On the day that Anna was to be released from the hospital she had an episode of spitting up.  No big deal, right?  I admit I was caught off guard when everything that my husband Mike fed her came flooding from her mouth like Old Faithful.  But I was new to the parenting thing and I told myself that every infant "spits up."  It wasn’t until the doctor’s came into the room and told us that she had been doing that all night that an alarm went off in my head.  "She’s not healthy.  There is something really wrong" was what I kept hearing in my heart.   "You’re panicking. Cold feet. She’s just a spitting baby" was what my head told me.  Too much of our journey had been led by my heart and it needed a break.  So instead of listening to what might have been mother’s instinct—I couldn’t have developed one in just 48 hours right?—I decided to listen to my head and get her checked out for her symptoms, not any larger underlying cause.
 
Anna was sent to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and for the next five days she was given medication for reflux to ensure the formula was kept down.  She showed signs of improvement and we were allowed to take her home on the sixth day with a few different medications and warm wishes from the doctors and nurses, with one of the night nurses telling us that Anna was an incredibly relaxed baby who was a dream patient.  He said her temperament was something that every parent wishes for.

So what happened?  We brought her to the hotel room the first night "home" and she was quiet and certainly a dream.  But the following nights things began to change.  She cried.  And cried.  And cried.  Then I cried.  And cried.  And cried.  What happened to the baby with the temperament of gold?  It was like she was gone.  I worried that her formula was not warm enough, or if the medication was wearing off.  I wondered if maybe there were some bonding issues that would plague us for a lifetime and that the "open/primal wound theory"—the idea that separating a child from her birthmother can be a traumatic experience with lifelong repercussions—was not just a theory.  Why wouldn’t she stop crying?   Did she already hate me? Could she tell I wasn’t her mom by birth?   I hated the idea that she was frightened by the unfamiliarity of my voice.  When she heard my heartbeat as I held her did she feel insecure and uncomfortable?  

If I had known then what I know now…  Maybe she wouldn’t have developed the issues that we are now struggling through with daily therapy sessions.  Maybe we would have caught—it—it, what I am only beginning to understand and deal with now. So much so that I don’t feel comfortable revealing what it is, just yet. It: What kept her from speaking,  what kept her struggling in pain everyday.  What led her to express herself through behaviors of hitting and pushing, unable to put into words how she was feeling.

Maybe the "autism diet" and the "sensory diet" that she follows now would have had more profound impacts if we had not fed her milk-based formula since the day she was born.   The damage the milk did on her system since the very day she was born makes me cringe.  The very idea that someone so small and innocent could go through the bouts of diarrhea and reflux as she did makes me feel sick as her mother. But the biggest kicker is that I had that instinct.  I wished I had listened to that voice that was telling me there was something wrong, a deep down and forever kind of wrong, instead of convincing myself that she was just in need of a little dropper with magic medication.  I wish I had forced more testing or not suppressed that feeling of concern when doctors would later tell me that "every child grows at their own pace."  There I go,  getting ahead of myself again.

I was in that hotel room for 29 days everyday listening to her scream and watching her body shudder.  I was on edge anyway while Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) and a variety of other issues were cleared up and more than once I recall feeling like I was trapped in a nightmare of my own making.  There was nowhere to go and no one around to step in and talk me from the ledge of my own fears.  Mike left on day 14 after he had used up all of his sick time for the year.  My parents drove three days from Mississippi to come to the rescue.  I cannot explain in words my emotions at seeing a familiar face as even my own reflection had become so distant in my heart.  When they met their newest granddaughter I remember my mom telling me she was beautiful and wonderful; everything I needed to hear. My dad seemed filled with a sense of relief that was audible in his tone and glowed through a fixed smile.  It would only be in later months when the dust would settle that they came fully clean about their first impression.  My mom told me that Anna truly was magnificent but that she was also had a seriousness to her that spoke of "one pissed off baby."  She was right.  Anna was angry.  Her fists were clenched tight and her brow was furrowed even as she slept.  When she wasn’t sleeping she was crying and when she wasn’t crying she was staring into space, emotionless, as if the sounds and smells of the world had shocked her out of the present time.

I was afraid.  She was afraid.  And this was how our life together began.

