Today he said “Abba”

First, thank you Dana for posting your soup recipes! We’re eating a lot of soup these days. Matan eats anything with a mushy consistency. Got any pie recipies? I’ve been suffering from a terrible sweet cravings, especially the sweet-sour of an apple and cranberry pie with lots of cinamon, that sort of thing is making me drool. I tried to satisfy it in Ukraine when I saw a cherry pie at McDonalds. It looked perfect, but had that plasticy aftertaste that makes you realize why they only cost a buck.

Matan is such an easy child to be with compared to our experience with Karen at the same stage. Obviously, it helps that we were more prepared, emotionally this time. We think its a combination of two very different personalities and also very different levels of QOC (quality of care) in the baby homes.

Karen was rebellious from the beginning, and very standoff-ish, physically. Unlike many baby home children, she didn’t throw herself into the arms of the first smiling adult she saw. Her baby home was no where near the level of his, both in terms of facilities, and warmth from the caretakers.

Matan easily makes, and maintains eye contact with me. He enjoys pleasant sensory stimulation, and always wants to be held and pampered. Karen didn’t want to be held or helped if she could help it. One of her favorite phrases was, “me, alone (I WILL do it myself)”

He experienced warmth from his caretakers, something that really impressed me at his baby home. I’m really glad that Karen got to spend time there because it means she has developed a positive view of her early life.

Together

They’re sleeping now. She’s going to bed much more easily than ever before. She’s tries her best to keep quiet so as not to disturb Matan. It’s unbelievable how much of a maternal instinct she exhibits with him. Having him join our family has brought a new, and very positive balance to our family relationships. Matan brings out the maternal instinct in almost everyone. He’s pretty amazing that way

Why regress to a baby bottle?

One piece of advice I got from reading “Attaching in Adoption“, when we first were in Ukraine to bring Karen home, was the importance of regressing baby home children to a baby bottle.  The book even recommended regressing children as old as 7 to the bottle.  The book didn’t go into much detail, except to say that it was helpful for bonding.   We also found that the bottle helped Karen relax since we were lucky that she had never been introduced to a pacifier.

My sister posted a really great explanation on the various benefits of bottle regressing in one of her comments several pages ago.  She adopted her son, Alex, from Siberia last year.  I’m reposting her detailed post for the benefit of anyone who may read this prior to adopting from a baby house or orphanage. 

From her comment:

I would definitely make every effort to get him to take a bottle. Try different fluids, try warming it up, and like food, try to do it in a quiet calm place where he can focus on it. With Alex it took a week to get him to take the bottle and it turned out it was just because he only wanted warm liquids, something we only found out by trial and error. (You can warm it in a microwave or by placing the bottle in hot water for a few minutes. Test it on the inside of your wrist first because the one scalding incident will be enough to ensure he never wants a bottle again!

Now, here are all the good reasons for the bottle:

1. Attachment: It’s not just the sucking, it’s sucking while making eye contact with Mom, and cuddling. Alex’s bottle is part of his bedtime, nap time and wake up routines, when we sit in his room, he lies in my arms like a baby, and we rock, cuddle and sing. Other times he gets a cup or sippy cup.

2. Oral Motor: Alex can’t chew because he was taken off the bottle and given mush since 6 months old. And although he now can say about 10 words, his pronunciation is limited to about 3 or 4 consonants. So cracker sounds like dadder. Sucking strengthens the mouth and jaw muscles that are necessary for both chewing and talking.

3. Nutrition. Since it took several months to figure out what foods Alex would eat and wasn’t allergic to, we used baby formula in his bottle. This way we were certain that he was getting nutrition and we didn’t have to stress too much about what foods he ate. It also helped him put on weight pretty quickly…according to our IA (International Adoption) doctor, orphanage kids generally find their new growth curve within 9 months of coming home. So we wanted to get him moving up quickly before he tapered off. He’s gained over 2 kg since coming home, but he’s still pretty thin – because he’s also grown so much taller.

You should be able to get Nestle baby formula in Lugansk. And when you get back to Israel you will probably be able to get toddler formula which is a little more nutritionally appropriate, although I don’t personally think the difference is that big.

Bonding

As in, Karen and Matan bonding.  Today we had a wonderful visit to the baby home.  The lady in charge of the room encouraged us to let the kids play the piano, and here’s the result:

Karen built a house out of pillows, stuffed animals and blocks for Matan. He was more impressed when she carted him around in a small car.  

