Back Off! We Just Got Home!

International Adoption often includes traveling to far off countries with upside down time tables. You know what I mean. China for instance is 12 or 13 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. The good people of your adoption agency understand this. Acclimation is one of the (best) reasons that they schedule a few days in Beijing before you go to your baby’s capital city. If you decide to travel to Korea, Russia, Kazakhstan, the same could easily apply.

While you are spending 2 weeks in China getting to know your new baby, the excitement builds at home. When we went, we literally had a few thousand hits to our blog while we were gone. We also had a gallery on the site and uploaded about 100 pictures while we were overseas. Then the scary thing started to happen. We
started to get emails from family and friends telling us that they were looking forward to seeing us after we got home. They were even proposing dates to do so. The excitement of the moment clearly clouded their thinking as many of these messages mentioned the week that we got home as “good” meeting times. At the
time, even my wife and I did not appreciate the magnitude of the problem. We added additional stress to our situation that we could have prevented with George-Bush-style preemptive measures.

1. Shock and Awe: Explain the dilemma
   up front: Send an email or put up a blog message detailing the trip, when
   you will meet your son or daughter and when you will return home. In the itinerary, purposely include a cooling off period of at least one week after you return. Explain that you are going to spend this time trying to get the baby on US time and to recover. This will allow you to get over jet lag,
   get your kid to the pediatrician and get over any travel born illness (or
   exhaustion) that you have “contracted”.
2. Call for Backup Ask them to come over to help: When you get back, life will be very chaotic. Some family, friends or members of your church may bring you frozen meals. This is usually a pretty fair trade for getting a glimpse of the baby. Just explain to them at the door that everyone is jet lagged, sick or that the house or apartment is a total disaster area. This will keep people from sticking around too long. When friends ask if they can help, the answer is “yes please!” Ask them to fold a load of laundry or help you put away some of the stuff you packed. They just want to hang out with you and will usually be pretty glad to help. The same goes for your parents. If they want to be around, have them make some meals, do some laundry or help with clean-up. If you do get sick, insist that they come to help. If you can, maybe plan in advance for one of them to stay with you for a week with the understanding that they are there to help you get your life back in order.{mosnooad}
3. Use the Media Answer the emails with more reasonable dates. For the people that you are not comfortable with asking for help, just offer a more reasonable time frame. Be proactive about it. Heading it off at the pass will cushion the blow and it will give you one less thing to think about. When you get back, there will be piles of clothing that needs to be put away. You will attempt to unload your suitcase unsuccessfully resulting in piles of clothing and medicine on
   your dining room table. You will also be sorting through your souvenirs. If you are like us, you probably brought home a whole extra suitcase of these. This on top of bottles, bibs, books and baby food everywhere will probably result in short term disaster area conditions at home. Do you really want your colleague “Dave from Accounting” and his lovely wife Phyllis in your house during that?

So the lessons learned here are: be proactive, take control and ask for help. Good luck noodads! If you are considering adoption or need help choosing an agency, let me know. I am always available to answer questions.