Read More About My Adoptive Family

 
• Dark Emotions Post Adoption
 
• The Journey to Home

But tonight I’m not going down memory lane.  Tonight we are two years after the fact and I’m home at 6 p.m. with my two girls. We are waiting for 7 p.m. when they will both go to sleep.  I’m ready for that time to come.  It’s been a long night.  We just had to leave a party where my oldest daughter, Anna, belted a 16-month-old boy and nearly sent him down a flight of hardwood stairs.  I’d like to say this kind of behavior problem is a rarity.  I wish I could say she was just tired.  I’d like to believe that she is not the aggressive type or that she must have been prompted to strike him because of something he had done to her.  But the fact is, this isn’t about the typical behavior of a child entering the “terrible twos.”  The screaming and scratching of faces by this child isn’t due to a growth spurt or a desire for independence. 

Two years ago our lives changed, and while I love this child with every ounce of my being, I cannot say that it has been two years of unwavering pride and absolute bliss.  There were nights spent listening to her cry as an infant and knowing that I couldn’t do a thing to console her.  In fact, my attempts to hold her and rock her fueled a fire in her that often frightened me.  There were days when she would fly into fits of rage and bang her head on the ground so hard it would cause welts the size of ping pong balls.  I have left more social settings than I can count only to come home and cry silently at the isolation that I feel when I can sense the eyes rolling of moms who parent more typical toddlers.  Tonight is one of those nights.

But in between those days and nights were periods of rest, when the tears I cried were because of her delicate smile or her deep-hearted giggle, her father swinging her in the air to Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Starting Something,” and Anna singing “yeah yeah” along with the chorus.  It thrilled my spirit to hear her say “uv ou”; a 20-month-old’s attempt at “love you”. 

Most people don’t get to see that Anna.  It hurts my heart that we can’t just leave her alone to let her play in a room with her older cousins or group of friends. Not even for a minute.  The stimulation is just too much and every child becomes a moving target for her to take aim.  Tolerant moms will say, “Don’t worry, my child has an older sibling who does the same thing” and the lesser tolerant ones will say to their child just loud enough for me to hear, “Not everyone is nice sweetheart.  You just need to walk away.”  Both moms are wrong.  Anna isn’t like a typical older sibling, but yes, she is nice.  In fact she is nothing short of amazing…  I swear.

It’s 7:11 p.m. and my loving and supportive husband, Mike, has also come home from the party. He explains that he made a decent excuse to our friends for my abrupt departure.  (We’ve done this enough times that the script is nearly seamless.  I leave first and he follows casually so as not to arise a flurry of concern or to draw attention.) When he he sees my eyes filled with tears, he scoops both girls up in his arms to put them down bed. Up the stairs they go with Anna saying, “Night Night” in that voice that tells me she has no idea what happened just an hour ago.  That breaks my heart all over again.

I rarely get to this point in telling a story as painful as this one before I turn tail and run to hide from the blogosphere, even on my personal blog.  I don’t like to write about the lesser-than-miraculous stuff when it comes to Anna. People tend to remember the really extreme moments in life and for our daughter those extremes are often unpleasant.  So here we are readers.  It’s the beginning of our very long journey through parenting.  It’s easy to get caught up in the hundreds of tonights rather than the possibilities of tomorrow. 

So tonight I will try to remember the yesterdays.  In particular, two years ago yesterday when life as I knew it was a desolate and painful series of days hoping for news that a new life would join ours.  And then the e-mail came and it did.  Anna came and, as all babies do, she changed everything. 

Before we found out, I spent the day in an anxiety-induced hangover from staying up late.  The night before Tammy, our adoption counselor, called me to talk with be about two possible situations.  One was of a baby boy who had already been born, papers were signed, and his adoption was a matter of a few signatures, a relatively quick drive through a few state lines, and coming up with a name.  But there was something in my heart that didn’t feel connected to the situation.  The second opportunity, was for Anna, and much like our daughter’s personality, the placement circumstances were challenging.  There was an obstacle course of legal elements that needed to be navigated, a complicated medical history that would leave several important gaps in the story we could one day share with her, and a broader birth family with other adopted children that may be difficult to piece together should she want relationships in the future.  Nothing about this scenario felt like it would be easy, but all I needed to say yes was a feeling.  And that feeling came when our counselor spoke of one of the other adopted siblings. 

Tammy had helped to place Anna’s sibling a couple of years earlier.  She had been keeping in touch with the family through the years and maybe it was that element of reality that sealed Anna into my heart.  As I listened, Anna stopped being a theory and started to become a younger sister, a real baby, an honest adoption story.  The pieces took shape and my heart beat faster.  I remember very little of the details of our conversation, but I recall with incredibly accuracy the way my jaw felt paralyzed, my stomach quivered, and my breathing became a voluntary action of reminding my body to inhale and exhale.

