My husband and I married in 2007, as I was approaching the age of 40. Knowing that it would be difficult to get pregnant without medical intervention, we decided to build our family through adoption.
Our adoption agency was very supportive every step of the way, eliciting our feedback and guiding us to international adoption. After 9 months of paperwork, waiting, nail biting, and 4 trips to Russia, we became the proud parents to 2 toddlers – Roman and Cynthia.
We rejoiced at the arrival of our children and introduced them to our families with gatherings and celebrations. Soon we were immersed in full parenting mode: first words, first steps, poopy diapers, ear infections, teething issues and potty training.
We also experienced some attachment and bonding issues, which are not unusual when children are adopted from international orphanages. Through the staff of Oak Adoptive Health at Akron Children's Hospital, we became armed with resources that taught us from experience and supported our child/parent bond.
The personnel educated us not only on the challenges of parenting adopted children, but also on the causes of these challenges so that we would better understand their origins and learn how to appropriately respond to each child’s unique needs.
Our experience with Oak Adoptive Health has solidified our individual and family identities, as well as given our children and us, as their parents, the security we needed to build healthy family relationships. As a member of the Parent Mentor group, I hope to share our experiences and knowledge with other families who are embarking on similar journeys and who may be frustrated, confused and hurting due to similar adoption-related issues.
I am happy to say that we are now a healthy, happy, typical family of 5! Roman and Cynthia have a little brother, Cole, who joined our family through birth.
While we anticipate that there will be bumps along the path of our life together, we know that with each other, God, and the help of adoptive resources, we will continue to weather them all.
Connie is a mentor for these care services: Adoption
