re-framing the adoption narrative

She came to us on a Saturday night, after lying alone in a room for nearly 48 hours. We hadn’t planned for her. In fact, earlier that morning, I stood together with Jeremy in the storage shed while we debated getting rid of all the clothes our youngest had outgrown. 

We’re done, right? 

Uhhh… I think so???

…

Let’s just hang on to them a little longer, ok?

Ok. 

And an hour later, Bana K was at our door explaining what happened. 

Mom had been on the way to the clinic when baby M came. Somewhere between home and safety, she birthed, bled and died. A neighbor pulled them both into a hut and the funeral began. Baby M was wrapped in a blanket and placed in a back room. With no one to nurse her, the family prepared for not one, but two burials. 

Something in her cries that night must have pushed the family to think differently. Several of the funeral attendees knew us, and a messenger was dispatched. I arrived to find Dad, his seven other children, and the 200 or so mourners typically found at a village funeral. I was ushered into a two room house. The four-year-old on the other side of the brick wall was wailing for his mom who wasn’t coming back. The family sat with me on the dirt floor while other curious bodies crammed in, blocking what little light would have come through the door and triangle windows built into the exterior walls. Dad leaned on the wall across from me, no longer coping with the two-year-old fussing on his lap. The fifteen-year-old next to him was little help. They both looked like they'd been run over by a truck. 

The family asked me to speak, and I asked first to just listen. In turn, old women said the same thing, one after another. “We need help. We can’t manage. Please help us. Please help.” I said, “I want to help. She needs to eat. It has been too long. I can have milk here in a few hours.” 

They had already decided though what kind of help they were looking for. 

“Take her.”

“Uhhh…”

“We just can’t right now. We’re not managing with the other seven. We need you to take her.” 

There we sat, between a rock and a hard place. A shell-shocked family desperately asking for help. Me, rolling over attachment theory in my head. Above the clamor expressing this challenge and that, I blurted out, “She needs her family!” And they upped the volume a notch and yelled back, “We need YOU.” And ten minutes later, someone was shoving into my vehicle a bundle of blankets, at the center of which was a darling little girl. 

Every year when Adoption Awareness Month (November, fyi) rolls around, I get this sinking feeling in my gut as I see the internet filled with stories and pictures of happy adoptive families who would center the narrative around the beauty of adoption. And truly, adoption is beautiful. To choose to love is beauty incarnate. But, truly-truly, it is beauty from ashes. We owe it to the adoptees in our midst to acknowledge that ashes are a bi-product of something being burnt to the ground. 

There is no other way to arrive at adoption other than extreme trauma and loss. A mother dies. A family breaks. Addiction. Disfunction. Abandonment. We can’t manage - take her.

Sometimes I feel like we are so busy celebrating the redemption that we hold precious little space for the tragic. It is both lovely and awful at the same time. Like my favorite Ann says, “Joy and pain are arteries of the same heart,” and intentional orphan care means we handle both well. 

It might seem unreasonably pessimistic to even suggest re-directing the conversation towards trauma. Who doesn’t love a happy ending? What’s wrong with you, Emo Adoption Lady? 

What’s wrong with me is that I grew up in the first world and have lived my entire adult life in the third, and now as a foster and adoptive mother, I see the trajectory of orphan care from two different continental views, and I’m still unsettled. 

In America, we have focused on keeping children safe, and with family when possible, which means we major on two actions: removal and reunification. “The system” is swamped and foster parents, bless them, are doing their best. In Zambia - to our shame - we have largely focused on crisis management which has meant institutionalization. As I’ve written about before (here and here,) the funding flow out of the West fuels the glorification of orphanages and the result is thousands of children in “care” (a misnomer) while their DNA is out there. 

What has my gut twisted in knots and wrapped around my heart is that, on either continent, in any context, when I hear talk about adoption awareness, the thing that I’m NOT hearing people talk about is prevention. 

Every single adoption is the result of a brokenness which we, the community of privilege, have failed to prevent. I think about this for our own son, and for all of our adoptee friends. I cry about how scared my son’s birth mom must have been, and how someone clearly wasn’t there to support her. I think about the parents who sign papers and hand kids over because no stepped in to say, “keep your child, I’ll pay for everything.” I think about the homeless mom and the addicted one and the one with an abusive boyfriend and I feel the burden of responsibility. How many steps along the way were we not there for you? 

Baby M stayed with us for three weeks at which point, I won’t lie, we kind of wanted to keep her. There’s something about waking up every two hours at night to feed a baby and wearing her close to my heart throughout the day – I think any mother would have to be a little off to not feel the bonds of love forming. And truthfully? It would have been easy to make her ours. 