I fell in love that Anna that night.  There was so much more that had to be done.  We planned to speak to the birthmother the following night and to the mom of Anna’s adopted sibling as well.  Nothing was decided for anyone but Mike and me. 

I remember cleaning the house when I came home from school that afternoon.  My head was pounding with the headache that comes from not having anything to eat or drink all day.  Still, I wiped down surfaces, vacuumed rugs, scrubbed toilets.  You’d have thought the birthmother was coming to our house, but no, I was preparing for a phone call that was still hours away. 

When finally the time came, Mike and I sat next to each other at the kitchen table with two phones, one to use and the other as a back up in case the battery (which indicated full power) suddenly died.  I had rehearsed the conversation for over a year, but it felt like I had never spoke a word in my life.  I was an English teacher.  My job was speaking and my passion was writing.  For this moment though, there was no rehearsal, no lesson plan, no higher education needed.  I just had to be myself and pray that being me was good enough.  For someone who spent over half a decade feeling utterly inadequate, “me” was the last thing I thought would be desirable.

There were awkward pauses, nervous laughs, ramblings, times when I spoke too fast, times when I spoke too slow.  There were times when the birthmom would say something and neither Mike nor I understood so we laughed cordially and hoped that would suffice.  I remember glaring at Mike, hoping he’d chime in more, but being nervous that he’d say something to mess up our chances of being chosen. The birthmom asked us about names for the baby and if we were excited.  I didn’t know how to answer.  Should I say we were happy, or should we been less than forthcoming to protect our true desperation inside?  Do we share a baby name or ask her what she’d like to name the baby?  What if she didn’t like the name we liked? 

As it turned out, Anna’s birthmom loved the name and loved that we had two cats.  She knew of our past experiences with infertility, miscarriage, and a failed adoption and and was thrilled that we were going to be getting a baby after so much time.  Between our profile book, the information that Tammy provided, and our phone conversation, all of our cards were on the table and this birthmother felt comfortable entrusting her baby’s happiness, well-being, and dreams in our hands.  Imagine that; for once the idea of “me” was what it took to make me a mom.

Life changed that night. One week later, life would change again.  Anna was born and suddenly “me” felt entirely lacking all over again.

First, it’s ME who is lucky to have HER.  The child saved my life.  I’m not exaggerating.  I don’t know where my mental or physical health was heading prior to her adoption, but I know that I wouldn’t have lasted much longer continuing to be as taxed as I was on a daily basis.  Ulcers, weight loss, headaches, nightmares, panic attacks…  you name it, they were my constant companions.  Anna’s life was a miracle to mine and so the notion that she is lucky to have me seems like a joke.  In my lifetime I wonder how I can ever be as valuable to her as she has been in just the last 22 months. 

Second, imagining where she’d be had we not adopted her is not in my frame of mind.  But I can very easily imagine where I’d be had we not adopted her.  It’s a little place commonly known as HELL.  Daily tantrums, fits of illnesses, sibling jealousy, and the dirty diapers have nothing on the horrors of living a life without her. 

Just the other day I was introduced to a new member of my little play group.  After learning of Anna’s adoption, the mom asked with genuine interest if we had adopted because we wanted to save a child?  I had to laugh out loud and immediately, without a social filter I responded, “Seriously?  No, I wanted to save myself.”  The room seemed to stand still and then someone said, “That’s why I like you Jenna.  You just tell it like it is.”  Out of the corner of my eye I could see another mom who was clearly appalled by my statement.  I wonder what it is about adoption that makes people think it was either a consolation prize for the helpless infertile or the work of a completely selfless and altruistic person.  Somewhere in the middle is me.  I was supposed to be a mom to Anna and Meghan and this is how it happened.  Period.

There is something else to that “she’s so lucky” statement that has thrown me.  It most often is spoken just after Anna has had a major meltdown (and I mean meltdown in the atypical, something-is-wrong-with-my-child way) or when she is a tornado of energy without focus or consideration for social expectations.  Anna has some significant developmental issues that we are working on (more detailed information is coming on this topic).  Hearing how lucky she is to have me is like telling me that there is something wrong with her that no one else would want to handle.  Like, “Thank God it’s you and not me”.  ugh.  It both turns my stomach and breaks my heart.

Here are some other, kinder ways that would seem to say the same sentiment:

What a great family you all make!
It’s truly a miracle that you all found each other!
It’s amazing how things seem to work out even when they seem impossible.

Some who read my words may wonder where it is that I’ll get to writing the story which has brought me to AFC, “a family with special needs.” It’s hard to say, really. But recent happenings are forcing my hand to sharing a bit sooner than I’d like.

