe and clothe him. We will try to give him all that he needs to nourish his body, mind, and spirit. We will love him and hold him close. We can’t wait!

Sorry – but no pictures of him will be seen until he is our own. The orphanage is very serious about this and we want to respect their rules. But let me reassure you he is a handsome little lad!