To Travel or Not To Travel?

by Pam Connell | More from this Blogger

When we prepared to receive our first daughter from Korea, we were lucky enough to be able to travel to receive her. Although Korea offers the option of having the child escorted, our child would be older than most of the Korean babies then coming over--between nine and twelve months old, prime stranger anxiety stage. We felt it would be even harder on her to bond with a strange escort for 16 hours or so then be passed over to another set of strange hands.

I was trying to think of it from the baby's point of view. I didn't realize how valuable it would be for us to meet the people who had cared for her, see her home and where she had slept, the doctor's office where she'd had her checkups, the scene outside her apartment, how she was carried on her foster mother's back--to be able to visualize what her life had been like.

Seeing our daughter's home and city enabled her to see us a couple of times before we whisked her away from all she'd ever known, enabled us to see how she was held when she was fed and to feed her ourselves, to see how she was carried and where she was used to sleeping, and what a couple of her favorite treats and clapping games were.

But more than the practical advantages of this familiarity, we experienced the people who had known and loved our daughter. We experienced wonderful hospitality in Korea. We saw firsthand the faith of the agency founders, baby home nurses and caregivers, social work staff and foster mothers and the love they lavished on the children. We saw the places and people where our daughter was born, named, cared for in sickness and in health. The greatest benefit of traveling will be our ability to tell our daughters, with assurance and authority, how much they were loved.

Please see these related blogs:

Traveling to Our Daughter

Traveling to Our Daughter: Part Two

Traveling to Our Daughter, Part Three

Learn more about Pam Connell

Pam Connell is a mother of three by both birth and adoption. She has worked in education, child care, social services, ministry and journalism.

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