Mommy Shopping

When I first found out I was pregnant with J, I started reading books, everything I could get my hands on really. “What to expect when expecting” “What to eat when expecting” If it had to do with being pregnant, giving birth or bring home a new baby I had to read it. I took a lot of valuable information way from these books. So when I was pregnant with L, I re-read a few of them - a bit of refresher. So now that we are “paper pregnant” and waiting for # 3 who will be a baby but not a new born I decided I needed to get my hands on everything I could about adoption.

I have also been reading a lot of articles on the internet. One article in particular caught my attention. The subject -

MOMMY SHOPPING

Perfect. I am a Mommy!

Perfect. I like to Shop!

Sounds Good, but mommy shopping is not good for the baby or the Mommy (or Daddy). So what is this Mommy Shopping? I will try to explain Mommy Shopping the best I can and how it may affect our daughter.

Our daughter will have been separated from her birth mother and then again she will be separated from at least one other mother, her foster mother, before she will join our family. Given the amount of loss our little girl will have experienced she may come home ready to be once again handed off to yet another care giver.

To the world our daughter may look well adjusted, happy and very social. She may reach out to family, friend’s even strangers. She may coo and make eye contact with Grandma or the checker at the grocery store. She may appear completely happy to be passed around from family to friends to the mailman. But what she is doing is Mommy Shopping. She expects that the two (maybe even more) heartbreaking separations that she has already experienced in her very short little life will continue to happen. Once my little girl is placed in my arms I will do everything in my power to make sure she never feels the need to Mommy Shop.

When our little girl gets home we need to help her establish that we are her family. That we are her Mommy and Daddy and that she never needs to look further then home to know she is Loved, Safe and Wanted. We need to reinforce that we are her family before we can help her establish bonds with other family members and friends.

An action as simple and harmless as allowing Grandma to hold her, feed her, change her diaper, is only reinforcing that Mommies (and Daddies too) are replaceable. If we allow our daughter to Mommy Shop we are also allowing her to avoid Bonding with us.

In order to make sure that our daughter does not Mommy Shop we plan to temporarily restrict holding to just Mommy, Daddy and brothers when she first comes home. We are also going to have to restrict feedings and attending to her cries and other intimate needs as well.

We understand that many of our family and friends are just as anxious and excited for our little girl to join our family. All of us will have looked at her picture many times. We will have discussed her arrival. We will have made plans for her to join the family. To us she will already be part of our family. But to her we will be strangers. She will not be old enough to understand that her Foster Family was only temporary. She will not be old enough to know that she will be leaving her birth country and all it holds; familiar faces, sights, smells, all that she has grown to know as her home.

While we have been waiting for her she has been living with a wonderful family in South Korea. They have been the ones that have awoken many times a night for feedings. They have been the ones who have rocked her to sleep and comforted her when she has cried out at night. They are the ones who she sees when she first wakes up and when she closes her eyes at night. They have been the ones to play peek-a-boo. And in a blink of the eye they too are now gone and she is once again in the hands of a stranger.

Because of all she has been through we plan to do the following;

We are going to baby our baby. We are going to consider her emotional age when she comes home and not her chronological age. Don’t be surprised if you see us giving her a bottle instead of a Sippy-cup, or tending to her at every little whimper. She needs to get what we all give our new born babies, the trust that we are her Mommy and Daddy and we are here for her forever.

We are going to stay close to Home. And at first we will also need to limit visitors. We are strangers to this little girl. She has not been waiting a long time for us. So when we come home we will stay close to home, limit visitors and when we introduce her to family and friends we will restricting holding and passing her around (but this won’t be forever we promise).

We plan to Use a Baby Carrier and carry her as long and often as possible. She didn’t get 9 months of Mommy carrying her around and she needs that closeness to bond.

Establish a routine, yes us. Although we have never been much to a strict routine with the boys, we plan to provide our daughter with a very strict routine at first to allow her to adjust to the many changes in her life. We feel that giving her a consistent routine will help her predict what will happen next and give her a feeling of safety.

Often when parents come home with a new baby everyone wants to hold the baby and help with feeding and diaper changes, ok only Grandmas enjoy doing this. If you want to help but don’t know what to do because we are restricting the care of our daughter to Mommy and Daddy only. I may suggest that our boys will love the extra attention to be given to them until their little sister is ready to be cared for by anyone other than Mommy and Daddy. After all we don’t want her Mommy Shopping!

Some great information on this subject can be found at: www.A4everFamily.org