The internet… the Pandora’s Box of the 21st century. In so many ways I can both feel blessed and cursed by it, but when it comes down to the bottom line, we are all in charge of how we use it to our advantage or disadvantage. In thinking about our adoption story, I find myself on thin ice with the internet.

Prior to the births of my daughters, the web was a home away from the reality of living silently in my fertile shell. I made friends with so many wonderful people. Some of them were miscarriage survivors, others have since gone on their own way to live a life without children. Whatever their story, I created connections with perfect strangers from all over the world that felt more intimate than so many connections in my material life.

After putting our infertility story out in the public through our little stints on Oprah, The Today Show, and The Empty Picture Frame, I received a lot of feedback that comforted me and got me through some soul searching times. When I read reviews on Amazon from the book I felt like I was part of a community of women like myself who just wanted to be heard and accepted. But there were others people, too, who didn’t seem to share in my experiences. I remember one person on a message board who wished me cancer for having injected myself with hormones for so many years. Mean internet!

In addition to my time on AFC, I have another blog where I write about where our adoption journey has taken us. That blog was once private but came out of the black hole of blogs this year to reveal some intensely personal aspects of our path to a family. I am amazed at how few people respond to that blog anymore, when there were often dozens of responses when it was private. I don’t believe people left me, but I tend to think that there are a lot who like to lurk more than post. Maybe that’s the way it is here?

I have a private blog for my closest friends and family. I have chronicled the happening of my girls’ lives so that those who live far from us can enjoy their progress and feel connected to the stories of their first steps, first teeth, Halloween costumes and all that good stuff. Each month I’ve posted a video on their birthdays so we can watch them grown before our eyes. Sometimes I catch myself thinking morbidly… what if I were to die tomorrow? They would at least have those pieces to read and those videos to watch to know just how deeply loved they both are. I will thank the internet for carving a permanent place for my love for those children.

In the past few weeks, the internet once again has struck me in a sore spot. Up until now, the question to publish any of Anna’s story has been mine alone to make. In spite of readers’ requests on my other blog to see pictures of my family, I have never posted a photo of anyone. I do not name Anna’s birth mother because that is a part of her story to share, not mine or even Anna’s for that matter. Anna’s birth siblings, as well, are not for discussion by name, location or age. That, too, is not debatable. While I myself am highly Google-able, that was a choice I made long ago and I choose not to make that decision for anyone else.

However, the control that the internet has provided me to communicate what I wish and when, is also reciprocal to the birth family. No legal documentation or binding agreement can truly cover the surfacing of information on the other side of Anna’s family tree. While I suppose I could make a case on the basis of the legal aspect of adoption, the agreement for open communication stops me from going down that road. I do not want to play the legal card when so much of our relationship is not just about legal stuff.

This worries me and it is what has kept me at arm’s distance from posting for the last few weeks. How do I navigate these tricky waters when places like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or My Space allow for information to be shared to mass audiences? When I am asked for photos of my daughter so that her birth mom can put them on her wall, how am I to differentiate between her wall at home and her wall on Facebook? How do I share the videos of my child with her birth family and be certain that they won’t later show up on YouTube? Can I be “friends” with Anna’s birth family and not have them emailing everyone else on my “friend” list?

As I have worried about how much information I choose to share through my blogs, it is no longer my place in the blogosphere which has me feeling so cautionary. Drawing the lines between what is appropriate and what isn’t has little to do with the legal paperwork of adoption. For me, it’s more about the respect that adoption brings for all parties. I want our relationship to be one of mutual respect and understanding, and ultimately protecting OUR daughter from the harms that the internet can bring. While I am still feeling my way through those pitfalls, I find myself worrying that there are other people out there who are not constantly questioning the decision of what, how, or when to post.

When is TMI more than just some phrase that is laughed about by teenage girls at the mall?

Since our adoption of Anna there is something else to that idea of family that catches me once in a while.  While filling out my holiday card list there is the added name of our very extended family; Anna’s biological sibling who was also adopted.  The uniqueness of this situation does not fall on deaf ears.  Thanks to the concept of open adoption, so many adoptees will learn of their birth mothers and fathers, but often the biological siblings get lost in the story.  Sometimes there are none to speak of and other times they are either adopted to people who would like to keep that aspect closed, or they are raised by the birth parents in a complicated set of circumstances. Either way I hear much about that bond between the first parents and the baby, but I rarely read of the siblings.  As a sister myself, I will say that the bond between my sister and me is one that reaches deeper than even that between our parents.