Karen and Matan

Here they are “bonding”

I continue to be impressed with the staff at the baby home.  It seems that the playroom we use for our visits also serves as a special playroom for different groups of children on alternate days. Today the doctor brought in three handicapped children who can’t walk, and get around by using their arms to propel themselves.  The children were incredibly happy to be in the big room, and when the woman who is responsible for the room put on some music, they all started to “dance” with their upper bodies. 

The doctor and his assistant brought out some play musical instruments, and the children enjoyed trying out different sounds.  Caring and affection were clearing visible in the eyes of the doctor and assistant. We sat with the children, and they seemed to enjoy our company.  When we first began our visits, Karen showed a great deal of fear around some of the handicapped children, but she has come a long way, and today she sat with them and played the xylophone together with them.  They seemed especially happy to have a “big” girl play with them.

We hope to take custody of Matan and leave Lugansk in about 10 days….

Harbinger of tantrums future

Today seemed like just another visit to the baby home.  Nothing to set it apart as something special now that we have the official ok to adopt Matan.  We brought baby food and bananas, but I forgot to bring a bottle for Karen, something that was to cause some inconvenience later on.  I need to keep in mind that anything he eats or that we bring for him, Karen will invariably NEED too.

Our regular playroom had just been wet-vacuumed, and the carpet was damp and smelled of chemicals, so we had to go into the larger, shared playroom.  No sooner had I begun feeding Matan, our room was invaded by his entire grupa of about 12 children.  I didn’t want to stop feeding him, but it quickly became apparent that we were a baby magnet, as all his friends converged and started trying to climb onto my lap at once. 

I put away the food until after their 45 minute play period.  The children were so excited to see a real “mama and papa”, and also to see a “big” girl, that they all wanted to be with us.  I did my best to integrate, and engage the children, even though it was clearly disturbing to both Matan and Karen.  I got my first glimpse of what constitutes a tantrum for Matan.  He arched his back, throwing himself, back-of-the-head first, onto the floor. Although this didn’t include all out screaming, I expect his behavior will likely become more extreme once we leave the baby home.

I’m very grateful for the comments and suggestions.   Tamar’s description of 16 hours straight of screaming toddler has convinced us to fly back to Kiev.  It also helped to read that Michal flew an internal flight in winter and is still here to tell about it.

In case you missed it, I’m planning to repost much of Tamar’s comment on the benefits of regressing baby home adoptees to the bottle.

The Kiss

The orphanage director congratulated us with a kiss today in court!  It was the most truly surprising episode of this entire process. 

We began the day preparing for court.  Karen didn’t know what to expect, but she was excited to finally wear a dress after weeks in a snowsuit.  Here we are, waiting for our driver.

After dropping us off, he went to pick up our witnesses.  I was surprised when he returned with 4 women, including the baby home director.  When we adopted Karen, a very low-level representative from the baby home attended the hearing, and we never saw the director except on our last day when we gave her the recommended “donation”.

Karen was super fidgety, as usual.  Since there was no one to watch her, our translator said it was ok for her to accompany us.   We entered the courtroom.  DH, Karen, our translator and I sat in the front row.

The judge was a very young woman, and she asked us a couple of standard questions, like whether we have the means to support an additional child.  We gave short and sweet answers, but Karen was quickly losing patience and started squirming.  At one point, she started taking off one of her boots, and I held a finger up to my lips, indicating for her to be quiet.  The judge was apparently charmed by our little hellion, and began smiling at her.  Before we knew it, Her Honor finished reading her bit, and everyone was standing. 

The orphanage director, it turns out, was sitting just behind me. She touched my shoulder and when I turned around, she opened her arms and pulled me in for a kiss.  Nothing could have surprised me more!  She congratulated each of us, and kissed each one of us in turn. 

I’d like to think we were honored because she had seen how well we were bonding with Matan.  Or perhaps she liked the gift we gave her.  Regardless, it made my day.

Even though it is Christmas Eve here, everything remained open so we took Karen out to celebrate.  Here she is at the gymboree, driving a virtual semi-trailor.  Her face says it all.  I can already see her career path in defensive driving.

