Category Archives: friends

Cocooning Conclusion

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For an introduction to cocooning and why we chose this for our family, you can see my posts here: Cocooning {Part I}, Cocooning {Part II}, Cocooning {Part III} and any other posts under the category “cocooning”.

If we aren’t careful, parenting can be such a minefield of opinions and judgments. Adoptive parenting is certainly no exception. I have had much loving support in our decision to cocoon, but I have also had opposition. Some people seem to feel judged by my posts because they chose not to cocoon. Others had never heard of it, and wished they had known of this option when their child first came home which has resulted in some feelings of regret.

If there is one thing I keep learning over and over again, it is that it is always dangerous to judge other people’s parenting choices. There are so many things I have done that I swore I would never do… or have not done that I was sure I would do!

I can honestly tell you that cocooning was incredibly hard. Much harder than I expected it to be. And I am an introvert by nature – so I can only assume it might be even that much harder on an extroverted mother. What made cocooning so hard was not so much the isolation from the world, but it was the insanity in our home coupled with the isolation from the world. At one point, I searched through blogs about cocooning and saw how many mothers started out with intentions to cocoon, but simply couldn’t keep it up. I considered quitting as well (many times) – but Giselle’s needs and temperament simply wouldn’t allow it.

I have heard that bringing a child home in the toddler years is one of the hardest/worst times to bring about this huge life change for them. They are not so young that they don’t notice the changes, and they are not so old as to understand any explanations given to them. All they know is, “that was my home, and these people took me away”. Of course each situation is unique, and each child is unique in how the perceive life and handle change.

Saying goodby to her Haitian Nana.

First days with us. I knew she was stressed, but now I can see the intensity of it on her face.

Do I think cocooning is a must in every adoption situation? Not necessarily to the degree we did. But I do think it is important for families to know about this option and to seriously consider it for their family. I think it would be ideal for families to prepare for the possibility that their child will need this, but certainly not all children will need to cocoon to the extent that Giselle did.

I am so very thankful we were already prepared to do this – mentally and in our family’s scheduling. I can only imagine that Giselle’s healing would have taken much, much longer had we not cocooned. She was the type of child who needed this SO incredibly much, and now that we are 8 months into getting to know her, I am absolutely certain that we would have years and years of repercussions to deal with down the road had we not taken her into her new world very slowly.

How do I know this? When she first came home, she slept absolutely horribly. She cried and whined a good part of the night – she really was traumatized by her transport into this completely different world. If I had to make an outing for any reason (ie – the grocery store for some milk, or to the bank), she would sleep even worse that night. One sure trigger every single time was if another person would come up to her, look her in the eye and talk to her. Then I knew it was game over for sure – we weren’t sleeping for at least the next 3 nights.

This became even more evident at around 3-4 months home when she finally started sleeping a bit better. Any new stress during the day would result in a very restless, fitful sleep again. I was expecting to cocoon for 6 weeks. I counted down the days anxiously. At the end of 4 weeks we could manage a quick shopping trip without too much trauma. But she was no where near OK at 6 weeks. And so I dug my heals in for the 3 month mark. By 3 months home, we could do a quick visit at one or two close friends/family. They could come to our house for even shorter visits with minimal “damage”. But she would still get easily confused as to who the new “mother” was, and which one she should be listening to and going to for her needs.

At 4.5 months home, we had planned to go visit family for Christmas (an 8 hour road trip). But after a busy week, and a few Christmas parties, she fell apart and I knew there was no way we could make the trip. So we adjusted our plans (after grieving a little bit) to hunker down for a quiet Christmas at home.

At 7 months home, I finally saw a huge jump in her confidence about where she fit into our family, and that our family unit is consistent. It does not change. People might visit, but they will leave; our family unit doesn’t change. Family members might leave, but they always come back because our family unit doesn’t change. People can talk sweetly to her and maybe even pick her up and thats ok, but she still knows to whom she belongs.

