Good grief

We did not visit our child prior to the adoption being finalized.

Remember, we had an earlier failed domestic adoption. I'm not sure we trusted that it wouldn't happen again. I'm sure we felt it would be 'easier' if something went wrong and we didn't know him.

Besides, silly me, I looked at the timeline for the process, added up all the weeks here and weeks there, and figured our child would be home in no time.

I did not account for all the things the agency did wrong at the forefront, let alone what can go wrong during the process.

Our agency did not allow us to foster our own child. Later on in our process when I decided to go down and find out what the delay was, after dealing with so many angry adoptive parents whose cases were dragging on and on, the agency facilitators in Guatemala were not even allowing visits from the a-parents.

That's not really the point of this post - to rant about the process. It's about having a child put into your arms that doesn't know you. More than that, it's about taking him away from all that he does know.

It was obvious that he had been well loved and cared for. He had no problem attaching to us. I was concerned about that, but he knew how to love. At the end of the first day, he was comfortable with us. By the end of the first week, it was as if he had been with us forever.

I saw one very positive change to affirm this fact - we have several pictures of The Boy sucking his two middle fingers. When we left Guatemala, he also left this self-comforting tool behind.

We came home.

There was nothing familiar about his surroundings. New smells. New toys. New everything.

To make matters worse, MFH had to leave on a business trip the next week. And, that's when it happened.

The grieving.

I had read all about it. In my mind, I knew he had to process it. By the time MFH returned home, it was over.

We haven't seen it since.

We gave him a whole new world, but forced him to leave his world behind.

It was heart wrenching.