Invisible Bonds

This post has been on mind a lot since I wrote it months ago. Worry that I would be judged and found lacking in some proper measure of maternal warmth kept me from publishing it sooner. PC discussions of adoption often involve trite platitudes about how it is the same, a mother's love is the same, regardless of how a child comes into our lives. The intensity of the love I have for each of my children is the same. The bonds, now that they have formed, are as strong. But, the process of attaching to a toddler as that child attached to me took my breath away with its difficulties and its setbacks and its sheer stubborn slowness.

I often felt ashamed of my emotions in the first year with my daughter (her second year). I felt compassion, tenderness and love. I felt sad and angry and hurt for her and all she had been through in her first year of life. I also felt tired of her. Tired of her tantrums and her anger and her indiscriminate affection. I felt angry too. Angry at her inability to ever accept what was offered as enough. I could never hold her enough, never play a game long enough, never push the swing long enough. It seemed for the longest time that I was not enough. Looking back on it now from a place of love and trust, I know that I did my very best and I did really well. We did really well. But, at the time I felt inadequate in my inability to love her instantly and without reservations, they way I did my newborn sons.

Hearing about birth and the first weeks postpartum from other women has given me a new perspective on the rough start with my daughter. I have listened to women describe their difficulties bonding to high needs infants. Months sometimes are required to get the positive feedback that allows a new mom to feel anything but tired and inadequate when a birth is traumatic or breastfeeding goes poorly or a newborn is collicky or refuses to sleep or be comforted. I realized that the shock of the bonding time with Ess hit me so hard in part because I was spoiled. My pregnancy with Gee was an enjoyable one, his birth exactly what I had planned. He breastfed eagerly and easily. I never experienced much doubt or fear. I bonded to him with unbreakable cords the moment he nuzzled to my chest at a few hours old and never even stopped to ponder when the meld occurred. He looked to me for food, comfort, warmth and security and I had the joy of being able to provide them all with little effort.

When I understood how different each birth mother and child's bonding story can be, it gave my heart permission to understand how different each and every mother and child's bonding story can be. I wonder - what about you? If you've adopted, did bonding happen instantly, slowly, somewhere in between? Was it a moment in time or a slow growth in trust? What if you birthed your children? Was it instant and almost invisible or did circumstances slow things down?

Here is my daughter's and my story.

Screaming - A Bonding Story

The overwhelming thing that I remember about the first year with my daughter is the screaming. Not a grief-stricken sob. Not a wail or a moan. For these things, for pain and grief, I was prepared. A full-on pissed off that I spent the first year of my life in an orphanage and it sucked SCREAM.

Every time I put her down. Every time a meal ended. Every bed time. Every time a toy frustrated her or I took a desired object away from her. Every time we left the playground. Every time we left any thing. She screamed like the ghosts of sixty other toddlers still surrounded her on the orphanage nursery floor and she had to howl with the most volume, the most need, the most fury, just to be heard.

She screamed until I wanted to scream, for sleep, for peace, for a moment to collect myself, for time with my one year old son. Until, I guiltily admit, I sometimes didn’t want to pick her up. Her screams felt so manipulative and unpleasant. Not a cry for help, but an angry, entitled demand. And, not a plea for me, her mother, to comfort her. She would let anyone hold her. Adults were interchangeable.

Often, when she screamed and thrashed at my feet in public over some offense taken, women approached her to comfort her. I felt invisible, removed. Oh no, I’m not her mother. I’m just standing here. I had to fight that lethargy constantly. Anger is not endearing. It is hard to love. (Wise words that had to be applied inward, to myself, if I sought a bond of love.) I had to fight the feeling that I was not entitled to be her mother. That she not only didn’t prefer me, she didn’t like me. That the woman sitting next to me would do it better, would be worthy enough to earn her exclusive love.

Time passed. She learned slowly to trust me. To trust that I would be there when she woke up, that we would eat treats again, that we would return to the swing another day. We joined a cooperative toddler school that met twice a week. The parents met without the children in groups once a week, to give the kids practice separating.

My son in his infinite, attached, normalcy screamed on cue when I left the room, just like all the other two-year-olds. Perfectly age appropriate separation anxiety. Not Ess. She happily played, climbing into anyone’s lap. For once, Ess wasn’t the screamer. Just when I most wanted her to scream. Any adult in a storm.

The year went by. The parent group was discussing aggression when the first sobbing screams drifted in. “Momma. Momma. Mooommmaaaa!” I didn’t move. It wasn’t my son. No one else jumped up. The sound continued, long, drawn out, heartbroken.

She entered the room with her fists stuffed into her open mouth, tears flowing down her face.

“She just got sad,” the mom with her said.

“Momma,” she sobbed, “I sit with you.”

I picked her up and sat quietly with her on my lap while the conversation continued as if the earth hadn’t just moved. In my head, I screamed from the rooftops.

It’s okay. It’s going to be okay, baby. My baby. My daughter. My child. Finally, all mine.