When we first learned of Anna there was one over-riding stipulation to her adoption that all parties felt was crucial.  Anna needed to know of any biological siblings.  Fortunately for us, the adoptive parents to one of her siblings has become very dear friends to us.  It was during the crucial days of Anna’s stay in the NICU that I called upon the other mom for support and reassurance.  It was that mom who was able to talk me off a ledge of fear and uncertainty.  Since then, we have come to share stories, pictures, and share in emails on a regular basis.  Initially this was done for the benefit of our children and to uphold a promise to them that they would have access to each other when/if they needed it.  But somewhere along the way, it has been us moms that have needed and wanted the access.  I would consider her to be a part of our family in much the same way as I consider her child to be Anna’s sibling.  We have never met, and yet we share a bond that is stronger than our similar circumstances could have predicted.  Often I wonder if our children will one day feel the same way.  Maybe they won’t consider each other as siblings, but close friends as their moms are.  At least we will give them the opportunity to make that decision for themselves.

Adoption can be so incredibly complicated.  It can be a raving success or it can be a nightmare of unforeseen issues.  Adoption can simply stop at being a method to building a family or it can be something that shapes futures.  For us, the adoption of Anna gave us the gift of friendship, family, and support.  It is OUR family tree, not HER family tree has been extended in ways that I would never had dreamed.  Not only does it create opportunities to share a beautiful story, but it also increases the number or holiday cards to write!

Our lawyer had talked at length about how he managed to get couples out of his state in 5-7 days. Two weeks later, Mike had depleted his vacation time and needed to get back home. I would be left in the hotel room by myself…  except it was worse than being by myself. I was with a two-week-old infant for whom I felt incredibly ill-prepared to care. Not only was I in a strange state hundred of miles from my home, but I was also with a baby who cried inconsolably every waking minute. Seriously. E.V.E.R.Y minute.

Colic. That’s what we were told when she screamed and clenched her fists or hours and hours each day. Even while sleeping, her brow was furrowed and her tiny muscles were contracted. When she left the NICU after a five-day stay, we were told she was as good as new after some minor reflux. One nurse even told us she was going to be the most laid back baby we could imagine. What, then, was the problem?

I found a hospital to complete Anna’s 2 week well-baby check up and was anxious to ask them what I could about this crying little being. After explaining my situation to the nurse at the ER, I was told to take a seat in the waiting room. It was then that I learned I had new issues to contend with. A security guard walked over to me followed by a doctor and two nurses. They lead me to an exam room where the nurse took Anna from me to be “weighed and measured”...  or so I thought.

Moments later, when the questioning began, I realized that Anna was no longer in the room with me and that the questions I was being asked were not about her health, but about me.  Where are you from? What is your full name? Do you have two forms of ID? I explained the adoption and that my husband was on his way back to our home state. I was tired and I cried as I told them that Anna hadn’t stopped crying since we took her from the hospital. I was met with glazed eyes and was told that they couldn’t treat her or do an exam because I didn’t have her adoption papers with me. I explained that the adoption was not finalized but that I had a file of paperwork and that there must be something in there that would be helpful. Apparently the one paper they needed was at the hotel room. The insurance coverage was difficult to understand because Anna was both on her birth mom’s insurance and also ours, but her name had not been changed, etc. I begged them just to help me help Anna and that we would take care of the money on a credit card if needed. I could hear Anna screaming in the adjacent room and I tried to get to her. The security guard stood strong in my path.

“She is screaming and has been screaming for two weeks. I need to hold her.”

“Babies don’t scream for no reason,” the guard told me.

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

Finally I was told, “We can’t treat her because you aren’t her real mom so you can’t give authorization.”

In that moment I felt myself become focused from my fog of exhaustion. Fear turned into a protective rage.

“I AM her mom.”

Memories of her stay in the NICU flooded me. I recalled one night shift nurse who phoned us to tell us to come feed Anna at 2am. We explained we were going to see her in the morning as we had a very long night of attorney issues and needed to clear our heads with sleep. “Babies are a 24-hour job,” she had said before hanging up. Her tone obviously questioned our commitment as parents. I had bit my tongue during that phone call, but not now.

“I am the person who has dreamed of her for years before she was born and I am the person who has held her each night as she cries. I am the person who is here now and I will be the person who is there for her when she falls, when she cries, when her heart breaks, when she graduates, when she learns to drive. And I will be the person who explains that I am not the only mom she has and I’ll be the person who has to delicately embrace the fallout of emotions that will inevitably come from that story. Yes, I AM her mom.”