I saw this so evident in our trip to visit family at Easter. While at Christmas she still felt very insecure if someone spoke sweetly to her and got in her space… at Easter, family she had never met were doing those same things, but it didn’t seem to make her feel insecure about my relationship with her. That was a huge relief! I didn’t even realize how hyper vigilant I had become about how people would talk to her, how close they were or how much eye contact they tried to make – because those things would always pull her away from me and confused her. On this trip, I would pull her aside a few times per day and make sure we played our little games to connect with each other. She was always willing to connect, and then would happily go off to play. In the past, when feeling unsure she would always pull away from me and resist connection.

Our trip hasn’t been without pay back. She has reverted back to some of her old tricks of screaming and tantruming instead of using her words. Of being rough with the other kids, and defiant to me and some control battles. But they are manageable, and still in a context of feeling connected with me.

In conclusion, cocooning was a life saver for our family. While it was incredibly hard, the rewards of it are beyond measure for Giselle, and the therefor general peace of our family – because she is at peace. The gift that cocooning gives, is giving a baseline of “normal” for your child. Because at about 6 weeks home, she was adjusting and becoming more comfortable in our family, we could see her at her “normal”. Then when she was in a situation she found stressful, we could see her stress coming out in ways that weren’t her normal. Without that baseline, I don’t know how I would have known to read her cues. The draw back to cocooning was my extreme loneliness on top of the fatigue and stress. That didn’t help our bonding as I was easily frustrated and upset. In hindsight, we should have had Darren take paternity leave for at least 1-3 months. I think it would have set us up for better ways of dealing with stressful situations at home that I just didn’t have the chance to implement on my own. I was literally trying to survive moment by moment. The challenge now is to unlearn some of my ways of dealing with Giselle, and to work more on making our relationship more fun.

Thank you for so many of you who have encouraged, understood and supported our decision to allow Giselle to adjust to her new life at her own pace. Somedays that understanding was what helped me to get through just one more day. And you all share in the rewards now – as she is, for the most part, a happy and confident little girl.

In her own words…

“Daddy, Mommy, Kylar, Amara and Giselle. Everybody my family! Giselle happy family!”

 

 

Meeting Giselle {Part 2}

Aside

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(I can’t figure out why my title isn’t posting…)

Meeting Giselle {Part 2}

Our 6 weeks of intensive cocooning has been over for two weeks. We are slowly finding our new balance. How much Giselle can handle, what are the signs that she is getting stressed, what works and doesn’t work when friends come over to visit… We want to share with you what is working for us right now (although this seems to be changing almost daily which is why this post has been so difficult to write).  Those of you who are in our circle of face to face family and friends have been asking us “what should we do/not do?”. We so appreciate the loving care you are showing by asking!

I love that in our culture we generally include children as real people. We say “hi” to our friend’s children, ask them how they are… you know, because they actually are real people! So much of what I am asking you to do is counter intuitive to how we treat each other’s kids. But trust me – this is the best way you can show love to Giselle right now.

~ She is definitely more comfortable with women than men. While she is happily on her way to becoming a Daddy’s Girl, other men in close proximity still really make her nervous.

~ When we are out and about shopping and she notices people staring at her, she becomes uncomfortable. So imagine when people come up to talk to her! We find that when people mostly ignore her (ok, I know you are going to have to sneak a peak at her because she is so adorable!), she is much more at ease and comfortable. When people make eye contact and/or try to engage her, she gets stressed out. And plays with her belly button. If you see her playing with her belly button, she is not doing so good even if she isn’t showing any other outward signs of being stressed.

 ~ We think our other kids are pretty amazing too! It means so much to us – and them, if you pay attention to Kylar and Amara and give them some loving attention as well. The added bonus to this is that Giselle sees her siblings in healthy outside-of-family relationships. She is learning appropriate behaviour (hopefully! if our kids are behaving, that is..) from how the other kids behave around you. She watches to see that Amara isn’t fearful. That Kylar isn’t hugging just everyone he meets. And that they always. always. come back to us and that way stay together as a family.

