The days were nothing compared to the nights
By Angie Gallop
I’ll call our youngest daughter “FE” for “Former Elf”. Even though we openly talk about her birth parents, she tells us that she was one of Santa’s Elves in the North Pole before she came to live with us at 14 months of age.
Her journey was dramatic and, dare I say, traumatic. We had less than a week to prepare for her coming home, and her foster mother had just a half hour to say goodbye. FE started her life with us by crying the entire hour-long drive home.
Running to strangers, climbing on everything, trips to Emerg
In those early days FE was on all the time. She was full of smiles, hugs and kisses for us but just as ready run and offer them to any (and it seemed every!) stranger. She needed constant vigilance. She climbed all structures taller than herself, and when she wasn’t climbing, she needed to be “up!” If denied our arms, she would melt into a tantrum.
In the end, I had to put her in daycare, so that we could keep our home business running and pay the mortgage—a $40-per-day solution introducing more unfamiliar caregivers to an already chaotic roster. FE was sent home sick regularly. I can’t remember how many times we ended up in the emergency ward, her breathing laboured, her nose bleeding. So many nose bleeds.
Days were nothing, compared to the nights
FE didn’t sleep. She’d wake up screaming two or three times per night, sending me from nervous sleep into fight-or-flight mode. Soon, I hadn’t slept a full night in months.
I can hardly write this next part. I’m crying as I do it. There were multiple times when my husband had to intervene—pull me away and send me to another room—because I was too angry and exhausted to respond to our child with anything resembling love.
This little girl had been torn away from all the family she knew, placed in a strange home, and was unable to talk about it or understand any words we could offer. And I was resentful and felt like a failure because of all those times I couldn’t soothe her.
Both my husband and I needed time away from work demands so we could be fully available to her. Instead, we both had to work full-time days to keep our family afloat because, as self-employed business owners, we had no Employment Insurance. We were exhausted, barely keeping it together at work, and in a scary financial freefall as a result.
I know she felt our fear and anger. I hope she didn’t believe it was because of her.
In the end, we sought professional help at $90 per hour. I’m not sure we’d have felt secure enough to spend this money had we not known we could count on financial support from my parents. Together, with the counsellor’s help, we started to put together strategies and see our way out of exhaustion.
Five years later…
These days, FE has her teachers laughing at her expressions “I got to tell you something…” and commenting on her creativity and kindness toward others.
Looking back, it’s easy to see what we should have done: taken some months off to bond with our new arrival. We just couldn’t see how to afford it. And I’m one of the lucky ones who had family support. Even then, we experienced very dark moments.
All children need time with their parents or caregivers—far more time than our goal-setting, outcomes-demanding, profits-driven society accords them. That needs to change.
It’s the least we can do—give the most vulnerable kids in our society a little more time with their parents’ undivided attention.
Forming a family through adoption is one of the most joy-filled but also one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Equitable benefits, more time and less financial pressure would have given us the space and energy to simply sit and hold her more. To enjoy her little hands patting our faces. Her hazel eyes staring into ours as she quizzically considered: Are these people mine—really mine?
The opinions expressed in blogs posted reflect their author and do not represent any official stance of Adopt4Life. We respect the diversity of opinions within the adoption, kinship and customary care community and hope that these posts will stimulate meaningful conversations. Our #timetoattach campaign continues with the aim to adapt public policy to introduce 15 weeks of parental leave (attachment leave) for adoptive parents and kin and customary caregivers. As we, along with Western University and the Adoption Council of Canada, have worked to bring awareness to this important support required for families and children, it has been so important to share the real experiences of parents and their children as they sought to form healthy and lasting attachments. Find out how to share your story.