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You're Not Alone
Addressing the Common Problem of Post Adoption Depression
By Kelly Burgess
"This is not like a 9-month pregnancy where everyone is excited and shopping and preparing the nursery and all those things we do with pregnant women," says Foli. "Adoption is about chasing that last birth certificate and hoping the home study is approved and worrying about birth parents backing out at the last minute. It's a completely different process and one that puts enormous stress on the parents."
Foli also points out that families of couples who are trying to adopt don't always support adoption announcements in the same way that they support pregnancy announcements, and that in itself can cause a couple to feel some sadness and perhaps question where their child will fit in with the extended family.
Foli and Thompson, who have two older children by birth, found this to be true even in their families. "I think the support was very different for us in our births versus our adoptions, and this is not uncommon," says Foli. "It's not always even as obvious as actual objections, but sometimes just a marked lack of excitement over adoption."
Another big challenge for parents adopting from overseas is some of the health issues that parents find themselves faced with that they didn't expect, such as attachment and integration disorders from children who have been in orphanages. Also, many problems, such as fetal alcohol syndrome, often are not recognized until the child begins to have developmental or learning difficulties.
"I've definitely seen cases where the parent held it together pretty well for quite a while, even though it was a shock to them how difficult things were, and then, after three years or so, they realized that, hey, this is very serious, and it's not going to get better quickly," says McCarthy. "That's when you see kind of a delayed depression where they finally accept how bad things really are."
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