~ Because she is still learning to attach to us as her primary care givers (experts say this can take up to a year), we need to be sure she is always pointed towards us for her care and needs. This means that only Darren or I (sometimes Kylar and Amara) can feed her, comfort her, hold/carry her, or kiss her owies. If she seeks any of this from you, the best thing you can do is turn her towards one of us and say “You have a good Mommy. She will help you!” 

~ We are finding that visitors to our home are ok in small doses. Only one, maybe two visitors per week. Only about an hour at a time. We are still keeping her circle very, very small. Please know that some days even an hour will be too much. And if I have to say “I think this isn’t working for her today”, I know you will have grace for us, but it is hard for me to say this because I want the visit!

What is this look? Angry? Pouty? Insecure? Nervous?… learning to read her signs can be tough. But I can see her hands are down by her belly button…

Even though the really intense part of cocooning is over, it still isn’t life as usual for us. We are keeping her circle very small and limited to people who are consistently in our lives. Even if she seems to handle situations well, it can set her to regress (back to having fits, not talking, even angry with us) later when she is alone with us. Sometimes it can take a few hours – even days, for her to seem more “normal” and back to her regular self.  Sometimes it means she (and therefor I) aren’t sleeping for the next two nights. It’s a huge learning curve for all of us.

Remember, we are still figuring out her cues (and I think they keep changing as she is figuring herself out!), and trying to understand how much of how she is acting around new people is simply her personality, and how much is stress. It feels strange to not know these things about our 2 year old child!

Thank you so much for your loving care and patience as we help Giselle adjust and attach to her new forever family.

** side note – Amara has taken to interesting measures as a way of dealing with all the attention Giselle is getting. She has started telling people whom she may or may not really know, that she loves them… how pretty their hair/clothing is… and sometimes repeated hugs that might seem out of place. The best way to deal with this is to engage her about conversation about something else. Or tell her how pretty her own hair/clothing is. But please don’t encourage the excessive hugging and “I love you’s” as we are trying to teach her culturally healthy boundaries. Thank-you!

Renewal in the Waiting

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I was nervous about the timing of leaving the city to go visit my family 8 hours away. But I knew I needed to go hold my new little nephew and “just be” with my sisters and nephews, my mom and dad for a few days - before Giselle comes home. It has been so good. It has left me more rested and ready to tackle some more jobs at home before we travel. It has helped pass another long week with no news.

Many, many months ago I had it in my head that Giselle would come home in July. For many months, another adoptive momma and I have been dreaming about the chance we could travel at the same time – us to get Giselle and she to go see the judge for her babies (hi Amy!). Amy has received news that she is to travel to Haiti the 3rd week of July (along with 2 other families from our O). I am trying not to get my hopes up to much, but the chance to hug this friend I have only known through emails, as well as the trip of a lifetime to pick up our daughter – that would truly make my joy complete!

One of the things I love so much about this journey is the people you “meet” along the way. Cindy is another one of those people. We “met” on the Haitian adoptions Face*book group, and one day she posted their Haitian adoption timeline of their daughter Sunny. It matched our timeline so closely, I asked her if we could stay in touch as a way to encourage each other as we passed through each step. We have continued to be closely tied in our timelines. They have been in MOI for probably 3-5 days longer than us. One big difference between our adoptions is that she is adopting an older child. One who is able to express her longing for her family with pen and paper. Cindy posted her recent blog post to her facebook, and I it touched me so deeply I want to share it with you. For those of you adopting, it might make you weep (for relating to the pain, and the joy of God’s message). For those of you supporting families who are adopting – it will give you another window into the soul of an adoptive parent, and the God who parents us.

