Avoiding Complications
Being Prepared for the Unexpected: Avoiding Unforeseen Complications
- Planning ahead is the best way to avert a crisis.
- Make sure your own immunizations are up to date.
- Take copies of your passports and visas and carry them in a separate bag.
- Hand carry copies of important documents, including papers received from BCIS.
- Don't put anything essential in your checked luggage.
- Do pack some clothing essentials for each person in each bag, in case one bag is lost.
- Take along twice as much in travelers' checks as you think you will need and pack them separate from your international credit card.
- Being Prepared for Unexpected Concerns: Emotionally and Medically
Many adoptive parents feel overwhelmed at some point by a combination of culture shock and adoption related stresses. Preparation, along with knowing what to expect, is the way to cope.
Prepare yourself emotionally for the possibility of finding previously undiagnosed medical problems in your child. Your child may be dirty, weak, have a cold or even pneumonia, be covered with sores, or any number of complications. People in foreign countries do not have access to the wonderful medical treatment we have available in the United States. Most of our over-the-counter remedies would be considered 'gold' in many countries.
Be prepared for distress, anxiety or anger in your child or in yourselves in response to change, the unknown frustration, and a sense of loss of control over events, as well as grief in the child's case. His fear and sadness may be manifested directly or in withdrawal, clinging, eating, or sleeping disturbances, tantrums, or some other troubling behavior.
Take precautions against physical discomforts and illness. Take along remedies for diarrhea, nausea, fever, and flu-like or cold like symptoms. Also, an antibiotic ointment and Band-Aids, thermometer, and anything else you may consider a first-aid essential.
Once you've prepared, try to relax and have faith that everything will work out. A mild case of culture shock or adoption-related stress can even be helpful in deepening our understanding of the major long-term adjustment required of the child who is changing his home, his parents, his language, his food, and sometimes even his name.
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