The trip to China was exciting. You stayed in a five-star hotel and even saw fabulous sights like the Great Wall and the palace in Beijing. Your baby was more adorable in person than pictures. You and your husband never felt so thrilled and fulfilled as you held her in your arms on the flight home. Your ten-year quest for a child is finally over, you are a family now and forever. This little one is finally yours!

One month later.

You feel anxious and depressed, but more often, simply overwhelmed. Some mornings you don't get dressed. You don't feel any great love for your child, and you can barely make it through your day. Even your husband doesn't understand. In your deepest, most private moments, you wish you could give your baby back.

Science is just beginning to define "Post-Adoption Depression Syndrome" (PADS), which is not yet a distinct illness recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. PADS can range from a full-blown episode of severe depression that requires hospitalization or just a simple case of the blues that lasts a month or two. The few scientific studies of PADS indicate that over half of adoptive mothers experience it. For example, in 1999 Harriet McCarthy, manager of the Eastern European Adoption Coalition Parent Education and Preparedness, surveyed 165 mothers who had adopted children from Eastern Europe and found that 65% reported post-adoption depression. Other researchers have determined that you are more likely to experience PADS if you adopt from overseas or if your child has special needs.

"PADS is now where post-partum depression in biological mothers was ten years ago," Pamela Kruger, editor of a book by adoptive parents, told the New York Times. "Parents can be blindsided by it. They're expecting... this joyous moment and not expecting to have these feelings."

Doctors often attribute post-partum blues to dramatic hormonal changes that occur after the birth of a baby. However, psychologists often link new mother's depression to the sudden overwhelming demands of an infant and new financial responsibility, as well her loss of professional identity, social networks, and personal freedom. Sometimes depression is simply about not getting enough sleep or time to oneself.

Adoptive mothers experience all these things too. One mother described PADS to author Dr. Karen Foli: "I don't know how you could know how it feels to have somebody so dependent on you at that level 24 hours a day. It's almost like I was suffocating. Like I had someone physically attached to me. I felt awful that this poor little thing had this monster for a mother who wanted to shake her off her leg."

Many adoptive mothers are older and wealthier than typical first moms. They often have established careers and have enjoyed years of freedom from the demands of children. They feel depressed and anxious if they do not "fall in love" with their children immediately. Old negative feelings about miscarriage and infertility often resurface. Adoptive parents who have become friends with their child's birth mothers often feel sorry for their loss and pain - adding to their own depression. Often adoptive parents have been so focused on the goal of getting a child that they did not prepare themselves for caring for a child.

June Bond, a writer for Roots and Wings magazine and the first person to recognize PADS, says that adoptive parents experience a huge letdown within a few weeks after their new child comes home. It is similar to what happens after a wedding, completing a college degree or achieving any other big life goal. "The emotional rush from the attainment of this long-desired goal is exhilarating," she writes. ".Feelings of being 'let down' are common after reaching any major life milestone."

To make matters worse, their child may have problems the new parents did not anticipate. The child may have spent years in an orphanage or foster care, and developed attention-getting or coping behaviors like head-banging, tantrums, inappropriate displays of affection, etc. Even worse, their doctor may diagnose major medical problems like attention-deficit disorder or fetal alcohol syndrome that will require years of special care.

As Bond and other writers have noted, adoptive mothers and fathers often do not feel free to talk about their depression to friends, family or counselors. Those who supported them in their quest to become parents now believe that they are the happiest people in the world. They have attained a higher social status by adopting and becoming parents. Consequently, many sufferers are reluctant to talk about PADS. They may especially avoid counselors at their adoption agency, because they are afraid they may jeopardize the adoption.

If an adopted child develops problems in later childhood or as a teen, parents often look back over their lives to find answers. If they do not understand that PADS is a normal and even predictable crisis, they may feel that they were never good parents from day one and everything is their fault. They do not understand that nearly every new mother or father has feelings of being trapped by their new child, worries whether they did the right thing by having children, and misses the freedom of their youth and life before the demands of parenthood.

Experts like Bond and Foli tell parents who are experiencing post-adoption depression to get involved with other adoptive parents on the Internet. You can safely share your story with others in the same spot. If your depression lasts for more than a few months, seek professional help. If you are going back over your child's past to figure out what went wrong, don't be too hard on yourself. Post-Adoption Depression is a naturally occurring period of becoming parents.

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