Cocooning {Part III}

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I think cocooning can sometimes feel hurtful to family and friends who have supported the adoptive family for so many years. You have prayed with us, shed tears, questioned, rejoiced when something finally went well – and will be SO excited when Giselle is finally ready to come home.

And then we tell you to please stay away. Please don’t touch her. Don’t be part of our lives for a time. I get that. As a matter of fact, it has been so very hard for me to give space to friends who have finally brought their children home – even though I know how important it is for them to have that time together.

Can I just assure you that, while we are so looking forward to having Giselle in our arms, I am not looking forward to this time of isolation? That everything inside of me will want to drive to your home, your workplace, our church – to throw the largest “Welcome Home” party this city has ever seen, to show off our beautiful new daughter! It will be hard, but doing what we believe to be the best start for her is more important than our desires.

There are ways that you can still be part of our lives. It is likely that we will need you more than ever in this adjustment time!

~Airport Party! – if you live in our area, one way to get a sneak peak at Giselle will be when we land at the airport (don’t forget your camera!) Yes, some adoption experts don’t agree on the large airport party, but I think it is important for us as her family – and for you if you are able – to see her as she enters our city. To rejoice with us on the completion of this step of her adoption. Walking through those doors, knowing our friends and family are waiting on the other side is the best feeling ever! And yes, Darren and I will argue about who gets to carry her through ;) We will be happy to show her off from the safety of our arms.

~ Verbal Support – just hearing that you support us in doing our best to help Giselle adjust and heal is such a balm to our spirits. We will be questioning ourselves throughout the day with her, so hearing your words of support and encouragement via fb/email/text messages might just be what helps lift our spirits to get through that tough moment when we feel at a loss. We might not have a chance to get back to you right away, but know we appreciate you!

~ Family Support – Giselle will take up a lot of our waking hours for the first while. But we desperately don’t want our other children to feel neglected or left out. And we certainly don’t want them to feel like prisoners in their own home for 2 months as Giselle adjusts. For those of you who are in our day-to-day lives, we might need you to take Kylar out for a play date with your kids. Or Amara to her gymnastics class one week. Or simply take them to the park for a few hours to get some breathing room and a sense of normal life.

~ Meals – I have some amazing friends who have actually offered (or at least not run the other way screaming when asked) to help me make freezer meals. I am aiming to have 60 meals in my freezer before Giselle comes home. My most amazing sister-in-law (Hi Kristin!*) has offered to plan for us to have hot meals brought a few times per week for the first few weeks as I can imagine that thinking about dinner – even a freezer meal, might feel overwhelming somedays. For those of you who will be willing to help with this, please know I still can’t let you come inside to meet Giselle. And believe me when I say “it will hurt me more than it hurts you” because everything inside of me will want to drag you into my house to meet my beautiful baby.

~ I will need to hire a housekeeper to come in about once per week to help me stay sane. While the housekeeper is here, we will be outside (weather permitting or downstairs if not), or perhaps making a trip to the doctor. If anyone knows anyone (wink) who is reasonable – and will not be picky about my house being in order before they come, I need that name, please!

~ Yes, I did say making a trip to the Doctor. Of course keeping her home completely, all the time will not be possible.  While it is our goal to be home as much as possible, I also need to find out why her tummy is so bloated. I need to make sure she doesn’t have any parasites or other issues that could easily be passed along to other family members. So fun. So if you do happen to see us out and about… no judging please ;)

~PRAY!! Please, please be praying. I would love a prayer team with people assigned to different family members. I need people praying specifically for me, others for my children, for my husband, and our family as a whole. I realize that we can do everything that human knowledge says is good and wise… but if I don’t have the wisdom that comes from my God who already knows Giselle intimately, and the rest of us completely… we could still end up in a bad place. We need God more than anything through this. We are desperate for Him to be our guide, our safe place, and our strength. If you feel you would like to partner with us in this, please message me at nausd @ ymail . com (no spaces).

