Is It An Adoption Thing

I know when I went private, I lost a lot of readers. . . especially ones who have adopted and have that experience, but I still needed to post about this. 

Having a child who is adopted, I find myself asking the question, "Is this an adoption thing?" approximately 151 times a day.  Seriously.  No joke.  With adoption comes loss and trauma, and innate feelings so deeply engrained in our children. 

In the past few months, T and I went out and got a video monitor for our son.  We always had one for TT, but we got it because of the SIDS risks of infants, etc.  We never thought we needed it for Nur, because when he came home, he was beyond the age of a SIDS risk.  Well, we ended up getting a video monitor for him anyway, because we both really wanted access to what was going on with him in his crib.

This brings me to what happened last night.

We put Nur to bed at 7:30, as we always do.  I read him 2 books, and sang a few songs as he laid on my shoulder and his breathing deepened.  I laid him in his crib, and walked out of his room.  This began the waterworks.  The past few days he has cried for a bit, so this wasn't unusual.  He proceeded to cry for about 10-15 minutes and then went silent.  I snuggled up to T and we watched an episode of Madmen.  Half way through the episode, I looked at the monitor, and Nur was still standing in his crib, holding the railing, and rocking back and forth.  Hmm. . . He was completely silent.  If I didn't have the video monitor, I never would have known. 

I went in his room and rubbed his back, and he fell into a deep slumber and I tiptoed out of his room.  I then went to bed, as I was exhausted.  At 9:30pm, Nur woke up and cried for a few minutes.  I looked at the monitor, the crying stopped, and I went back to bed.  I'm an obsessive monitor checker, and at 11:30pm, I checked again, and he was STILL standing up, rocking in his crib.  Okay, granted.  I can't be sure he rocked for the whole 2 hours, but my gut is telling me he did.  He rocked alone in his crib, in a pitch black room, for 2 hours.  Alone.  Completely alone.  We intervened at this point, all woke up tired and red eyed, but mostly, I just feel sick to my stomach.

I then made the mistake of speaking about this to a family member.  A family member who has never adopted, and thinks these are normal toddler issues and that I shouldn't intervene.  A family member who thinks that adopted children don't need to be parented any differently than biological children.  Well, I disagree with all of this.  I've never heard of a toddler self soothing for 2 hours.  Alone, in silence.  Most toddlers I know will yell out mama, or something.  But not Nur.  He was completely silent, and today, I feel physically ill and that I failed him.

I don't know what T and I are going to do.  But I do know that we need Nur to know we are there for him, always.  I know he knows this during the daytime, but at nighttime, he needs to know he can yell out to me, and we'll come.  I'm not sure what this new plan looks like, but I know we need one.