Adjustments, transitions and a little Tommy history

Written by Zhey |Posted on November 4, 2009 | 2 Comments

My little heartbreaker.

Finally, I found minutes to spare and blog about how we are all adjusting to life now that our little baby boy is home. Well, life is turned upside down, in a good way.
Tommy is a happy kid, he likes to play with his ball, chase the cats, walk outside in the morning and wrestle with his Dad. He is not a difficult child, his transition went very smoothly and I didn’t have problems with meltdowns at all – they were practically nonexistent.
On his first night with us, he slept at about eight in the evening and stirred at around one in the morning. I gave him a bottle of milk and after finishing seven ounces, he fell right back to sleep. He stirred again at about four in the morning and I offered another seven ounces and did a diaper change. He woke up at six and we took him out for a walk around the village.
He was very quiet and observant most of the time. He never made any whimpering sound and I felt so sad to realize that my boy was trying to deal with yet another change in his life on his own, quiet, little way.
We would be Tommy’s fourth caregivers. When he was born, he was immediately placed into someone else’s care. At four months, he was “given” to an elderly (58 year old) Christian woman who wanted to legally adopt him, however, her age and her biological children prevented the adoption. She took care of Tommy for five months before she finally decided to entrust Tommy to the care of the social welfare services so he would be placed properly into a forever family. At nine months old, Tommy was placed in a rehabilitation center in Olongapo City and in April of this year, two months short of his first birthday, he was transferred to the DSWD Rehabilitation and Study Center for Children in Lubao, Pampanga. It is the same center that we went to back in December of 2008 – a trip that stamped a seal on our decision to adopt a child someday. We didn’t know that it is going to be the same center that would play a big part in our very own adoption story. What a small world.
Anyway, back to Tommy. We spent as much time as we could bonding with him and making him feel that this is home. It was pretty apparent that he didn’t spend time with males in the past because each time Warren is near him, he’d be anxiously staring at Warren with curious, somehow fearful eyes. If there ever was a rough time in his transition, it would have to be transitioning to the fact that Warren is a permanent figure in his life. They were on a push and pull for about three days, Warren would try to play with him and for a few minutes Tommy would laugh and enjoy and then the next minute, he would get cranky and all worked up. Each time Tommy’s behavior would turn bad, Warren would pull away. Then when Tommy’s mood would improve, he’d push again.
Warren, bless his heart, spent as much time as he could with Tommy to get the child used to his presence. He took him on walks outside, he played with him gently, he kissed and cuddled him a lot until on the fourth morning, at two a.m. Tommy woke Warren up with a big smile on his face. Father and son spent about an hour playing and wrestling and it’s been like that every morning since! Only the times would vary, sometimes four a.m., other times three.
Life is so much different now, but it’s never been better! We praise God for His wonderful gift and it was so perfectly timed, Gotcha Day was actually two days before my 33rd birthday!

RSCC in Lubao, Pampanga. Tommy’s home for six months.

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