Every child is entitled to have items at home that are made for and by people of his race.

Tuesday afternoon was a big one for us in some ways. On Tuesday we had our last formal visit with Karen, our WACAP social worker. Marla came along as well, to our delight. This last visit was so very different from the day over a year ago when Karen did our homestudy. That day was preceded by a week of cleaning, re-organizing, and agonizing over childproofing and fire extinguishers. I had to have everything just so. This time we spent the hours before Karen and Marla arrived studying in our separate chairs, baby sleeping in the bedroom. When the phone rang to announce that someone was at the front door I belatedly noticed that the table needed to be wiped down and we probably should have swept the floor.

But I've learned that this is not the stuff that a good social worker is looking for during home visits. We easily whiled away 2 hours chatting with Marla and Karen about baby J, who joined us when her nap was through. We covered everything from the new info on Z to J's eating and sleeping habits to the various and sundry plans I have simmering for future family planning. Again, lovely, like chatting with old friends who just want to hear everything about you.

"So," said Karen at one point. "You mentioned last visit that you had been hoping to get some books for J that were focused on an African-American perspective."

"Yes!" I went scrambling through the condo to grab the various books that we've collected, mostly through gifts, that are full of brown baby faces. "Here's Whose Knees are These, Whose toes are those, Please Baby Please, Let's Count Baby, Beautiful Brown Eyes, and Blueberry Girl."

We spent some time thumbing through the books with our guests. I have to admit, I'm pretty fond of our little collection. While I was conscious of the (overwhelmingly white) racial images in storybooks and children's literature before we met our daughter I am doubly aware of them now. We have a couple shelves full of books for her, blessed as we are with literary friends who send them by the boatload. Lots of kids' books like Good Night Moon, the Dr. Seuss books, and other newer classics like the I Love You Book either use animals or multi-colored rainbow people whose ethnicity is non-specific. But many of the books I loved growing up feature distinctly white heroines. That's not all that odd - most of them are written by white people.

Every child is entitled to have items at home that are made for and by people of his race.

This item on the TAC Bill of Rights was extremely intimidating to me at first. When I read through the list the first time this was one item that I drew a blank on when I tried to brainstorm a strategy. But, I was thinking mostly about obvious cultural artifacts back then, before there was an actual brown baby in my life. The things that came to mind for me were items like artwork, music, and clothes. How will I know what to pick? I thought. What to pay? I don't want to feel like a giant phony, filling my house with art by and for black people, when I'm not black. I felt especially sensitive to the white tendency to appropriate items and practices from other ethnic groups cultural lives and turn it to our own purposes. I didn't want to do that, or to be perceived that way. I tried to imagine one of our black friends coming over to find our condo made over with black images and artwork everywhere. Awkward.

I was forgetting the obvious. The reason to have items in the home, most of the items we have in the home anyway, is in order to use them. And what do we use the most? Things like hair and skin care products, clothes, and if you are a baby or child toys and books. (If you are an adult maybe books as well!) One of the reason that my child is entitled to have these items in her home that are made by and for people of her ethnicity is that they will work better for her than items made by and for people of my ethnicity, right? Oh yeah, right.

So, right now, we are concentrating on books and toys. Most (with the exception of Blueberry Girl and Beautiful Brown Eyes) of the books that I pulled for Karen and Marla are written by black authors and illustrators for black and brown children. There isn't anything especially remarkable about them except that the pictures inside are of brown babies counting, finding knees and toes, etc. But I don't think we could overestimate the importance of finding engaging reading materials for our daughter that is written for her - board books and story books and eventually literature that she can read and find herself in.

So, the books part is easy and fun. But what about other stuff? Other items? Some things - hair products for example- will come naturally, because I want what works best for baby J. Others, like artwork and home decor, is a little more difficult.

There is a fine line, I think, between creating an environment that respectfully supports my child's racial identity and appropriating something that doesn't belong to me. I am not sure, just yet, where that line is. I know that anything we buy especially for baby J won't cross it. When it comes to things we buy for our family it gets a little fuzzier and will require me to feel things out a little bit.