This would not be the last time my role as her mother would find its way to an important conversation. It would also not be the last time that I would find myself defending the origin of my family. I imagine this happens to many adoptive parents as I also imagine it happens to birth parents who are asked about how many children they have.

I’m a work in progress as a human being and especially as a mom. I’m still working on how to not let those ignorant comments get the better of me. Just today someone said of my two children, who are just nine months and two weeks apart, “That can’t be natural.”

Ugh.  ]]> 2009-11-30T17:23:59+00:00 http://www.adoptivefamiliescircle.com/site/ghost_of_birthdays_past/ http://www.adoptivefamiliescircle.com/site/ghost_of_birthdays_past/#When:00:29:45Z Last week was my birthday. I remember my birthday from so many years earlier. I remember wishing for a baby and thinking, “By next year, I’ll be a mom.” It was easy to think of a year in advance rather than concentrating on the emptiness of the current situation. For over half a decade the birthday process went on that way. 

Now, here I am with a 19 month old and a 10 month old. It blows my mind that so much has changed. So much of what felt impossible is at my feet. I marvel daily at how I became so fortunate and so close to not having any of this.

At one point, and only one point, in my journey to motherhood did I feel the urge to give up and follow a different path.

Mike and I had been waiting for a year to be chosen by a birth mother. We had long passed the moments of hope and excitement. We didn’t have the feelings of empowerment and enthusiasm about the adoption process that so many of my fellow infertiles talk about when moving off of the treatment path. For us, the entire process from beginning to end had been a frightening leap of faith and, after a year of waiting for a placement, preceded by five years of IVFs and failures, that faith was near extinct.

January 2008 found me cooped up in my house watching another typical New England blizzard blanket the neighborhood. The television streamed school closings and the fire was giving off that familiar comfortable smell of birch burning. With the holiday season once again passed, I sat on the couch with my computer typing thoughts about my life’s path. As I often do, I was writing an email to no one…  just a bunch of my emotions pouring out into cyberspace where I would not be judged me for my words of self-pity and self-loathing. Except for one thing—I addressed the email to the counselor whom we had turned to once we gave up on our dreadful agency. The agency had taken $10,000 and given us not even a glimmer of a connection; we were hopeless. When I turned my energy to our new counselor I was once again renewed with confidence that something would come through for us. It was easier to blame a bad agency than to see ourselves as potentially undesirable.

Yet there we were—a year after our home study, and still no birth moms had selected us. Mike and I had discussed this possibility but never did I imagine it would come true. Here was the bold statement. We would not allow our relationship to be defined as the couple who tried to have kids their entire lives. Yet there we were. We had been together for nearly 12 years and nearly 6 of those had been spent trying to have a family. It was decided then that if nothing materialized by the anniversary of the day we met, we would forego any further efforts.  At that point, we would have spent half of our lives together in pain, and we couldn’t imagine continuing on that path as a healthy way to build a strong marriage.

As I sat on that couch typing out the unintended email, the idea that we were in the homestretch to loneliness loomed over my head. Questions bubbled from dark places within me: Who was I if I wasn’t going to be someone’s mom? What would my life look like if it didn’t involved being a parent? How could I face my students everyday knowing that I would never have a child of my own to teach? Could our marriage survive the depression that I knew I was about to experience? Would I regret having made the choice to abandon this calling? I poured my heart out without editing. As tears streamed down my face I heard my dog scratch at the door to come in from the cold. The wind from the blustery night blew out the candles on the kitchen table, reminding me of so many birthday wishes that would not be fulfilled. When I returned to my computer, my cat was curled up on the heat of the keyboard.

“Great,”  I thought, “I’m already one of those cat-people who never had kids.”

I pushed her aside to find my writing gone, sent inadvertently to the counselor whom I had already overburdened through a series of desperate phone calls and emails. It was something you’d seen on television. I pushed every possible button hoping to retrieve the material. It was no use. A woman I barely knew and the last person I’d want to think I was a lunatic was going to be receiving a message where I questioned whether I was really meant to be a mom. Certainly I had nailed my own coffin.

And now, as my birthday has come and gone, I recall that night not so long ago when things were at their darkest and my heart ached for a wish that would not come. This year my birthday was spent cleaning the house, wiping poop off tiny bums, and making dinner. When I opened my gift from the girls, it was a day at a spa where I could relax and get away from “it all.” It was an interesting gift, given that I would never ever want to get away from any of it again.]]> 2009-11-18T00:29:45+00:00 http://www.adoptivefamiliescircle.com/site/dark_emotions_post_adoption/ http://www.adoptivefamiliescircle.com/site/dark_emotions_post_adoption/#When:01:52:35Z It’s been well documented that most people travel through certain stages before they are really ready to adopt. If you are moving from infertility to adoption, those stages are dramatic and emotional. I think my husband and I lingered in every stage a bit longer than the typical adoptive couple. Sometimes I think I’m addicted my own emotions. I tend to wallow in them until I can’t breath. 

