16 Things We Didn’t Know About Adoption

Adoption is no easy road. Here are 16 things we didn’t know about adoption.

1. We didn’t know that even though you bring a child into your home when he is an infant, he will still have a strong loyalty to his birth parents.
2. We didn’t know our hearts could be so happy and so sad at the same time. While we rejoiced at the opportunity to call this child our own, our hearts broke for her birth parents who were experiencing a great sense of loss and pain.
3. We didn’t know it was possible to instantly fall in love with a little person whom we had just met. 
4. We didn’t know that we would grieve when people talked about who their baby looks like, because our baby didn’t resemble either of us.
5. We didn’t know people would ask hurtful questions such as, “How could his mom not want him, he is such an adorable baby!”
6. We didn’t know that we would gain so many new friends with adoption being the common denominator that drew us together.
7. We didn’t know that a child who comes into your home as a baby may still have difficulty bonding with his new family.
8. We didn’t understand the importance of staying home and limiting visitors so our child could know who is mom and dad.
9. We didn’t know that drugs and alcohol can leave an invisible mark on a child that sometimes isn’t seen until the child is older. If we would have, we could have spared our family added grief.
10. We didn’t know that while we loved our newest family member, we would grieve the “old us.”
11. We didn’t know how hard it is to find a new normal when a new child enters your family. 
12. We didn’t know that even though a child is very young when he enters your home, he is still experiencing a loss of all that is familiar, and he will be affected.
13. We didn’t know how important it is to hold an infant even when he is sleeping to encourage the bonding process.
14. We didn’t know that older children need excessive love and deliberate nurturing to feel safe, especially when they felt unsafe and unloved in their previous home.
15. We didn’t know a child who is loved and cared for could still be fearful and feel unsafe.
16. We didn’t know adoption would take us on a journey that would include depths of pain and heights of joy unlike any we had previously experienced–a journey so complicated that only that only those who have experienced it can truly relate.