I looked around our house and took inventory of what we have on our walls. If I don't count pictures of Andrew and I or of J, we still have several pieces of art that contain images of people in them. Two are wall hangings from Africa - one of a mother and child that K. brought back from Cameroon when he was doing work there, and an image of three gender indeterminate people that our neighbors brought back from Kenya for us this past summer. The painting in our bedroom has two children, both of whom are white. Then there is a more abstract digital painting with a woman's face (lots of women on our walls!) and she is definitely white. Finally I have a wall space that is dedicated to religious art - a couple of icons, a Mary candle, and two small nativity scenes that stay up year round. I have two more nativities that come out at Christmas time. All of these except for one reflect white featured people - one of the permanent nativities is from New Mexico and the figures are Latino in appearance.

I think there is some room for growth there. I want that growth to be natural, however. Hopefully our home always reflects who we are as a family. I am sure this is true in intentional and unintentional ways - remembering the Montessori principle of the unspoken lesson. As baby J grows, and we grow as parents with her, we should remain mindful of what unspoken lessons about the value of her racial identity within our family our home is teaching her.

This item on the TAC bill of rights is something small but very important, I think. I take for granted, as a white person, how many of the items that surround me are made just for me. My digital camera will never ask me if someone blinked after taking a picture when everyone's eyes are open, as happens to Andrew's Vietnamese classmate and her family. If our webcam had face tracking technology it would follow my face just fine. No one ever gave my mother a "classic" children's book with no white faces in it. The soaps, shampoos, and lotions in most supermarkets and grocery stores are made for hair and skin just like mine. And much of the art and religious imagery I might be drawn to contains images of people who look, well, like me. This is not an experience I can replicate for baby J. But I can work to make sure that she, too, grows up surrounded by and with access to items that are made by and for people who look like her. It might not always be what feels natural to me, and it will take research and effort. But it can be done - and it is her right to have this experience.

She's never loved baths...

...but our girl did a pretty good job on her baptism day!

I have a few posts in the works that aren't fully cooked yet, so I'll share some pictures from baby J's baptism to keep things moving 'round here.
Making it official.

Those dangerous waters! We went full-on naked baby baptism, and it was amazing.

With her godfather, Stephen.

Here we have classic baby J. She has her opinions.

We can be a tough lot to corral for photographs

Ah, there we go. Beautiful, wonderful day. ♥

All photos by Robin Dupuy, our friend and a gentleman.

OA Roundtable #13 - agreeing on openness.

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It's designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don't need to be part of the Open Adoption Bloggers list to participate, or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you're thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table.

This OA Roundtable topic is from Andy at Today's the Day.
We often hear about open adoptions where the two sides don't want the same level of openness. First mothers who don't get updates as often as they would like, or not as many visits each year. Or adoptive parents who want to include their child's first mother in his life, but she is not ready.

But what we don't often discuss is when people on the same side of the triad can't agree on the level of openness in an adoption.

•It could be a wife who wants a fully open adoption but the husband only wants to send letters once a year.
•Or a first mother isn't ready for an open adoption but the first father wants to be part of the baby's life.
•Maybe a spouse isn't supportive of their partner entering into reunion with their first mother.
•Or a partner who came along after the adoption and isn't comfortable with your relationship with your placed child.
•And the classic Hallmark movie of the year scenario: Your mother-in-law is convinced that the baby will be snatched away from under your nose if you have an open adoption.
How would/do you navigate these situations? Does your current relationship impact the type of open adoption that you have? How does this affect your current relationship?

"I just feel protective," S said to me. S is one of my closest and dearest friends. We went to college together, and have been through enough of life closely linked to each other that at this point we function more like siblings than anything. "I guess I'm just suspicious by nature."

My experience of S is not that she is suspicious by nature. But protective of me? Absolutely.

We had been talking about Z, J's first mom, and some new information I had just received that may turn out to be a game changer in terms of the levels of openness in our adoption. My friend's first questions, when I brought up seeking more openness from Z, were oriented towards protecting and preserving what she perceives as our nuclear family: Andrew, Alissa, and baby J.

