Interview with Wendy McCord, M.F.C.C., Ph.D.

Wendy McCord is a psychotherapist in the Phoenix area with a special interest in the treatment of problems related to prenatal and perinatal trauma and loss. Dr. McCord was Chairperson of the 1994 Regional Conference of APPPAH "Nurturing the Unborn Child: The Lifelong Impact" held at Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles. Readers can contact her at 602-899-2099.

M.A. : What should adoptive parents know when they bring home their baby?
W.M. : All adopted babies, I think you can pretty much say, are in shock, which is the most severe level of trauma, and that shock needs to be empathized with and understood. They need to be held a lot, they need to be given true empathy, and what they do needs to be interpreted in terms of their loss. Parents who are in denial of this add another trauma to what the baby has already suffered. The most important information that adoptive parents can have is that their baby is conscious of what happened to it, that there is, encoded in it's biological and emotional and spiritual system, the knowledge, already, of this primal wound. Babies sense it physically, emotionally and spiritually--on all levels.

M.A. : The idea of adoption as a "primal wound" seems so hopeless, as if there's nothing a parent can do. Is there something they can do?
W.M. : Absolutely. If they can come to their child with this understanding, then they can begin to interpret the signals the child is giving them as being based on what the child needs. They can begin to empathize with the baby's experience. So if an infant comes to them with colic, or with tremendous startle responses, or fear, or is unable to attach or unable to be held or unable to be comforted, instead of feeling like the child doesn't like them, they can begin to say to this baby, "You must feel really sad, you must feel really lost. You miss your mother. You miss your connection. You've lost something very important, and I understand." Hold the baby, and let the baby mourn--because they are truly mourning--and contain the baby's fears and contain their own fears because the baby does not have the ability to take on adult fears at that time. Another specific thing they can do is to find out about the birth, and about the birth mother and what she went through, so that if there was drugs or alcohol, or if there was anxiety involved on the mother's part, they can know about it. What was the birth like? Did the baby get to see its mother? Did the mother hold the child, or was it never put in its mother's arms? To the infant, those things are significant and have deep meaning.

M.A: : What if the baby seems 'unreachable'?
W.M: If your adopted baby can't connect to you, if for any reason it is just disconnected, or spacy, or blocked out, or foggy, whatever--you need to empathize with that. "You're far away from me now, it's hard to connect to me. I'm not the mom you expected. I don't smell like her. I don't sound like her. I'm a different mom, and I love you, and I will wait for you to get over your sadness." And you have to say it, out loud. These are tremendously healing things for this infant to hear, and it will allow the baby to cry, it will allow the baby to mourn.

M.A. : How can I expect a newborn baby to respond to the words I say, since he doesn't understand language?
W.M: Babies are much more conscious than they're given credit for. Medical science is beginning to understand more and more about what babies are capable of. They're actually realizing that babies understand math, that they understand concepts, that they identify people, that they are much, much smarter than we have understood. But what they haven't gotten to yet is that babies are psychologically brilliant, and probably more in touch with their feelings, and more in touch with what's going on than we ever, ever gave them credit for. One of the sad things about psychology is that few people understand how conscious babies are even in utero. One way this shows is in the statistics that certain adopted children have so many psychological problems even though many of them grow up in families who truly love and care about them and want to help them.

M.A. : I'm afraid that by bringing up such things I'll be putting awful ideas into his head.
W.M: I think one of the most ludicrous ideas is that you're hiding anything from a baby. Years ago people wouldn't tell children that they were adopted, and so they would grow up sensing that something is terribly wrong. And when they were told the truth, although it may have been interpreted as a horrible truth and a terrible secret, it made sense, and it made their life make sense, and it gave them an understanding of this terrible burden they were carrying, like not feeling right about themselves. So the idea that telling the truth to an infant is going to put an idea in their mind is absurd--they were there, they know. They know on a very primal, instinctual level. All you're doing is telling them that the hurt they feel is real, which is what makes us sane. It's what truly loving is--affirming that person's honest experience. So anything less than that is insane. Anything less than that is putting crazy ideas in their mind, like they should be happy, or they should not be sick, or they should not be feeling bad, or they "should be loving me more than their birth mom". That's crazy and the baby doesn't understand that. So it's exactly the opposite of putting awful ideas into his head. And the other thing is, even if you don't believe me, what harm would it do to try? If you don't believe the baby understands and hears, then it doesn't matter what you say, does it? But if by some odd chance I might be right, then it may just reduce the level of pain that the infant is carrying.

M.A. : How do I know if what I'm saying is helping?
W.M. : You'll know immediately. The baby will know, and you will know. They just...hear you, I don't know how to say it--they hear you and they feel understood. It's miraculous to see it. They just relax. It's totally healing.

M.A. : Is there a 'time frame' for having the best opportunity to affect healing in the child?
W.M. : We know that personality is set probably by birth, and certainly by one. And the damage that's done to a child in the first year is the most severe damage. We know this, Freud knew this--it's the first stage of development. We know that most child abuse is done before age three because people think children that young can't remember. But not empathizing with your child is also a form of abuse. You're telling them that what they're feeling isn't real, or that they can't feel, but they can. Babies who've been separated from their mothers do have to mourn. And they do have to be sick. And they need somebody just to understand why, and to allow it. Then they can heal.

Marcy Wineman Axness, axness@earthlink.net an adoptee, lives in California with her husband and two children. ADOPTION INSIGHT ~ Booklets, Audiotapes, Articles to illuminate heart and mind http://home.earthlink.net/~axness/

Credits: Marcy Wineman Axness