Little is written about the stages of grief after adoption… yep, I wrote grief… grief after adoption. They are real and let me tell you that, if I had a nice time lathering myself up in the denial, anger, and despair of post-infertility blues, I got good and drunk off of post-adoption stress. Each day was like a 24-hour bar where the cocktail on special changed from resentment, to inadequacy, to denial… too many emotions to count.

The first wave came when we met our daughter for the first time. People we had met told us, “You’ll just fall in love at first sight” or “Once you see her it will all just fall into place.” Wow, were they wrong. For a number of reasons, the moment when we met Anna was one of the most difficult in my life. Walking into the room, meeting her birth mother, having the baby placed in my arms… ugh, I think of it now and I feel sick to my stomach.

I was riddled with guilt for having this, the most important moment in my life, be a day that her birth mom would remember as so sad for herself. There was little happiness for me because I was overwhelmed with what I thought I “should do.” Should I hug the birth mother? Should I talk about how happy I was? Should I say “thank you?” It all seemed too practiced and not enough. I was confused, exhausted, and filled with so many conflicting emotions. The idea that I’d fall in love at first sight was so far from down in the Pandora’s box of emotions, I just couldn’t grasp it.

Following this came a long period of denial. I refused to believe that this baby was going to be ours. I had separated myself from seeing her as a real human being who would be our daughter so much that the love I should have/could have felt was impossible to achieve. I didn’t want to be hurt. And after 6 years of hurt, I couldn’t let myself feel anything for her. I even told our counselor that I didn’t know if I would parent her. Nothing I was feeling was parental. Nothing in my heart felt natural for how a mom should feel when meeting her daughter. It was painful and heartbreaking… all the emotions I was trying to protect myself from feeling I was now bringing on myself.

The day that Anna was to be discharged brought another series of emotions to tackle. There was the possibility that her birth mother would not proceed with the adoption plan. Suddenly I wanted to grab Anna and run. I felt protective of her and I began to love her as I had imagined I would. I was scared and felt karma had brought this ironic twist because I had doubted my own emotions the night that we met. It was dreadful, a nightmare of hours when the questions in my mind and heart were battling with the reality of our situation.

Enter the beginning of our medical concerns for Anna. Only hours after the birth mother left the hospital and Anna was supposed to be packed up in her car seat, she vomited violently. It wasn’t the spit up of a typical baby. In fact, we would learn that it was the same vomiting that occurred the entire night before. We would also learn that Anna was not going to be coming home with us. She was going to sent to the NICU and she would be given a feeding tube. Suddenly a new emotion bubbled up. Inadequacy. Could I do this? Could I parent a baby with needs that we hadn’t foreseen? We had spent over $100,000 on infertility treatments and now were faced with who knows how much money in medical expenses…. money we simply did not have. How could we give her what she needed if we didn’t have it? It wasn’t just the money that I felt inadequate about, it was the ability to care for a baby with certain specific needs.  I was a teacher for over a decade and I knew well how parents of children with needs dedicated their lives to those kids. I just didn’t know if I could be one of them. This baby deserved parents who didn’t question their ability to parent, and yet here I was doing just that.

The emotions of adoption don’t end here. They continue to this day. On a regular basis I can feel a mix of inadequacy and guilt. But I also feel something else; I am in awe of my fortune. I love this child beyond words and time. I cannot imagine that I am the same person who experienced all of what has been written. Often I am embarrassed by my own insecurities. I cannot believe I ever questioned my ability to love or parent this child and yet, as I would learn later, these emotions are not exclusive to adoption. When I gave birth nine months later, and the nurse said, “your daughter is here”  I looked for Anna.]]> 2009-11-12T01:52:35+00:00 http://www.adoptivefamiliescircle.com/site/calling_all_triad_members/ http://www.adoptivefamiliescircle.com/site/calling_all_triad_members/#When:17:22:35Z Ironically, even though I’m a blogger, I don’t read many blogs.

I feel like I’m always that party crasher who gets drunk and says things that are off color or insensitive. Having said that, I’m about to get really wild here, lampshade on my head wild, so be aware that if you are super sensitive to this stuff, this post may not be for you.