As I have explained the adoption process over and over to friends and family, this is something that comes up all the time. The folks who love us are, naturally, most concerned with preserving what we worked so hard and waited so long to achieve by adopting baby J, and sometimes it seems like the most natural place for them to go when thinking about Z is to wonder if she is a threat. I forget, at times, that we were not the only ones burned by our failed match - and that most of our community who felt invested in that experience and who cried with us when it fell through haven't spent large chunks of their lives becoming educated about open adoption. So I am glad that our dear ones are comfortable enough with us to voice these concerns. I'd rather get it settled now.

So, while Andrew and I are in agreement about the level of openness we are hoping for and how we would go about it if we have the opportunity to pursue a relationship with Z, I also understand how and why that might sound scary to our extended family and community of friends. The amazing thing about our community, however, is that I can trust them to respect our choices. This is a gift that not everyone receives from loved ones. So I look forward to dialogue about it - because I know that questions like the ones S posed to me over coffee aren't judgements on me, Andrew, or Z, but actual attempts by people who love us to understand this alternative way of family building that we are engaged in. They don't have to agree with us to support who we are. Time will tell, and S and I will still be talking about baby J over coffee for years and years to come.

Wordless Wednesday

Snapshot, MLK Day.

We were on a walk with a neighbor couple and their precocious four year old, enjoying some rare winter sunshine when we came to the corner and stopped at the light. J was snuggled up to my chest in her Ergo, blinking sleepily in the brightness. Andrew caught up to me and we waited together. Our party wasn't alone on the corner. It was MLK day, and many of the events in our city that celebrate the legacy of Dr. King happen in our neighborhood. A thin black woman walked up next to us, lit a cigarette, and did a double-take at the sight of J.

"Is that your baby?" She asked, looking past me to Andrew.

"Yup, this is my baby." I replied, letting myself sound proud.

"Really." She looked again at J, squinting a little. "What's her name?"

I told her. The light turned green and we started crossing the street together. She walked next to me in silence for a couple seconds and then as we reached the other side spoke again.

"Well you have got yourself one beautiful baby!"

"I know, right?" I smiled at her. "Thank you."

"You better take care of that baby!" She tossed it back over her shoulder, heading a different direction from our little crowd. "If you don't, I'm going to whoop ya."

"Don't worry," I whispered softly into J's fuzzy curls, kissing her forehead. "You won't have to whoop me."

Plan vs. Reality: Feeding

"So, Auntie Lissa," my three year old niece S. said to me last week during a visit with her and her mom and brother. She had watched carefully as I fed baby J a couple of times during our time together. "Before, did you feed J with your nipples?"

Oh dear, I couldn't help thinking to myself. This is what you get for deciding not to do adoptive breastfeeding.

"I didn't" I told her.

"Why?"

"Well, Jubilee didn't grow in my tummy like your brother and you did in your mommy's tummy." S. knows all about babies, as she has a little brother who is a year old. "So I couldn't feed her that way."

S. looked dumbfounded. "She didn't grow in your tummy?! How did you get her??"

Now, my sister-in-law has had more than one discussion with S about baby J, and how she joined our family. But that's the thing with kids her age- sometimes they have to hear things over and over for them to make sense. (It is likely that we will experience a similar phenomenon with J someday. We'll tell her and tell her the story of her birth and how we became her parents and then one day she'll suddenly go "Wait, WHAT?!")

S and I had a good talk about how baby J came to be in our family, and I sent my sister-in-law home with some of the adoption themed storybooks that we have been given, to read at their leisure. After we said goodbye and sent S and family on their way I heated up a bottle for my baby. I cuddled J close to my body, her head resting against my bare arm and her wee hand clutching my finger, and watched her devour her meal. Sometimes when I feed her I need to mentally brush away the spiderweb feelings of guilt that I didn't try harder to breastfeed. That was, at one point, the plan.

