Hello Everyone! I am sure probably no one but family and friends will read this, but I plan on using this as a therapeutic place for me to post my thoughts, feelings, and basically just a way not to drive myself crazy.
So let's get started. I am a 32 year old wife, teacher, mother, daughter, granddaughter, niece, and many other labels. I have been married to my sweet husband for the past 7 years. He has cystic fibrosis and had a double lung transplant as of six years ago. As a result of this we can not have children the natural way. I have always wanted to be a mother. From the time I was three and was old enough to speak I would tell people I wanted to be a mommy when I grew up. God but this strong desire in my heart to be a mother.
I knew going into our marriage we would not just be having children, but I still had faith that we would have children some how some way. I have an uncle who was adopted and so I was always open to adopt children. So a few years later after we had been married and my husband had a transplant we decided to adopt.
We started our adoption journey looking for a Central American Country. We had three children we were interested in adopting from Guatemala. However this did not work out and so Haiti was the next closest country to Guatemala that we were eligible to adopt from.
This is when God brought us to our two precious boys. I was shown their picture and fell in love with them, totally and completely. So my husband and I started the process of their adoption. It was a long difficult process that was not completed until after us knowing about the boys for two years. I know that just in the time that I knew about the boys they had lived through 4 hurricanes, a food riot, and the major Haiti earthquake. I had a good sense that the oldest one would have some major attachment disorder because I had seen some raging that would last for over an hour in Haiti over simply not being able to control everything, ie an hour plus long fit because I told him he had to share a toy with his brother. However they were my boys and I was bringing them home come h-e-double hockey sticks.
Well now we have been home for almost three months. And while they are still my boys that I love very much, I also find myself mourning for a "normal" parenting experience. We have had major fits since practically the first day he came home. We have learned to avoid them while looking for help so they have reduced, but I still bear the scars of some of his major fits. The last one was on Saturday because I told him he had to drink water with his lunch and he could not have a coke (which he never gets). We have found a therapeutic parenting counselor to work with us as his parents, but we still need to find someone to work with him. We have been through a talk therapist that was doing nothing but trying to put him on medication. We have another appointment with another specialist to work with him in the middle of June. I will go to a million therapist and weed each of them out to find someone to help my boy. The youngest one does not rage, but does have some of the same symptoms of RAD. However I do not know if they are just mimic behaviors, or true RAD symptoms. Our therapeutic counselor says that she would be surprised if he does not have some attachment problems.
So anyway welcome to our crazy life. I am not sure that my rambling will do much to help with anyone, but it does help me to document our story. I am just in the beginning stages of this long battle for my child's heart and already at times feel so overwhelmed. If anyone has any great ideas, please share. I would love to hear from you.
