When I was waiting to adopt, I wrestled with how much time and energy I should invest into preparing to parent. I am a planner by nature, so if I had been pregnant, I would have worked out a schedule for learning all I needed to know by the time the baby was born. When you adopt, you have no idea when that might be.
I worked with a man who got a call at work to hop on the next plane to Las Vegas because his son had just been born. The placing mother had contacted the adoption agency after the baby was born, and she selected the adoptive parents after looking through profiles in her hospital bed. This man and his wife had nothing prepared. The adoptive mother spent the flight to Las Vegas skimming through What to Expect the First Year.
I would not handle that type of crunch well, especially in light of my “scheduled” personality. However, it was much too painful for me to read about how to care for a baby who was not coming, or at least not coming when I wanted him to come.
I had no experience whatsoever with taking care of a newborn. I never even babysat as a child. The closest I had to experience was babysitting my then-three-month-old nephew while my sister went to a movie (he cried the whole time) and watching my then-four-year-old nephew for a few days while his brother was born. So, I was hardly prepared to take care of a newborn without some sort of preparation.
It was quite a dilemma. Do I push myself into multiple depressions by reading about parenting babies? Or do I risk having no clue how to take care of a baby in the case of a sudden placement?
I had such a difficult time emotionally while waiting to adopt that I opted for waiting to read parenting books until we were matched. As it turns out, this worked out just fine. We were matched seven weeks before my son was born, which gave me enough time to read the parenting books. This was also enough time to buy the things we needed for the baby. (My coworker had to borrow a car seat to bring the baby home because he had nothing prepared.)
Which plan is best for you? You need to decide this for yourself. It is a risk to wait to read the parenting books until after you are matched, but you also need to take care of yourself emotionally. If you decide to wait, ask an experienced parent to be a standby mentor in case your match happens quickly.
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Photo credit: Rosanne Mooney
I haven’t even started the paper work and I keep doing research on parenting.
There are parenting books i would so NOT follow the advice of.
Sure they are popular books, but the folks who wrote them know nothing about babies and just want to make babies convinient and easy to deal with which I don’t think is posible as babies are such demanding little “critters” and no amount of trying to force them on a schedule they are not ready for will change that.
Still, I think I like Sear’s book the best. He knows about babies and treats them with the gentleness they deserve.
Also, I’m not taking child rearing advice from parents who are loathed by their children (not because of typical things kids get annoyed about their parents for like not letting them stay out until 4 am partying on the pier)
Mostly I want to unlearn all the stuff I leanred about parenting from my own parents. The Gentle Christian Mother’s forum comes to mind.
“Mostly I want to unlearn all the stuff I leanred about parenting from my own parents.”
That was my starting point, too. :0)
- Faith