The Plan:
It turns out that being pregnant is not what causes women to lactate. The hormones that surge through a pregnant woman's body do prepare the breasts to produce milk, but lactation itself is a result of stimulation - the baby feeding is what causes it. This means that it's possible for a woman to produce milk and breastfeed a baby that she has not given birth to. This doesn't mean that it is possible for that woman to produce enough milk to be the sole source of nutrition for an infant, however.

I latched on (pun intended) to the adoptive breastfeeding idea almost immediately after our profile went out. It seemed like just my kind of project. I researched various ways of inducing lactation, from the rather intense medicated protocol, to the comfort-and-bonding only method which simply calls for offering the baby the breast for comfort purposes and considering any milk eventually produced a bonus. (For a good compilation of resources on the options, click here.)Andrew and I went to see a lactation specialist, and discussed all the options thoroughly. I was disappointed to learn that even in a best case scenario the most I could expect to produce, milk-wise, was about 25% of my baby's food. I was also fairly daunted by the amount of work involved in generating that - it would mean going on hormone treatments for several months, and then a combination of one particular drug with some herbs plus pumping around the clock once we were either matched or had baby. Ideally this method works best when an adoptive mother (or biological mother using a surrogate) is matched early and knows when to expect a child. We didn't have that advantage.

As time wore on I realized that I was probably putting off making a decision on which path to take for a reason. Andrew and I stopped fertility treatments after only a few months of exploring that option. We decided that a biological child wasn't important enough to us to endure all of the medications, hormones, and intrusions of medical personnel into our lives and bodies, even if the cost had been reasonable. I left that world behind me gladly, and made a pact with my body to stay away from that sort of hormonal meddling (including hormonal birth control) forever more.

Clearly, for me, the medicated option was out.

So I planned to start pumping when we were matched, in hopes of producing something for our baby, and then to use a device like this one for feeding while breastfeeding.

Since exclusive breastfeeding isn't possible for adoptive moms, I also scrupulously researched formulas, flirted briefly with making my own, and eventually settled on Earth's Best. This, I reasoned, would be how we'd spend all the money we would be saving by using cloth diapers.

That was the plan.

The Reality:
When we were chosen by Y we initially thought she would be delivering within a few days, and I just figured we would deal with feeding after the birth. As things stretched out, Y and I had a chance to discuss feeding, and I told her what formula I wanted to use. We planned to bring it to the hospital so that the baby would be able to just start with the organic formula from the beginning. Of course, Baby C came on her own schedule, and then Y found she couldn't give her up. I arrived home too demoralized to really think about feeding.

J was 16 days old when we met her, and she was already used to a certain brand of formula and a particular kind of bottle. My attempts to nurse her for comfort were met with deep frustration and confusion on her part and I quickly gave it up. It's not bonding, I reasoned, if all the baby does is scream. Also, I didn't want to rock the boat with Granny M too much by waltzing in and announcing that I had x, y, and z better ways to do things than what she had been doing with J and the 47 odd babies who had preceded her in Granny M's careful care. So, for the eleven days we were in Georgia J ate the formula she had started life eating from the bottles that Granny M had determined were the best choice.

We ended up loving the bottles. J was just hitting her two week mark when we met her, which is when babies tend to start spitting up. She is a champ at spitting up. Dr. Brown's seems to help, and we quickly abandoned the bottles we had picked out before baby (Born Free) in favor of them.

Formula was a bit more confusing for us. We went back and forth on whether or not to switch her to Earth's Best or leave her on the formula that she had started on. She seemed to be thriving, but in the end Andrew and I decided it was more important to have her on something organic. This is when the debacle began. First, I realized that we had accidentally fed J almost an entire can of formula for 9-24 month olds. (Okay, in my defense the can is the same shape and color as the regular formula! WHO DOES THAT? Don't they know that new parents aren't getting any sleep?!?!?!) When Andrew pointed out the discrepancy I burst into tears and demanded he return to the store for organic formula, since her routine was all broken up already. We decided to get the organic version of the same formula she had been using, in hopes of easing the transition. She happily ate a couple bottles of it, and then I found this. The new formula went straight into the garbage, and Andrew went back to the store for a can of Earth's Best.

