Rachel’s recent blog on babywearing reminded me of the many hours I spent wearing my one-year-old daughter Meg in a traditional Korean podaegi, a quilt-like baby carrier, and how much it comforted her while she was grieving for the foster mother who had cared for her for ten months. This got me thinking about the difference in child care among cultures. I would urge adoptive parents to learn as much as they can about child care in their child’s country, and if possible how your child in particular was cared for.
Especially for the older baby or toddler, keeping some child care practices the same may help them through the trauma of the move. Remember the child is already experiencing the loss of familiar faces, places, smells, language, time zones, climate and more.
Many babies and toddlers in other parts of the world are used to being held by foster parents and unused to being left in swings, cribs and strollers. Conversely some babies from orphanages may be unused to prolonged face-to-face interaction and need to be eased into it. They may not be used to being the only child around.
Korean babies usually sleep with their mothers on a mat or futon-like setting on the floor, and many Korean foster mothers follow this practice. My daughter had slept with her foster mother, then been transitioned from the foster mother’s Western-style bed to a mat on the floor next to the mother’s bed. However, the foster mother lay down with her until she was asleep. We allowed our daughters to share our king-size bed for several months after they came home. (We ended up doing this for a while with our birth son too, as do many mothers who practice attachment parenting or long-term breastfeeding.)
The Korean babies are carried on their foster mothers’ backs almost constantly. I was able to find a Korean baby carrier, a podaegi, which is quite different from most carriers, being basically a quilt which ties a baby onto your back.
I was able to find a website with directions for wearing and information on ordering the podaegi as well as many other kinds of baby carriers, some inspired by traditional carriers of the Mayan Indians, parts of Africa or the Pacific Islands. The websites include pictures of how to put it on the carrier yourself (I always had my husband help me, and didn’t try to carry other things while I was wearing my daughter in it. We used it mostly at night when we were trying to get her days and nights switched to our time zone. My husband would tie her onto me before he went to bed (his job was to get up early with our toddler son) and Meg and I would walk the floors for hours…I’m actually kind of nostalgic about it now. Note: If you are adopting internationally and have children already, plan ahead to have someone help you with the older children who may be on a completely different time schedule. We had one kid finally going to sleep at five am and her brother waking up at seven.
In Korea they called this form of carrying “obo” and if Meg was crying I would just say, “obo?” and lift her to my back (even without the carrier for brief periods).
I was very happy to have had this for Meg–it is what she was used to and I think it was a comfort.
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