Meeting the grupa and seeing the inside workings of Lugansk Baby Home

We are beginning to feel right at home when we visit Matan.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we had the rare opportunity to play with him while his entire grupa was there.  We arrived a bit early, and found that what we thought was a special room for foreigners, actually doubles as a larger playroom for the kids.   

When we arrived he was there with all his buds.  The ratio of caretakers to children was very good, between 2-3 children per adult.  Most of the caretakers were interacting with the children in a positive manner, with play, dance and physical contact.  Overall, very impressive.  The children were a mixture of healthy and some with Downs.  All were playing quite nicely together. 

We were invited to play in  same room since our alternate playroom was not available.   Matan showed immediately that he wasn’t pleased to be sharing his special visit with the rest of the grupa.  He threw himself on the ground and screwed up his face in the closest thing I’ve yet seen to a tantrum from him.  In this photo, he is doing the only rocking I’ve seen yet.  Many of the children came up to us for attention, but once I gently, but firmly pointed them in another direction, and maintained my focus on Matan, he slowly began to relax.  Not so with Karen.  She got really freaked out by all the small children coming up to her and touching her.  She “escaped” by climbing on the furniture and sitting high enough that they couldn’t reach her.  She came back a few times to try and play with Matan, but each time, she ended up whispering that she was scared by all the children touching her.  

This second photo shows one of the caretakers holding two children while “dancing” with a third.  I think it is a really good shot that indicates the overall level of care shown by the staff.  The whole grupa returned to their room after about 45 minutes, and we remained with Matan and Karen.  As posted yesterday (sorry for the repeat), we had a wonderful response from him when we gave him a jar of mashed fruit which he quickly polished off.  He then proceeded to eat the banana we offered.  He even took the bottle, although it is clear that he still isn’t quite sure why we keep giving it to him.  We also saw him put his thumb in his mouth.  We never saw any thumb sucking with Karen.  None of the children use pacifiers.

I didn’t feel comfortable taking photos of the caretakers and children at play since we were unable to ask their permission.  But Karen has become quite the photographer, so I gave her the camera and he took most of these photos.  Pretty good for an almost five year old!

Later in the day we went shopping and bought Karen a new winter coat.  Here she is showing off as the girl in red.  The photo was taken just outside of the building we’re living in.  I promise some more photos, maybe tomorrow, of our neighborhood and apartment to give an idea of what the “better” part of Lugansk looks like.

Visiting Matan

As we continue our visits to the baby home and spend 1-2 hours playing with Matan, we learn more about his likes, dislikes, and overall personality.  He’s not a big eater, we see that already.  On alternate days, I’ve brought mashed fruit, yoghurt and cookies.  One or two bites is usually all he’ll eat before turning his head away. 

Matan’s an easygoing little boy, and doesn’t make whining or complaining noises when he’s not happy, he simply turns away.  As some of you know, baby home children come with their own set of issues.  He rarely makes eye contact and doesn’t know how to suck on a bottle.  Staff feed them with large metal spoons. 

The book, “Attachment in Adoption” recommends giving children a bottle, even if they are as old as 7 years, since they were never nursed and never held closely and fed while making eye contact.  Matan did manage to suck on the bottle, twice, but he still prefers a cup and turns his head away from the bottle.  Karen drank out of her identical bottle in front of him to  show him how she does it.  Slowly, slowly….

The photo below shows him smiling, but  just looking off into the distance.  He’s still overwhelmed by all the attention and all the fun stuff to do in the special playrooms for foreigners.  Inway their own play areas, there isn’t much in the way of toys.

Our next visit to the baby home

We had an interesting 3 days, during which we were not able to visit Matan.  I do want to tell you all about the those days, but since we were offline and the time is lost, I’ll have to post about them later.

Today we finally got to visit him again.  Our driver is apparently trying to save money and will only be taking us to the baby home once a day, in the mornings from 10-12.  When we adopted Karen, we had two such visits a day, but it was sometimes tough since caretakers were always watching and we felt like we were under a microscope, if only because we were foreigners.  

This morning, our translator, Violetta, called, telling us to be ready in 20 minutes!  I was still in bed in sweats.  Needless to say, it was not my finest morning.   The rush was because we needed to go to the notary, then to the courthouse, and only then to visit Matan.  But I sucked it up and made it in 30 minutes, with DH taking responsibility for getting Karen together.