Her family already had asked for a long-term placement. We could have shown off our house and resources and promised her the world and her family would very likely have made a “smart” and terrible decision to leave her with us forever. And we would have been praised by the internet as a beautiful, adoptive family. But thankfully we have super good and reliable friends who snapped their fingers in our ears and just repeated, “She needs her family. She needs her family.” And they were absolutely right. So we set our feelings on the shelf and got serious about getting her home.

Convincing the family to receive her back was easier said than done, but we kept at it because we know it was right. We can never bring her mother back, but we can work to PREVENT the trauma of adoption. 

And work it is.

The first week baby M was home, Grandma called me several times after midnight just to say, “M is crying and won’t stop.” I never slept after those calls. On my first visit to the home to deliver more formula, I was given a list of things they needed. She wreaked of pee and I noticed that the rats had chewed through every one of her bottle nipples. We talked about burping and why babies cry and why laundry soap is too caustic for newborn skin. I taught them what a selfie was because the day deserved some levity. I drove away feeling like the band-aid had been ripped off too fast. 

Driving home, the thought rushed into my mind and I pushed it out the other side – This is a huge commitment. We are paying for everything anyway - it would be easier to just keep her with us. Thankfully the grace of conviction swelled again – prevention is worth the work. 

Unfortunately, our adoption culture celebrates the exact opposite. How many times have I seen a viral facebook post of a cute couple offering (begging) to adopt some other woman’s baby. We christen them as saints and speak nothing of birth mom’s story out on the margins. And after 6 million likes and 50,000 shares, the words “We’ll take her!” have become more admirable than, “We’ll move heaven and earth to make sure she stays with you!” And just like that, we facilitate loss instead of preventing it. 

Is it possible that the narrative of redemption in adoption has desensitized us to the flaming mess we didn’t address on the front end?  Is it possible that we aren't serious about family preservation because we don't yet believe in the primal wound we are inflicting? Do our meager efforts through pregnancy centers and WIC programs really amount to all that we can do? Are we skilled at putting out fires before they create the ashes out of which adoptees must then rise? 

I don’t think so. Not yet. We’re not nailing access to health care, marriage counseling, education, mentorship, therapy, childcare, job support. Not even close. Smart people have made these lists for us: they have curated research around what destabilizes parents and what kinds of structural and relational safeguards must be in place to support and preserve families. The stats are there: we're not doing it.

It feels like, in November, of all months, when we are supposed to be most “aware” of adoption, that prevention is the message we should be pouring over. Prevention is what we should be discussing and rallying behind and setting goals for. Because we love our adoptees more than life – this is a fact – but we need to get honest and admit that our adoptees wouldn’t have needed the "traumatic blessing" that is adoption if someone – WE – had done the hard work of prevention in the first place. 

Obviously not every person of privilege is in a position to help every mom and family in crisis – for reasons of geography if nothing else. None of us is omniscient and unknown crises are impossible prevent. Which is why I think the overarching narrative around adoption is so important – because while you may not be the neighbor to the newly pregnant woman who needs long-term support to keep her child safe and in her own home, that facebook friend of yours who thinks adoption is all rainbows and sunshine certainly is. It is our responsibility to cultivate a climate that is wise enough to know what needs to be done, and courageous enough to do it. 

For my part, I write words. I hug my son and mourn his loss with him, and celebrate the beauty of our forever family too. Together, we deliver tins of formula and become full-time cheerleaders of families preserved. We pour out, and advocate and hope. We do our best, which is all we can do. And we pray that you will too. 

a serious shout-out to some seriously-wonderful women

I recently encountered THIS article discussing research published earlier this year by a research team at Notre Dame University studying modern American parenting practices and their effects on child development. Read the original article to get the full flavor of their research, but I’ll paste in the meat of the article below:

“Ill-advised practices and beliefs have become commonplace in our culture, such as the use of infant formula, the isolation of infants in their own rooms or the belief that responding too quickly to a fussing baby will ‘spoil’ it,” Narvaez says.

This new research links certain early, nurturing parenting practices — the kind common in foraging hunter-gatherer societies — to specific, healthy emotional outcomes in adulthood, and has many experts rethinking some of our modern, cultural child-rearing “norms.”

“Breast-feeding infants, responsiveness to crying, almost constant touch and having multiple adult caregivers are some of the nurturing ancestral parenting practices that are shown to positively impact the developing brain, which not only shapes personality, but also helps physical health and moral development,” says Narvaez.