~keep reading here. I am hoping to share as much as I can about what our lives are really like after her arrival home. It is a really hard balance in blog land – to know what you should write in order to make other waiting families more aware of what they can expect, and to encourage other families who have “been there, done that” that they are not alone… with not wanting information on the web that could someday be hurtful to Giselle or the rest of my children. I will be praying for the wisdom I need here, but I really believe that too many waiting moms blog, and then the children come home we see a few nice posts about how happy everyone is… and then they disappear. Some because life is really good and they don’t feel the need to blog anymore (and that’s fine). Others because life is really hard and they don’t know want anyone to know. God is raising a passion in my heart for post – adoption support for families and I am hoping this will be a good place to start. If I can keep my eyes open long enough to write, that is.

*if you would like to reach Kristin about meals, please email me and I will put you in contact with her.  nausd @ ymail . com (no spaces)

Getting There… Organization Update

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An update on the house cleaning/purge – which might be boring for you to read, but will make me feel so much better to have it written down. If you are short on time (or just can’t handle how ridiculously organized I am becoming), scroll down to the bottom of the page at just read the last paragraph or two as I saved the best for last.

I did join the Fly Lady community, and have been taking baby steps at getting a cleaning routine in place. They send out an email every day with reminders of what section of the house you are to be working on that week, and your task for the day. And to my surprise, I have often recently done exactly what the task was… which means I’m not really staying on task for what they say I should be doing, but I am doing stuff… just in a different order. That makes me feel pretty good!

I have organized my en-suite completely – top to bottom. For those of you have have had the horror privilege of using this bathroom in my home, well, you know it tended to be the last room that would get cleaned. Which really sucked because it is the first and last room I use every day. And it is tiny, tiny! Like, Darren and I can’t both fit in there at the same time to brush our teeth together (unless one of us stands sideways). So, you might be wondering, how hard could that have been to clean? It took me HOURS! Not because it was so dirty (although it was pretty neglected), but there was just so much junk beneath the sink, in the baskets beneath, beneath the sink (it’s an old house), and in the medicine cabinet. I guess when you have less space, it’s harder to organize. Regardless, that room is successfully staying very clean and organized now and I don’t have to cringe when someone has a reason to use it. YAY!!

I have gone through my bedroom from top to bottom. The closet (again TINY – but so messy from lack of space… and your husband owns a closet organizer company you say? Don’t go there…), all our dressers and drawers… I think the only thing left is my nightstand drawer which will take me 5 min. Something I have discovered is; that now that everything has a place, I don’t get so stressed out when my room gets messy – because it only takes me a few minutes to put things back where they belong. Before, there were so many things in my room that didn’t belong there that it just felt overwhelming.

Our basement storage room – I have gone through every single box. I switched a lot of items from one storage room to another and now have all the girl’s clothing in one room. The items for Giselle that Amara has outgrown, and the clothes for Amara that I have collected on sale for when she is older. I even have a clothes hanger for next season’s items which allows me to see at a glance how many of a particular item they have for this summer, and what they might still need. I still have work to do in the storage rooms, but they have come a long way!

Yikes!

it's hard to see here, but that middle shelf is sagging in the middle

 

I organized my pantry yesterday. I was so excited about the baskets I bought at Cost*co  that I just HAD to organize something, so the pantry fell prey to my mad skills. Also, my bookcase is now completely organized down to labels on boxes.

