Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Babies are born knowing their mothers. They know her voice, the rhythm of her heart, they shared her feelings for months – happy, sad, scared – they felt them all, through the release of maternal endorphins, catecholamines (stress hormones), adrenaline and more. Babies are symbiotic with their mothers. It's meant to be that way.

Do you know the book “Primal Wound” that created such a stir in the adoption community? I believe that book had two messages – one I agree with and one I do not – at least not as stridently as the author. The message I agree with is that all babies separated from their mothers will experience loss and hence, grief. The second message, the one I disagree with, is that there seems to be some feeling that one can never heal from this loss.

People of all ages can and do heal from loss - significant loss. There are millions of examples of that around the world. People can and do work through grief and loss and are able to move forward. Heal does not mean “act as if it never happened” - it means that we are able to assimilate the loss into our lives and then move forward with our new “normal”.

There are large bodies of research showing how much babies know before birth – they are not “blank slates” - they are smart little people!! The Association for Pre-and-Perinatal Psychology and Health has some fascinating conferences and published works. I love that babies can distinguish their mother's voice from another woman basically at birth. I love that they can tell when mama is reading the same book (or singing the same song) that she did during the pregnancy and when she is reading or singing something new. I love that they can tell the smell of their mother's breastmilk vs another woman's, within hours of birth.

Can I say it again? Babies know their mothers. Separation from them creates loss and grief. This separation obviously occurs when the baby is placed for adoption, but can also come from a number of other sources – sick baby in the NICU, sick mama, unable to care for her baby, maternal death, abandonment, etc. The baby doesn't know the reason, can't analyze why it's “OK” – the baby only knows that mama isn't there. (And isn't it interesting that this “list” looks just like the one detailing early causes of RAD.) Babies grieve.