adoption

It’s in the balance …

1 Comment

okay get ready I’m talking about a taboo subject, or at least one that doesn’t get a lot of air play … I’ve been thinking of my mothering and the peri-menopausal symptoms I have … it’s quite a balance … motherhood and menopause…I will be turning 50 this year and our daughters will be 7 and 5 this summer, both entrusted to us at birth through adoption as you know.

Although becoming a mother was a journey I embraced, I am not quite embracing this latest journey in my life to menopause through the myriad of obstacles and symptoms that have become my latest routine.  Some nights are filled with ‘the night sweats’ others with insomnia.  During the day I may have a hot flash (luckily not often) and feel more blue than usual.  Irritability may be promoted from misbehavior of our girls or just the way I feel that day … it’s quite a balance and somedays I win and well others the symptoms win …

I realize parenting as a whole has its own obstacles in teaching our children to be good people of integrity and independence and as they get older their resistance to our oversight becomes stronger and stronger and with that clashes occur some for real and some because of my peri-menopausal self. It’s a ridiculously slippery slope, this midlife motherhood. I don’t think that any of us could have imagined how we’d need to balance it all, and especially at this juncture. Thankfully my husband is doing his best to understand and is the even tempered of the two of us at this point in my menopausal journey …

 

 

looking from the outside in …

1 Comment

i·ro·ny (r-n, r-)

NOUN:
pl. i·ro·nies
1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.

We’ve been home from our trip for a couple of weeks now and I have been reflecting on what became a regular occurrence from our time away …

It seemed almost everyone who saw us, whether they were other vacationers, or staff particularly at the resort, the common question to us was “are the girls twins?” The irony of this as you know is that our girls came to our family through adoption and they were born to different birth families and they are two years and a month apart ….

Why have I been thinking about this since our trip? Our girls know they were adopted, they each have a relationship with their birth mothers and extended family … and they know they are sisters because of our family.

But I wonder if their understanding has matured to see the irony in these pleasant comments. We are a family that blends in … all of us are Caucasian and that just happened … we did not know what background our future child might have … we were not specific to ‘caucasian only’ when we began our journey to parenthood through adoption…it just happened.

I do see that there are some resemblances of our girls to each my husband and I … each of their birth mothers resemble us … so it would seem the girls would somehow resemble us at some point too. This just happened it wasn’t something we tried to do … we took this journey understanding that without a genetic connection our future children would resemble the families they were born to and not us ….

When these pleasantries were shared I had a thought “Do I just smile and let them know that they are two years apart?” or “Do I educate that our family was formed through adoption and how they couldn’t really be twins?” I realized now that our girls are 6-1/2 and 4-1/2 years old it really is up to them to share their story and not me or is it at this age? We’ve always felt their adoptions are our families business and not necessarily for the world’s opinion BUT am I wrong to think this way?

after a visit …

Leave a comment

How do we feel after a visit?

Last night C left to return home to her home state she left with eyes brimming over with tears and I saw A was looking sad about her departure as well. So I started a conversation with our girls about our family and their birth families. I asked each of them how they feel after we have seen C and S. Each of them enthusiastically said they are happy when they see them and they feel sad after they have left.

Now at 6-1/2 and 4-1/2 these times together mean more to our girls then when they were babies. We see them developing their own independent relationships and with these relationships come the emotions for them of happy and sad. We talked about it’s okay to be sad when someone we love leaves after a visit.  That shows us how much we love and miss them when we are not together…

We realize that this is not something we can wipe away or hug away. These are their feelings, even now when they can’t put it all into words… but we see it come out as anger, disobedience and quietness (which if you knew our girls you would know something is up). My husband and I have shared with our daughter’s birth moms that the girls do feel sadness when a visit is over so that they know too it’s not just them (both women have shared their feelings of sadness after spending time together). As our girls get older and their understanding of being adopted is more fully understood, I think we will see a variety of emotions before, during and after visits. It is something we have learned to be watchful for to be there as support in the best way we can.

I know both my husband and I each enjoy and look forward to our visits with our family. Some of our get togethers need to be planned, as one family lives out-of-state and the other although close to us, busy schedules have made it that we have to plan a date or days we will be together somewhat in advance. Sometimes these visits include all family and a mix of family from Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and Grandparents including our sides of the family as well.

We are prepared to be there as the emotional support for our girls for whatever and whenever the need arises. We are here to hear what they are feeling and sit and listen allow them the comfort and space to feel what they are feeling … for now they allow us to be and sit with them and talk about it and our hope as they are older they will continue to do the same, allow us to be their emotional support.

Visits together are fun and we all enjoy them, it’s when the time has come to leave that we all feel sad. What helps is we know we will be getting back together and spending time together another time sooner than later.

Could this be it?

1 Comment

It was December 2005, we had already received some calls related to the website we had out there on the world wide web announcing that we wanted to be a family through adoption, domestic open adoption.  So far the calls we received had not amounted to any future calls with the person on the other line … until that one call in December.

C found our website on a google search.  She called through our 1-800 number midday and my husband (working from home) answered.  They talked for a bit.  Both nervous I’m sure.  We learned she was 8 weeks pregnant and was pretty sure she wanted to place her baby in an adoption.  They agreed to talk again.  It wasn’t until after the holidays that C called back again.  This time I happened to answer the phone.  It was a great conversation like talking to an old friend.  The three of us talked this time conferencing on our home phone.  We shared with her our facilitator’s name and number and asked if she would like to be called or to call her.  She chose to call our facilitator.  For us this was the first real step on our parenthood journey.

Turns out she called our facilitator within days of talking to us and after they talked and C gave a medical release for pregnancy verification, we all talked again soon after.  Because C was so early in her pregnancy we were all encouraged to start our relationship, too early for much else as a lot could happen in the next 7 months.

We talked, emailed and through Yahoo instant messages chatted and shared pictures.  Our calls would be full of fun and sharing about ourselves to each other.  Our Yahoo instant messages were filled with sharing fun photos that we all had to share of each other.

She told us more why she though adoption was the right plan for her baby.  She passed on the contact info of the baby’s father and let us know we could contact him to talk to as well.  My husband called him and with that we got to know him as well.

Before we knew it, weeks and months were passing by.  It was April and now C was 6 months pregnant.  Our facilitator suggested we meet in person.  Mind you we lived in different states that aren’t that close to each other.  We started making plans for C to come visit us.  Our only pre-requisite was that her parents knew why she was travelling (she lived at home and at the point had not told them she was pregnant).

We were excited to meet in person after these months of communication and developing a relationship.

As we waited to pick her up at the airport we wondered, could this be it?