Studies show that responding to a baby’s needs (not letting a baby “cry it out”) has been shown to influence the development of conscience; positive touch affects stress reactivity, impulse control and empathy; free play in nature influences social capacities and aggression; and a set of supportive caregivers (beyond the mother alone) predicts IQ and ego resilience as well as empathy.

As soon as my eyes crossed these words – ‘nurturing parenting practices – the kind common in foraging hunter-gatherer societies’ – I started pumping my fist in the air – “BANA CHITI! BANA ROBERT! BANA MAPALO! Where are you ladies! They’re writing about you!”

I’m not such a fan of the word choice “foraging-hunter-gatherer” but whatever, the scientific community and a top research institution has publically announced that smarty-pants America is (on average) getting it wrong and my neighbor ladies are (on the whole!) GETTING IT RIGHT. This is BIG!

Many of the women I know are easily intimidated by the well educated, western world that is forever sending “experts” to come and teach them how to run their lives. I’ve seen them sit meekly under authoritative teaching about everything topic imaginable; and while a lot of change is needed, I just feel like its high time someone shouts it out that these ladies have something teach their western counterparts. You’re in the game, ladies! Don’t call this a comeback, you’ve been here for years!

I long to be a cheerleader to these moms, to tell them that their normal, natural everyday methods have been proven to produce smart, resilient, empathetic children. I wish I could give them an earpiece to hear the murmuring of American parents debating this and that and everything… and then give them the chance to school us all in how to be attachment parents with nothing but grace, strength and fluidity. Ladies, hats off to you. If I could put you all on a plane and fly you to Indiana to speak at a research convention, I would. Because I think you’re awesome and you have taught me so much. Thank you.  

the missing ingredient in American attachment parenting

Ever since our dear friends the Huddles put a copy of Sears and Sears’ The Baby Book in our hands, we’ve been fairly consistent, traditional attachment parents. Since beginning down this road almost two years ago now, I’ve read everything I can find about attachment parenting, its debates and support. Spurred by media attention from TIME magazine, the Huffington Post and about a few gazillion mommy bloggers, moms from all corners of the parenting spectrum are throwing in their two cents. One sentiment that I’ve heard/read over and over again has to do with the “demanding” nature of attachment parenting. Mothers have blogged and tweeted and submitted letters to the editor many times over, effectively saying, “OK so maybe I’m NOT mom enough. I can’t just sit and nurse my child 24/7. I have a job and a home and husband and a dog to attend to. There is not enough room in our bed. I can’t stand carrying this pumpkin all day. All hail those who are strong enough to hack it, but please don’t make me feel guilty for not being able to make it work.” 

Well dear “Attachment-parenting-feels-like-a-crushing-weight-more-than-a-joyful-task” mother, my Zambian lady friends understand where you are coming from, and they have something to share that may encourage you.

Rural Zambian mothers are 100% attachment parents, 100% of the time. There is no debate or discussion about it. This “style” of parenting does not have a special name, its not considered demanding, and not a single woman resents the “choice” she has made. And I’m here to tell you that these women are just like you. They are busy. They have multiple children that need to be bathed and fed and put to sleep. They have jobs and meetings and life-business. They do not posses an extra measure of strength (wait, I take that back, thanks to hauling water and swinging hoes, these women are way buffer than you are…) But apart from freakishly strong biceps, these women really are just like you. The only difference is that they live and raise their children in the context of community.

All Zambian mothers are attachment mothers, but not a one is an attachment mother in isolation. Any time the baby does not really need Mom, she is strapped to the back of another girl or boy or neighborMom and sent off to play. Entertainment, even naptime parenting is often delegated to someone other than bioMom. When the baby cries for food, she is brought to bioMom immediately. The emotional and psychological attachment never skips a beat. But otherwise, mom is free to cook, attend a meeting or bathe without the “demands” of being literally “attached” to baby every second of every day.

I’ve gotten the impression that Americans assume that to be a successful attachment parent, the mother is required to be the one to hold, feed, sleep with, entertain cuddle and play with her babe all day every day until the kiddo goes off to kindergarten. I get tired just thinking about it, and I’m sure Zambian women would too if their understanding of attachment involved such an incredible one woman show.

There is no mistaking that Mom is Mom – an irreplaceable, all-important figure for a well connected child. My Zambian mama friends have learned so well to read the cues of their child to know when they need closeness to Mom or just closeness to someone. Sending the two and four year olds off with the six and eight year olds lets the newborn sleep peacefully while Mom relaxes a while. Letting little ones explore the world with other children keeps their minds stimulated and prevents them from crying and clinging to mom out of boredom.

