As most of you know, my daughter has been home for over a year now, having set foot on US soil 1 year ago on June 7. The year has had it's ups and downs but she has adjusted beautifully even when we moved from my mother-in-law's condo in Horseshoe Bay into our new home in San Antonio. In the grand scheme of things, she has really had a pretty easy adjustment from what we can compare to friends of ours and their adopted children. She has had her issues and she certainly has her
Our weekend away (back at Horseshoe Bay but in a Marriott Resort) brought back the ugliest of uglies of the adoption world.
You see, my daughter has only been in a hotel once before. Well, twice if you count the fact that we stayed in 2 different provinces in China while completing the adoption and immigration. But our last time in a hotel was almost exactly 1 year from the date of this Summer Regional corporate event. And I can tell you that even though my daughter was only 22 months old when we met in China, she wholly and fully remembers the day her life turned upside down and was placed with a complete stranger from another land and spent 10 days in hotels getting used to a strange person called Mommy.
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| Quiet Tiger's first hotel stay one year ago. The day her life turned upside down. |
On Thursday in Horseshoe Bay, we attempted to check into the hotel at 10:30am since Jay's first meeting was at noon. Of course, our room wasn't ready that early. Our Quiet Tiger didn't mind the hotel lobby at all. She waited with us quietly as Jay signed in with the event staff and we signed all the waiver forms for the childcare that the hotel would be providing while Jay and I attended sessions and meetings. After that, we drove down the road to have lunch at Subway while we waited for the call that our room was ready. It didn't come quickly. I dropped Jay off back at the hotel for his 1st session while the kids and I returned to town to pick up a few snacks at Walmart in Marble Falls while we continued to wait for our hotel room to be ready. We also made a drive through the bank.
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| Marriott Horseshoe Bay Texas on Lake LBJ |
After I received the phone call that our room was ready, we headed back to the hotel. Upon seeing luggage that the boys and I unloaded from the car and walking into the large building (even though she had been into the lobby earlier that morning), my Quiet Tiger started to cry. It was a cry that I recognized and had heard only a few times before - what I call her "orphanage cry." She cried at the check-in desk where I waited in line to receive our room keys, but she calmed down when I gave her the sucker that she had received at the bank. It was only a cry, not a scream, but it was one filled with emotion and I recognized it immediately.
Arriving in our room she was fine. She was all smiles, running around, checking everything out as I unpacked and situated the roll-away bed the housekeeping staff had brought for her use (we had requested a pack-n-play but didn't get one). L LOVED the idea of sleeping in a "big girl bed," something we've promised her if she'd start using the potty and ditch the diapers. Oh, she was all smiles and loved climbing up and down and rolling around and jumping on her big bed!!! (How is it that children follow orders and do not jump on beds at home but think its OK to jump on beds that are not their own? Seriously.)
That afternoon we had our first session as a couple and the kids went to the provided child care rooms in the hotel's yacht club. Our kids were separated by age, the boys staying together with older kids while L attended a different room with toddlers and babies. She didn't mind it one bit and went freely. No tears. No drama. No stress. I picked her up a couple hours later and she was happily eating Goldfish crackers and drinking apple juice. How easy that was! We later had dinner complete with karaoke (kind of bombed because the Spurs were playing) and dress up stuff for the kids. L loved it!
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| Super C enjoying karaoke night. |
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| Frightening. |
But late that night, the drama began. It's hard enough for any toddler to fall asleep in a hotel room at a decent hour while the rest of the family members are still awake watching TV, reading and checking email. It was after 9pm when L finally fell asleep on her roll-away. The rest of us were all falling asleep around 10:30 when L awoke
CRYING
SCREAMING
FREAKING OUT.
I'll call it Level 1 Hysterical (you'll see why later). She was crying harder than she had at the hotel check-in desk and I was worried that neighboring hotel guests would hear her. We tried talking her down. I sat with her, I rubbed her back, I laid with her. I tried being firm with her. Nothing soothed her. The only thing that seemed to calm her was my firm hand on her head as she laid on her stomach, head turned to the side looking at me, looking into her eyes and telling her calmly, "Go night-night. Go night-night. Go night-night." She woke up screaming two more times that night. I woke each time to tend to her while my husband and boys attempted to sleep. Mommy didn't get much sleep that night. Not much at all.
Friday morning, we had breakfast and then we had a morning session where the kids had to attend child care. This time my Quiet Tiger became hysterical again. This time, I'll call it Level 5 Hysterical. The sight of the toddler toys, the babies sitting on the foam mats, the babysitters sitting around on the floor playing with the toddlers, sent fear into my daughter. Once again folks, the orphanage cry, but this time LOUDER. Not unlike any child refusing to go into Sunday School or being dropped off at a new sitter's. I tried calming her as best I could. We decided to leave the room to check the boys into their respective rooms so she could witness them going to play and leaving mommy and daddy easily and happily. She quieted down. But once we returned to her room, she was not going in. She stood firmly in one place with
PANIC
TERROR
SCREAMING.