In college a good friend used to call me Terry, short for Tourettes Syndrome, because whatever was on my mind would come out, totally unfilitered. I have a tendency to do that when I’m blogging or commenting on other blogs. I’m frustrated when I know an author is holding back just to be politically correct. I get irritated by bloggers and posters who use pseudonyms…  as I tell my students, you should own what you say or don’t say it at all.

We are such an interesting community of people. There is this notion of the adoption triad… the birth parents, the child, and the adoptive parents. The idea is that this triad is linked forever by a mutual respect and love for the process which brought them together. I have to say, I really find this peculiar in that out there in the adoption circles, I don’t see much mutual anything with these groups. Sure sometimes there is a great match up and these families really unite around the common ground of having a child who is loved by so many. But more often than not, and I can speak from experience on this, there is a sad animosity that lies just beneath the surface of the process.

Among the adoption blogs that I do read, many adoptive parents seem stuck on the idea that they have to be sensitive to the story of their child’s genetic make-up. They seem to want to change school assignments to meet the special needs of their kids and celebrate holidays like “gotcha day”. I have one great friend who has a picture of her daughter’s birth mother holding their daughter prominently featured in their home and another friend who sends videos to her child’s birth parents to mark each month of life.

It’s as if they go out of their way to include that piece in their child’s life without considering that maybe, their kids won’t want to be surrounded by reminders that these people chose not to be so involved in their upbringing.  I’m amazed at how hypersensitive some adoptive parents are in that way. I wonder, are they trying to fix the “primal wound” that they bought into during the process even though such a wound may not really exist? Or maybe their adoption stories really are as rosey as they paint them to be.

There is also special group of angry adoptees who lurk in the shadows of blogs on adoption. I had one of these when I was a private private blogger many moons ago. She was a member of my blog for well over a year and seemed supportive of our journey ever step of the way. Then, the night before Mike and I were to be parents, she posted this on my blog

“Unfortunately, as an adopted child she will never really be your little girl. She may play the role but inside she will be viscerally attached to her birthmother that is stronger than any artificial bond she may form with you which she forms out of necessity and survival. Her soul will always crave her real mother and that craving is a hole you will never fully be able to fill. I also work in the adoption world and unite children and their birthmothers and believe me, for both parties it is normally the single greatest moment of their lives as they crave each other in a way that can never be satisfied by anyone else. Please prepare yourself for this reality as you go on your journey with this little girl who is the true daughter of someone else.”

Artificial bond? Real Mother? True Daughter? I don’t get it.

The parts of the triad share such a unique story, and yet I haven’t really seen them come together in discussion groups or blogs. As an adoptive parent I would love to hear from adoptees who have had great experiences and who find their adoption to be a truly great gift…  but I suppose those people are off enjoying their lives whereas, when there is something to complain about, it seems there is plenty of time to do so under a pseudonym on the internet.

It’s interesting that the note I received above talked about “craving each other.” I’m having a hard time finding these blogs from birth fathers and mothers. We don’t hear enough from them.  Why do they rarely post in adoption forums? I’d personally LOVE to see a blogger on AFC who is a birth parent. I wonder, are they scarce because they feel a strong misplaced sense of guilt over placing their children? Or maybe they are busy doing wonderful things in the world as a testament to making a thoughtful and “right” choice for that time in their lives? I feel like these people could be the bridge between the over-cautious adoptive parents and the “wounded” adoptees. The words of birth parents are powerful. They have the answers that adoptees search for and that adoptive parents can’t deliver. Their experience is invaluable and shouldn’t be closed when the petition is completed.

I just think there has to be a middle ground somewhere. Yes, adoptive parents, adoption is a big friggin thing. But, no, wounded adoptees, it’s not the only thing. It has it’s place, in the photo albums and stories we share. But there is something to be said for the future, too.

My daughter isn’t adopted. My daughter WAS adopted. It happened and I’m entirely grateful it did. Now it’s over and we are moving forward as the family we were meant to be.  We will visit the past at appropriate times like when we do our Thank You’s at night or when we talk about family trees and fill our medical background sheets for the doctors. But it isn’t going to be a part of our regular conversations with every person we meet.

The triad is a nice theory, but let’s look more closely at the idea of a triangle. All the points have to meet. Every part of the triad needs to come together. So let’s do that. Let’s stop the ugly postings and start using each other as resources to build and unite families. How about starting with having an adoptee and a birth parents write for AFC?

Editor’s Note: If you are interested in blogging for AFC, please email us at community@adoptivefamilies.com.]]> 2009-11-06T17:22:35+00:00