It is lamentable that America is really not set up with community structures that would be able to support this kind of network. Most American mothers do not have a dozen ready and willing baby sitters milling around outside their door waiting to take a baby and play for a while. American kids who are 12 and under have not been caring for babies since they were 5 and are generally not considered appropriate caretakers of other small children. Neighborhoods are, for the most part, not set up in such a way that all women are looking after all children at all times, and all children are free to play at any house or in any yard at all times. Truly, America’s isolationist culture has serious ramifications when it comes what’s feasible in the realm of child rearing.

this is "Pharaoh Pharaoh" happening in our back yard. in case you were wondering

I’ve mentioned to Jeremy before that I sincerely hope we are not called out of Zambia before the last of our children is done nursing. I don’t know what I would do without Bana Chiti offering to take Bronwyn on walks around the village; how I would make fires and cook meals without the 3^rd grade girls who fight over who gets to take Bronwyn home with them after school; how I would have quiet times, be with my husband or write things without the built in entertainment system that is THE VILLAGE. I don’t know what would become of my work if I couldn’t take Bronwyn to meetings without total assurance that playmates would appear out of no where, ready and willing to entertain my girl while I focused on the agenda. I have a feeling that if my current life were transposed into an American, no-community context, somebody would have to cry, somebody would get stuck in the pack and play, somebody would just have to deal, and that would be oh so sad for me.

mom's in there talking about important stuff like an HIV/AIDS pandemic...
and I'm playing with Mambwe and Mwewa. awesome.

I don’t have any practical, useful advice for struggling attachment parents in America short of changing the way the entire country does community. But since that is not overly likely, I guess all I can say is, I hear you. I understand why it’s hard. You are not lacking anything, but your culture is. Keep doing your best. Or just move next door to me. The village Mayo’s and I will be waiting.

confessions of a bush mama part 2

(I’m really enjoying this confession thing. Writers therapy at its best.)

So here's my other confession. I don’t let my baby cry it out.

My blood pressure rises when I even type this because this confession is even more touchy than the co-sleeping thing. I’ve googled this one too. And read books. And talked to mothers in person and read their exchanges on the internet. I don’t even need to explain the cry it out debate – its uglier than the co-sleeping one and again, everyone under the sun has an opinion.

My biggest regret from my early(er) parenting days was insisting that Bronwyn learn to go to sleep at a certain time, in a certain way. Well intentioned friends had led me to believe that the cry it out theory was a universal best practice, and yet, at six weeks old, we were driving everyone in the house crazy by letting Bronwyn “cry it out” at night, all because that’s what THE BOOK said to do. “But she needs to get on a schedule!” I told my sleep deprived father one morning. And in his wisdom, all he said was, “Why?” I had no answer. And that was the end of that. Nursing her back to sleep without consideration of time of day or time since last feeding was the best decision we ever made. She’s fat and happy, and we’re happy that she’s fat and happy. AND - icing on the cake - our neighbors are more than happy that she’s fat and happy.

"girl, I don't even know what to do with your happiness right now."

I’m also glad that we chose a culturally relevant method of sleeping and feeding because Zambians don’t let their babies cry either. Once, I was gone on an errand that took longer than I expected and Bronwyn was struggling to go down for a nap without me and was letting the world know of her unhappiness. Our neighbor girl Gertrude came banging on the door, pleading with Jeremy to let her do something, anything, to help the wailing babe. 

thanks for the offer Gertrude, but I think she wants more than the pen

On another occasion, we experimented with trying to see if Bronwyn could last a night without nursing at all – there were expected tears and, I kid you not, within two minutes Ba Ben’s flashlight was shining through our window trying to figure out where the fire or leopard or robber was that was preventing this mother from meeting her baby’s legitimate need.  

Bronwyn's message: this is not hard, people

The Zambian thought, with which I agree is – if mommy can prevent baby’s tears with a simple drink of milk, then why on earth would she withhold it? So serious is this philosophy that I have been given the death stare more than once by nearby moms who feel like I am clearly not moving fast enough to get my boob into my child’s mouth. I’ve developed lighting fast reflexes, bounding out of chairs and hurdling over bushes and goats to reach the crying babe. (I kid. But only sort of.) And the fascinating thing is this – I’ve never met a spoiled Zambian child. I’ve never encountered a child-run household or a mother who feels manipulated by her child’s “demands” to nurse. On the contrary, Zambian kids cherish, honor and respect their mothers all the more as they see her as the giver of milk and of comfort. I see it written on the pages of their life book, “She gives me that which I need and therefore I shall rise and call her blessed.” What more could a Proverbs 31 woman ask for? 

some of the sweetest boys you'll ever meet. happily
breastfed during those crucial development years,
and now clearly possessing extra confidence (and swagger) because of it.

