Any other adoptive Moms?

[beemama]

I know there's at least one other adoptive mom on here! Anyone else? If so, we could do introductions. Otherwise, I'm always available to answer questions about adoption!

Here's my intro: I have a bio son who is 2 and fabulous. When he was 18 months old, we brought Charlie home from Ukraine at age 3.5. Charlie has special needs. He's now 4 and is doing awesome. He's truly amazing. He's adjusted so well and now I can't wait to add a baby girl to the mix! Domestic or international, wherever we find her!

Rach

[supermommy]

My Dh and I are very interested in adoption :-) It will be a few years for us though and by few I mean at least 5. We want a domestic adoption of a little girl, that is all we have discussed so far.

[supermommy]

oo I do have one question though. Was is strange bringing in an older child? To be so used to a toddler and then get a preschooler suddenly?? :-) We are looking to adopt preschool age but are concerned with the bonding since they are already older.

[mattbenmom]

I am an adoptive mom. I have 8 children in my home adopted through foster care. Their ages range from 17 this week to 17 monhs old. We have 3 sibling groups and 2 children that came home as a single child. 7 of my 8 have special needs ranging from RAD to FAE to ADHA to Autism and every combination in-between. They are all amazing blessings and challenges. Of coarse we struggle every now and again but for the most part we enjoy the crazy ride and have created an unbelievable family that I am proud of every second of every day.


That's us in a nut shell, lol.

Erin

[beemama]

Mattbenmom - Are you a foster parent, or did you adopt out of foster care? Well, obviously you did... I mean, do you foster parent as well as adopt. I've wanted to be a foster parent ever since I was a kid! We have no immediate plans to do so, but it's in the future for sure.

Adoption is a great way to grow your family! We'd love to do a domestic adoption of a baby girl, but we're kind of waiting for something to fall in our laps. If nothing does, in 1.5 years or so we'll do another international adoption. At least, that's the plan! ha.
ANYWAY, to answer your question - for us it was not at all weird to bring an older child home, but we had a unique situation. Because Charlie has a heart defect in addition to down syndrome, his orphanage basically left him in a bouncy seat most of the time. When we met him, he had just learned to sit on his own and took all his food by bottle (still does mostly). He couldn't talk and was TINY. It was very much like bringing home a 3 month old. It helped with the adjustment, especially for our bio son who was 18 months at the time. There is the fact that there's 3.5 years of Charlie's life that we know very little about, which makes me sad sometimes. He was in the hospital a lot, and I don't know if anyone was there to hold his hand, things like that. But he's fit into our family so perfectly. He was meant for us! Here's a blog post to see how amazingly far he's come: loveissugarfree.blogspot.com/2011/10/six-months-home-pic-heavy.html

It can be more difficult to add a preschooler to your home. A lot depends on that child's past experiences - specifically, if they were abused or neglected. Which if they come to you through foster care, is very likely. There probably won't be an "instant" bond, but it will come with time. Many adoptive parents have said for the first year, it felt like they were just babysitting, but it improves greatly with time. Older adopted children already have a past, experiences, memories that they'll bring with them. But more importantly, they have a future - and they need loving homes to have the best future possible!

My friend adopted a little girl from Charlie's orphanage, who was 3 at the time. She's been home for a year and has adjusted wonderfully! She has a great bond with her two older brothers. They fight like siblings, but it's obvious they love each other.

There are several good books on adopting older children and bonding. I'd find titles but the boys are up.

I'm passionate about adoption and orphan care, and I love to help any interested families! ;-)

[aprilandy]

We have a couple adopted children --both adopted as infants, both domestic, both open adoptions (now)

Hey Erin:)

[elizac]

Out of curiosity, how did you decide on Ukraine? DH and I drove through Ukraine a few years ago and loved the country and its people. Does Charlie speak both languages or mostly English?

[beemama]

We didn't choose Ukraine - we chose Charlie. He just happened to be in Ukraine! We loved Ukraine, and might adopt from there again. (Also looking at Korea, Hong Kong, Bulgaria, Serbia, and the US!) It was so beautiful.

Charlie grew up hearing Russian, but he didn't learn to speak until after we brought him home. We're teaching him English and ASL. The kids learn English so quickly tho! My friend's daughter has been home for one year and is completely fluent in English now!

I bought Charlie a Bilingual Baby Russian DVD for Christmas so we can keep some Russian around! Right now we use a few words like maladyets (good job), spaseeba (thank you), edee suda (come here) and nyet. It's fun!

**Edit: forgot to say how we found Charlie! We found him through a ministry, reecesrainbow.org. They help find adoptive families for kids around the world who have special needs.

[elizac]

Thank you for sharing! So very interesting. You probably know that there is a large Russian community in the area-- not sure about Ukrainians though

[mattbenmom]

Hi April!!

To answer your question Beemama- All 8 of our kids were foster children here first. We have had 29 foster kids in our home in the past 8 or so years. Of those 29, 8 were meant to stay forever. With the finalization of the last 2 girls we have decided to close our foster care license partly because 8 kids ( 7 with special needs) is enough and mostly because the attachment piece of having a child live here one day and gone the next is VERY difficult on the entire family and with their own abandonment and attachment issues it became very clear that I couldn't ask them to live their childhood like that. So now we are focusing on our forever family We do have notes in each of the kids files through the county/state that if a sibling of one of our kids comes into foster care we would be notified and given a chance to reopen our foster care license to keep the kids together