In October 2006, our family brought home a 5 month old adopted child from Japan and our lives have not been the same since. Because she is our second child (technically she’s our third - our first birth son passed away at the age of 7 months, and we second birth son is now about to turn 4), I’m constantly amazed at how our “parenting time” has grown exponentially. (See my wife’s blog at www.insanemom.com for more background info) Someone once told me…”your second child will be no problem, it’s not much more work having two than one.” They lied.

Anyway, several people have asked about the difference between how we as parents bond with an adopted child versus a birth child. I’ve met several people reluctant to go through the adoption process after having one birth child because of the fear that they won’t be able to love the adopted child as much as their birth child. It’s a very natural concern and I must admit I was fearful of the same thing. Here’s my story.

After the initial excitement of coming home with our adopted child from Japan, the reality set it. We came home with a 5 month old alien. (While it’s true that our daughter, being a Japanese citizen until we went through the adoption process with the family court system in the US, was in fact a registered alien. In this instance, I’m referring to the outer space variety of alien). It was like, what planet are you from?!

Welcome to Earth…

As experienced parents, we figured we would just fall into the parenting thing again with our new baby and life would be good. Wrong. After coming home came the reality that, hell, we don’t know anything about our adopted child and she doesn’t know anything about us. From our faces, to our smells, to our language, I’m sure we were just as alien to our 5 month old adopted daughter as she was to us. We knew nothing about her. For instance: How was she bathed? Did she ever sit in a bath tub before? Did she eat solid food yet? If so what type? What type of bed did she sleep in, and what was her bed time routine? This is really basic stuff for a baby! Yet here we were trying to “force” our adopted child into the patterns that we had developed with our first two birth children. The result: one unhappy baby and two unhappy parents.

In fact, the first two weeks at home were simply dreadful. My adopted daughter was so scared of me that she would literally urinate upon seeing my face. When she was crying, if I picked her up she would start to shiver and cry even louder! I’ll be honest, at this point I was regretting our decision to adopt. Not only did it cost a ton on money (Japanese adoptions are much more costly than domestic or, say Chinese adoptions), but the baby HATES ME! Things were a little better for my wife, but not much. We speculated that she was used to being handled by women at the adoption clinic from which she came. But because my wife had her hands full with our “mama’s boy” son who was going through his own life trauma about suddenly no longer being the center of the universe, good old dad was thrust into primary care giver role for our adopted baby.

After about a month things settled down a bit. My daughter and I declared a truce. From her end, she stopped urinating on me and she even got a handle on the wild uncontrollable crying. But she would still NEVER look or smile at me directly and she never made eye contact. From my end, I was still largely the primary caregiver, but I was only going through the motions of being her dad - feeding, burping, changing diapers, middle-of-the-night-waker-upper, etc… At this point I stopped resenting her, but I have to admit, that I was “Autopilot dad” - I took care of her basic needs but that was about all that I could muster. During this stage I felt constantly frustrated by her little idiosyncrasies that I was still trying to figure out. I would get angry feelings with her that I never had with my birth children. In hindsight, I had very little empathy for what she was going through, but I finally figured it out: You can’t bond with a baby who won’t look at you!

Around the third month the relationship between my adopted daughter and I turned the corner. I kept at it, day in and day out and eventually, she started to respond to me. It was as if she were saying, “I guess this guy is not going to go away…maybe he’s okay.” I would start to get the eye contact that all parents look for and I started to get the occasional giggle and smile. At this point I can honestly say that I started to feel like I was her dad, and not just the guy who brings on the milk. Still, the depth of nurturing I felt with my son was so much stronger.

Did I feel this way because my daughter was adopted? Or could it be that as the second child, she could never receive 100% of my doting attention. You’ve heard parents say it before: “with my first baby, if he dropped his bottle on the ground, we’d sterilize the nipple, with the second child, we’d wipe it off on our shirt and stick it back in his mouth.” With our son, we worried over every little sniffle or whimper in the night, with our daughter it’s been more like “if it ain’t bleeding, she’ll live.” So with how we react to our adopted daughter probably has an element of that second child syndrome thrown into the mix.

By the fifth month of life with our adopted daughter (as she turned about 10 months old), things were totally different. Maybe it was because I passed some kind of test, but my daughter somehow became my baby. At this point, if I walked into the room, my daughter would bounce up and down and flap her arms in excitement, reaching for me to pick her up. I’d have to cook or do chores with her riding in a backpack carrier so that I could move around without her hanging on my leg. And the real test - if she fell down and hurt herself, it had to be daddy to comfort her. As having always played second fiddle to my wife with my boy, this attachment was a new but enjoyable experience for me. A blessing to be loved so much for sure.

Today as she turned 11 months old this week, I can say with certainty that I love my adopted daughter just as much as I love my birth son - it just took a lot longer to form that bond. So if you’re thinking about adoption, but are worried about the bonding issue, I can say that yes, you can love your adopted child just as much as a birth child. Of course, don’t ask me that question in 12 years when she becomes a teenage alien.

Looking cute at 11 months old…still got that “alien” hairstyle.

[8/20/2008 Update: Please see my other stories about our Japan adoption:
Here she is, our Japan adoption
Japan adoption agencies
Bonding with an adopted child
Traveling to Japan to pick up our adopted daughter
Our Japanese Adoption - Update]

Posted by Netsato on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 1:38 am.