Now, that said, when it comes to things other than nursing/feeding/sleeping with the wee ones, the “I won’t let you cry” card is off the table. A kid who is pitching a fit because of a scuffle with an older sibling or because she didn't get her way gets a look that says, “Now I can nurse you or you can sit there and scream but I am not fighting this battle for you.” Because the moms know the difference between need and want. When to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em. When to let the tears fall, and when not to. Thank you Kenny Rogers for your invaluable parenting advice.

fold.

But insofar as eating and sleeping are concerned, prompt, consistent, caring response is seen as nothing more than meeting a legitimate need in a legitimate way. Zambian mamas, and this hybrid known as Bana Winnie, will unabashedly choose to meet that need every time.

What about you? What has worked in your household?

confessions of a bush mama part 1

I have a confession. Our baby still sleeps in our bed.

A few months ago we were traveling to Lusaka and stopped over at a guesthouse to catch a few winks before continuing on with our journey. Anna, the sweet Zambian lady who owns the place along with her American husband asked me which room we had been assigned. I told her ‘four’ and she said, “oh why don’t you just move into ‘six,’ it has two beds because I know American’s don’t like to sleep with their babies. I giggled and said, “No its ok, we sleep with her. We like it that way.” The lady almost hugged me – “Oh thank you, thank you!” she said, grasping my arm in solid affirmation, as if I were doing her a favor. (We‘ve actually been friends with Anna ever since she bailed Jeremy out of prison that one time – but that’s another story for another blog post. If you are ever driving through Serenje though and need a meal or a place to stay, let me know and I’ll give you her number.)

We never intended to be long term co-sleepers. We have this super-duper thingy called a pea pod. It pops up and zips closed and has good ventilation without mosquito entry. After our shower, we were almost more excited about getting to use the pea pod than we were bringing home the new baby. But… Ask me how many minutes she has slept in it so far – I think 27. Between her every-five-seconds nursing and absolute need to feel another’s body heat, sleeping alone has been a non-option for this child, bless her heart. Unfortunately it took me quite a while to stop stressing about this “situation” and realize that we are just fine, not a parenting debacle, and that our family could actually thrive in a bed-sharing environment.

I love it mom - but I don't think we can both fit in here, so don't expect a nap out of me

I’ve googled co-sleeping and bed-sharing, and holy-mother-opinionated-fire there are some VERY strong feelings on this subject. Everything from “if your baby sleeps with your bed you are going to kill her, and kill your marriage, and you are a bad person,” to, “if your baby doesn’t sleep in your bed or at least close to it, you are cruel and unusual and heartless and therefore a bad person.”  

I’ve talked with my Zambian lady friends a lot about this and in case you want to know, (hold your fire, please, my dear disagreeing friends) they totally side with the bed-sharing mothers of the world. Anna at the guesthouse was so relieved that we slept with our baby because she, just like the plethora of Fimpulu-folk I’ve polled, absolutely concurs that a child should never sleep alone. To stick a baby in a crib is borderline child abuse. Babies belong right next to the mother until they are at least weaned, preferably potty trained and then they should be moved into a bed with another child. We’ve already had people offer to send their children to our house at night to sleep with Bronwyn when its time for her to move out of our bed. With respect to safety, I’ve never heard of a single SIDS case here. Never even heard it mentioned. I have a feeling this would would make a phenominal research project for an ethno-pediatrics PHD candidate. 

Oh and, What about romantic time with your husband? I sure did ask. And they all looked at me like I was an idiot and said something to the effect of “What kind of freaky sex do you people have? Just don’t make so much noise.” There you have it. The co-sleeping debate can be over now.

For us, the logistics of keeping Bronwyn with us havd been more important than anything. With no temperature control, having her in our bed means I can check to see if she is cold or sweating without going out from under the safety of our mosquito net. I nurse her frequently during the night but if you were to ask me how many times, I’d have to say, I don’t know – BECAUSE I WAKE UP AND GO BACK TO SLEEP 30 SECONDS LATER – and for that priceless gift, sweet pea can sleep with us till she’s 30 if she wants to. As long as I get my zzz’s.

Are you a bed sharing family? Has it worked well for you? Your friends in Zambia are giving you a long-distance high five!