Jay took her from me and went into the room with her, holding her and sitting down playing with toys with her. I stood outside the room hiding, cringing, begging, pleading for her to calm down. I explained to a few of the babysitters what we were dealing with. I explained that this was far beyond a normal toddler's separation anxiety.
We were dealing with memory recall and
her fear of abandonment.
Jay left the room 5 minutes later and I heard her screams from outside the closed door. We told the babysitters that she might calm down if she were with her brothers and if they'd allow that arrangement, to please try that. In the end, that's the only way she made it through the 2 hour meeting - the only 2 year old in a room full of 9-12 year olds. She enjoyed being with her big brother Super C and was all smiles when I picked her up. We went to an enjoyable lunch meeting for families and then on a scheduled boat ride on the lake that she loved, screaming "Faster! Faster! Faster!" She's a speed demon liker her mommy. That night she slept soundly, admittedly with the help of a dose of Benedryl just in case.
Saturday was in essence a free day for the kids and I. Jay had sessions all morning, but the kids and I had breakfast and played at the hotel. We met Jay when he was done and spent a couple hours swimming at the pool where my one-handed-wonder proceeded to climb an eagle statue that kids love to climb and jump off. To get to the top requires dexterity of fingers and toes, like scaling a rock formation with no pre-drilled finger holds. She did it! Determination. She never ceases to amaze me. Ten fingers are highly overrated! We played at the beach for a few minutes and took the golf cart tram back to the hotel to rest a bit before our late evening dinner and awards ceremony. Again, the kids would attend child care one last time.
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| Ready to hit the pool in her new suit from Grammie. |
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| The huge eagle statue in the middle of the pool is what L climbed. |
The boys went to their assigned room and L was assigned the baby/toddler room as usual. This time her freak-out was astoundingly magnified! Friends, I don't think you've heard a child scream like this. This time she screamed a glass-shattering scream that people heard down the halls. Instead of standing next to me screaming, she pulled my hand so hard and attempted to sprint right out of there, pulling me with her. We entered Level 893 Hysterical. Off the charts, people. She was simply
OUT OF CONTROL with TERROR!
I took her to a corner of the lobby and sat her down trying to calm her. She kept screaming her head off and I could barely make out the words, "No play with toys! No play with toys! No, Mommy! No, Mommy!" It didn't matter that she had seen us pick her up after each session the previous days. Nothing could have gotten through her head that
MOMMY IS NOT ABANDONING YOU!
MOMMY ALWAYS COMES BACK!
She feared she'd be left forever like she had been left by her birthmom and like she had been left with me in Xi'an.
We left her screaming and wailing, out of control hoping the sitters would get her calmed down with some snacks or a little Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Once again, their only resort was to put her in the room with her brothers but she was happy with them and the intense screaming ceased. Super C reports she came into his room screaming but he went to her and showed her what to do (coloring with markers) and he let her eat nothing but Goldfish and apple juice for dinner. I think she even had a s'more for dessert. What an awesome big brother! She was calm when we picked her up and she slept well in bed with me that night without a peep without any Benedryl.
This is the most terror we have seen out of our daughter EVER. Even in China she sure cried at night and she definitely wanted nothing to do we me rocking her to sleep, but she never screamed with the volume and intensity and sheer terror which we witnessed over last weekend. The cries in China were all sad and sorrowful. These were terror.
When we arrived home on Sunday morning, I caught L standing in the corner of our living room taking it all in. She was smiling with the sweetest smile ever and she was nodding her head up and down. If I could read her mind, she was thinking to herself, "This is my home. I will always have a home."
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| A long weekend of no naps, late nights, stress and trauma, and an early morning taking daddy to the airport, she fell asleep at noon with Juneau on the living room floor. She needed her sleep and I didn't want to disturb her to put her in her crib. She slept there for 3 hours. |
As horrifying as the weekend was, the positive is this: Our Quiet Tiger is most certainly bonded to each one of us in the Collins family! That's the blessing. Yet I am glad that we won't have another regional event for a whole year. My prayer is that these traumatic moments will diminish and vanish with time. And I pray God will use time to heal my daughter's deep wounds and that she will know that she has a family, she has a home, that she is loved forevermore.
To learn more about trauma early on in childhood (not limited to adopted children), please refer to this article! It is so well written and explains so much of what we saw last weekend!
Please see our Prayer Request Tab above for helpful prayers for our daughter.