We finally made it to the baby home.  One difference is that we have not been asked to bring Pampers for Matan to wear during our visits.  Apparently the baby home supplies them, wow!

After being led to a door with sounds of children coming from within, we were told to wait.  The door was slightly ajar, so I tried to get a look only to have a caretaker close it in my face.  It looked like their beds and eating area was one and the same.  We were lucky with Karen since there our facilitator was a close friend of the baby home director, and they allowed us to see the hildren at play, and eating.  This went a long way in helping me understand Karen’s initial food issues.  The children were force-fed, one at a time.  If the c hild tried to slow down or stopped with a gag, dinner was over.  Needless to say, Karen can dawdle for ages over a meal, and never liked to be fed by me. 

We heard a kid crying and screaming, and worried it was Matan who didn’t want to come out.  No reason to worry.  They eventually brought him out and he lit up with a smile a I reached for him.  He is very easy going, and lets me touch him and rub his belly.  Karen wouldn’t even sit near me for the first few weeks of visits!

To Michal, who has seen the playroom, yes, it is very nice and has lots of toys.  You can tell he’s not used to seeing these things because he tries to run and touch everything.  He is only beginning to walk, and I need to hold his hand to keep him from running so fast he pitches forward on his face.  Not something we want to happen when the Svetlana of the hour is watching.

This last photo is of the ceiling of the special playroom for foreigners.  The room is covered by plaster cut-outs of sky and clouds surrounded by spotlights. Anyone who has ever been to Ukraine can tell you how completely decadent this is, considering the average lifestyle.

A model baby home

It was now almost lunch time, but we really wanted a chance to spend some time with Slavi/Matan, so we returned to the baby home after filing some paperwork with the notary.  The notary office will soon become  a second home to us since Ukraine requires lengthy notarization for all legal papers.

When we returned, one of Matan’s caretakers directed us to a playroom.  After removing our shoes, Karen charged into the adjoining room with Matan close on her heels.  We followed them into a  huge room that was decked out for the children’s Christmas party. Christmas here is only on January 7th (Russian Orthodox).

One of the caretakers pointed us towards a piano, and opened it, indicating that the children could play.  I was amazed since such delicate and expensive items are usually off-limits to children.  With a huge grin, Karen started banging on the keys.  She quickly modified her style when I told her that we must play gently if we wanted them to allow us to continue playing.  Matan quickly followed her lead, and the three of us experimented with different keys for a few minutes.  Then they were both off looking for something more interesting.

After Karen played around with the camera a bit, they both dashed into the adjoining room to play with more toys.  Matan was thrilled to have me help him sit astride a “car”, while he experimented with rolling in different directions.   Between Karen and myself, we took a bunch of photos.  I tried picking out my favorites to share here.

Welcome to Lugansk

After a fun-filled night aboard a Ukrainian national railways glorious 2nd class carriage, we arrived at our destination tired and ruffled.  Sasha, our new driver, met us at the station and took us, along with Leonid, our agency director, straight to the baby home.  It quickly became apparent that Sasha spoke not a word of English.   Luckily, our agency guy was still with us.  It also became clear that Leonid was totally unfamiliar with the system in Lugansk and that we were all at the mercy of Sasha.  

The baby home was absolutely stunning.  I say this without an ounce of sarcasm.  We went to the baby home director’s office and after some sweet talk between her and our team, a little boy was brought in and our doctor, who met us at the baby home, began his examination.  The child was tiny, and even the Christmas candy the director gave him, didn’t seem to excite him much. 

As the exam progressed, Karen started crying.  The boy, nicknamed Slavi (short for some very long Russian name that I will not try to write out until I get a translated document to work from), also started to tear up.  He didn’t cry, but his chin trembled, and he looked about to gush.  I was hugging Karen, and whispered to her that if she kept crying, he was going to cry too.  Like magic, she quickly got control and he also seemed less unhappy. 

 The baby home director then let us hold him, and play with him a bit.  Karen joined in and the four of us were quickly huddled around a hobby horse that Slavi really seemed to enjoy because he finally smiled directly at me!

Karen loved the Christmas decorations and this is the first photo we took of her in front of a Christmas tree there.

The first visit was cut short as Slavi was taken to have blood drawn.  We also had to run to some government office to file paperwork immediately.  After wards, we returned for a more lengthy visit.  I’ll update shortly with details and photos…..to be continued.