And last but not least… the HUGEST burden on my mind the last few months – actually since our renovation last summer, has been all the trim on my main floor still needing to be painted. I just couldn’t figure out how to manage it with the kids around. So, I humbled myself and asked for help. Rebekah and a few other friends were AMAZING and painted our house while/after the renovation last summer, but the trim wasn’t finished until last minute so they didn’t get to paint that. I asked her if she would PLEASE come help me with the trim, and she so kindly came today and helped me. Actually I helped her. As much as I could. While I corralled children, finished making lunch, drove Kylar to his gymnastics, and put Amara down for her nap I managed to get some time to work with her, but through it all she just steadily kept going. During Amara’s nap we ate lunch, then back to work… and we got two coats of paint on all the trim except the living room baseboard which will be really easy for me to do on my own. What a humongous blessing! This one thing has been just a nagging weight and it is gone! Done! She didn’t like how the hallway was painted so she and her sister in law are coming next week to do it again – which is also a huge blessing because I decided to change the colour and now they will paint it the new colour – and I don’t have to worry about how to paint it while keeping little fingerprints out of it. YAY!! Thanks so much Bekah! Plus we had great chats all day – this young women inspires me every time I’m with her.

I still have a long way to go, but I feel encouraged at the progress so far. I do have this nagging fear of getting everything done and ready, then Giselle’s file takes a REALLY long time to get through the next stage and I will go crazy with nothing to occupy my mind in the waiting. Silly me. I’ll be running around trying to KEEP the house organized until she comes and it all falls to ruins again. I can’t wait!

Amazing…!!!

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Can I just say that we are blessed? Our community of friends and our church community have rallied around us in regards to Giselle’s adoption in such amazing ways!

In February I went to our church women’s retreat. I hadn’t planned on going, but my friend Leesila badgered me into it – and I’m so thankful that she did! That was at the height of not knowing if we would be able to adopt Giselle and I was in a very dark place. I was asked to speak about what was happening in front of all the women there and then they prayed for me. And this wasn’t a very polite, everyone taking turns kind of praying. It was women on their knees wailing and lamenting and crying out to God for His mercy in this situation. It was a lot of tears and it was loud… it was amazing. Not only did I finally not feel alone in that struggle, I knew without a doubt that those prayers moved mountains in the spiritual realm.
Shortly after, Sharla asked if she could help me plan a fundraiser garage sale. Now, Sharla doesn’t do nice little garage sales that raise a couple hundred bucks. No, no my friends. At her adoption fundraiser sale, people were literally coming back every day to check out her new stock as she had so many donations coming in. She made thousands – yes, thousands of dollars at her sale! If I even make half of what she did, I will be dancing for joy in the streets. The date for our garage sale is June 2-4.  And yes – I’m accepting donations!
Recently, my friend Julie asked if she could help do a fundraiser for us through her photography. I am SO excited about this one, my friends! Julie is a talented photographer with a real heart for the orphan. She will do a photo shoot at a discounted rate with half of the proceeds going to our adoption costs. If you need to update your family photos, I humbly ask you to please consider this option? You can check out her work at www.papercastle.ca, and the blog post about our fundraiser here. You can email me personally for more information at nausfamily @ yahoo.com (no spaces).
And this is just crazy – A few weeks ago, I received a baby card congratulating us on being Giselle’s parents – with a cheque for 770.00 in it – the exact amount of one of our plane tickets to Haiti!!! Can you say confirmation that we are supposed to go on this trip? And let’s not forget my amazing parents – they used their airmiles to fly my mom here, risking the very real possibility that my dear Dad will drown all her newly planted seedlings… to look after my kids for the next 7 days. They are amazing.
The Sunday after we arrive home from Haiti, our church will do a spotlight on us. That means we will be on stage, presenting what we are doing, how the trip went, do a slide show – and they want to promote all our fundraisers :)
I asked our church if they would consider doing a fundraiser for the orphanage as the orphanage director would like to build a more permanent building (they are renting right now). I was thinking small – get the Sunday school kids involved in a little project. But no, they have decided to let us use our church (which is an old movie theatre) to host a family movie night! I’m so excited about this project and to see what God does. (date TBA)
And people, the thing I am most excited about is that not only does this help us immensely financially, and emotionally through this journey but it promotes adoption. It promotes it to my neighbours, my friends, my church family… and that gets me excited!! If even one more child finds a forever family through these promotions, it will be worth the extreme exhaustion I will be feeling after having 3 fundraisers in 3 weeks!