Some tips

I wanted to post some of the tips I had mentioned a few posts ago that we got from the social worker who did our homestudy, Francie.... you have to love someone named "Francie", right? She was sweet and very efficient in our homestudy. She encouraged us to read, read, read books about race and adoption. I really enjoy books like There is no me without you , which is more of a biographical type book but you learn a lot. I also want to be renewing my mind with encouraging material that is focused on the principles of God's word when viewing race, transracial issues and adoption. I haven't found a ton of material like this yet so if you have then let me know. Anyways, she gave us a great idea when we go to get our baby in the orphanage. She said to bring an outfit from home and a new bottle and ask one of the caregivers if there is a bottle & outfit that he/she is used to and if it would be possible to trade them out so that our baby can have something familiar. She said most of the time families look new, smell new and they then change the baby (which is of course the first thing you would want to do...) into some new clothes and new bottle. She was saying if you can give them a little bit of familiarity than it might be smoother the first few days. You can put the outfit in a shadowbox and have a really sweet keepsake for the baby. She did comment that some babies might revert to complete confusion and freak out some because these familiar things are not coming from the people they always have but most of the time this should be more comforting to them. She also encouraged that family be around in the first few weeks at home and help out when needed but that we do all the feeding, changing and handing over so the baby starts to associate a type of possession and provision coming from us. We thought these were good things to be thinking about.