Baby J, unlike her mother, maintained a calm and practical demeanor through this smorgasbord of formulas. And she's been eating Earth's Best happily now since just after Thanksgiving. Turns out, according to our pediatrician, it's best to make any formula switches early, before a strong taste preference develops.

I would say that, so far, feeding is the area of parenting in which I have felt the least confident. I feel guilty sometimes that I can't give J breastmilk, because I believe in the benefits. But I also know that, for me, breastfeeding would have been yet another opportunity for my body to fail me in the parenting-and-reproduction arena. I have fought - still fight - to experience my physical self in a positive way. It is important that, as J's mother, I keep that up.

And, to be honest, it's hard to feel too bad about it. J is thriving. She is one of the happiest and sweetest people I've ever met. We've worked hard as a family to bond in other ways, such as skin-to-skin time and feedings that mimic breastfeeding as much as possible. As we've gotten to know our girl we have learned how to prepare her food the way she likes the very best: mixed in advance to lessen air bubbles, heated just so, and served in a Dr. Brown's. There are times - usually when we are waiting the interminable three minutes for a bottle to heat - that I wish I could just whip out a breast and feed my baby. But when I watch my husband feed his daughter, her cheek resting on his bare arm while they gaze soulfully into each others eyes, I don't mind a bit.

I just want to say, to put it out there, that I think adoptive breastfeeding is a worthwhile and wonderful thing to do, if you really really want to. As my story demonstrates, if you don't really want it - it probably won't happen. A good friend of mine passed on some parenting advice she recieved when her daughter was born. "Alissa," she told me, "figure out what's super important to you, one or two things, and focus on that. You cannot do it all." For me, breastfeeding didn't end up in the top two. For those where it does - I applaud you.

All moms (I think) struggle with guilt from the pressure of providing a perfect life for our kids within a decidedly imperfect world. I can't speak for what it's like for mothers who are parenting their biological children, but for me as an adoptive mother I am finding the opportunities to feel guilty can be omnipresent and multi-dimensional. Feeding could be yet another opportunity to beat myself up over not being able to offer "the best" option to my child. Or - it can be an opportunity for me to remember that "the best" has a different definition for each individual situation. Part of the responsibility of parenthood is taking on the discernment process for what that "best" is for my own unique family, my own individual child. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

So far our pudding is doing just fine.

Lullaby baby

The month of January has three big weeks in a row for our little one: last week she was baptized - her formal initiation into our faith and religious community, yesterday our dear friends Ruthie and Carly threw us a baby shower that was very much J's initiation into our community of close friends, many of whom are musicians and artists, and then next week my darling mother-in-law is sponsoring a shower that will be attended by Andrew's relatives and folks dear to us and to her on that side of the water.

I have to say it is so much fun to have all of this happening after our baby is here to enjoy it!

Yesterday's shower was co-ed, and devoid of any baby games or contests. That is really not so much our style. Instead our dear ones with musical gifts brought songs for our girl, and a few of them graciously gave me permission to post the videos here. It was a perfect afternoon in so many ways. The decorations, the thoughtful presents and presence of so many of our beloved friends, and the music. Baby J hung on every note, paid very close attention, and her focus lagged only at the very end of the last lullaby, when she finally fell asleep. (during a rousing sing-a-long no less!)

Forgive the cinematographer. I wasn't paying as much attention as I maybe should have been - it was too fun.

Noah Star and his lovely wife Julie Jane.


These three boys, plus Jon E. Rock on drums, make up the band Wonderful, and a chunk of the group United State of Electronica. Here, they're singing a Wonderful song, baby boy blue.


And my sweet friend who I call Sarahsue, with her hunky lute-playing boyfriend John, making one of the quintessential geek songs of our adolescence into a lute-y lullaby. Forgive the overpowering vocals of the camera lady during the sing-a-long at the end - I got quite carried away. Also there were a lot of people singing along but on the video it sort of sounds like just me. ahem.

The only thing that could have made the afternoon better would have been if you were there. And you, too. My far away friends are constantly on my mind these days.

(p.s. I do realize that J's first name appears in one of these songs. I'm okay with it, as I've posted it here before. ♥)