All Moms Not Created Equal
It's been well over 2 years since my last post, and, I have to say, reading The Two Worst Days brought me to tears. How broken we were at that time in our lives, having absolutely no idea that almost exactly one month after that post, we'd be holding our newborn daughter. HOLDING OUR NEWBORN DAUGHTER. WE HAVE A DAUGHTER. *cue the happiest of all happy dances for the rest of our lives*
The End.
No.
The Beginning. To give a little background to our happy dance, The Attorney Who Shall Not Be Named phoned us again, early in May. Oh gracious, we were terrified. This guy treated us horribly the first go-around and was pulling on our heartstrings, again with all kinds of guarantees and waived waiting period and blah, blah, blah. After a hundred phone calls and family meetings and pros and cons, we decided to take one more leap. I won't say it was a leap of faith because it felt like a failure before it even started, like, we jumped off a cliff, fully knowing the fate that would meet us at the bottom, but we did it, anyway. Sickening, actually.
The driving force behind all the i-dotting and t-crossing and debt-deepening that ensued after we agreed to work with The Attorney, again, was that fact that I was clinging to a final strand of hope that, if I could meet our daughter's birth parents as soon as possible, well before her birth, that face time could make a difference. Baby #1 slipped away before met a soul, and maybe establishing that human connection would make a difference.
I am speaking in first person because Tom would not be joining me on this adventure, not at first. Neither he nor I had any days off left at work, and there was no point in both of us putting an even greater dent in our income if I'd be flying right back home with no baby. My mother-in-law agreed to fly out with me to meet Olivia's birth parents at an OB appointment for the scheduling of the pending C-section. Moral support. Much needed.
I've told this story so many times, in varying levels of detail, I'm afraid I'm going to keep this neat and sweet. We flew in on Monday, May 11th, 2015. The OB appointment on Tuesday, May 15th turned into a one-way trip down the hall connected to the clinic for a C-section that very afternoon. Olivia's mother had already starting having contractions and bleeding, and the surgeon didn't want to wait. At 2:11pm, I was the in the OR, furiously snapping photos of my daughter emerging into the world. SURREAL. I was suddenly a mother. We even had our own room in the hospital, and I stayed with her for the required 2 nights, matching wristbands and everything.
A lot of drama, crying, paperwork and days of waiting in a crappy hotel room later, both Tom AND my parents had joined us to celebrate the most precious and beautiful thing that's ever happened to us. We made it official with a judge in Arkansas and flew home, still in a daze. Olivia was only 10 days old. We'd agreed to an open adoption, so photos and chit chat are exchanged through private messaging on a regular basis. There is, unfortunately, a pretty significant language barrier between us, as Olivia is Marshallese, and her parents had only immigrated to Arkansas a few months before she was born.
This language barrier, and probably a few other factors which we are struggling to accept will never be revealed, led to the birth and subsequent adoption of Olivia's baby brother this summer.... to a different family across the country. I'm still working up the courage to reach out to these folks. I'm not gonna lie- I almost lost it when I found out. Lost. It. I was actually out of state at a conference at the time, and I immediately retreated to my hotel room until further notice. I felt betrayed. I felt angry. I felt a deep, deep sadness for Olivia's older siblings who still live with her parents. I had spoken with her 9-year old sister on the phone, a child who was clearly misinformed about the finality of adoption, as the United States defines it. She told me "white people took him," and that "he will come back when he gets a little bigger." The gut punch: "Is Olivia a little bigger, yet?" She truly thinks her little siblings are coming home, soon. And I have to add that there is yet another sibling, still living in the Marshall Islands, with family, I assume. Five Olivias, spread across the world, literally. I've attempted contact twice with The Attorney since this discovery, as our initial (and frustratingly, only verbal) agreement was that we would be contacted immediately were there to be siblings born later, as is common, apparently. Zero response to voicemail or text.
And that sits on a shelf, for now, my heart, heavy.
Twenty-eight-ish months after that fateful day in Texarkana, we have begun the education required by the state of Arizona to become foster parents. We'd like to adopt, again, but adoption through the foster care system comes with the incredible emotional risk of, well, not adopting. We think we're up for it, but, holy criminoly- what a crazy journey we're about to begin, and- controversial.
In my experience thus far, here's how the outsiders (and we're all outsiders to someone) view the path to parenthood....
Have sex.
Oh, you're having trouble getting knocked up?
Relax. Stop wanting it so much, and you'll conceive right away.
Still having trouble?
Fertility treatments.
No success?
More expensive and outside-the-box fertility treatments.
Unwilling, or too expensive?
Give up and adopt.
Preferably a snuggly newborn, as fresh as possible.
Awwww, you guys are real heroes, just so incredibly blessed to be a blessing to an unwanted child.
EVERYONE SHUT UP RIGHT THIS MINUTE.
Everything I just said is ridiculous. Kind of nauseating, actually. Call me angsty, but every action, every conversation, every decision involved in this intricate, confusing, inexplicable journey to "Mama" and "Dada" is intensely personal. Unique. Private, if you want it to be. Not private if you're me. And our intensely personal, unique choice to become foster parents has made me ultra-conscious (and admittedly, quite sensitive) of the staggering difference of public opinion toward Adoptive Parents vs Foster Parents.
The words "my child" are not spoken lightly, but, oh, how possessive we are of these little humans we are working so hard to mold into good people, per each parent's definition of "good," that is. The parents who share DNA, endure (enjoy?) pregnancy, have "offspring" in the most technical way possible- can those parents say "my child" more accurately than, say, an adoptive parent? Does an adoptive parent say "my child" in error, or with disregard to the fact that "my child" was actually created biologically by other people?
And then there are the foster parents. "Parents," that is. As you may know, the biblical Joseph has been referred to as Jesus Christ's "foster father." Donated zero DNA to Jesus. Didn't even have sex with Mary. Yet, he raised Jesus as his own son. As far as the neighbors and fellow synagogue-goers knew, he was Jesus' father. They had relocated as a family so frequently by the time Jesus was an adult, actually, the gossiping townspeople who knew Mary was pregnant before they were married were long gone, too far away to have influence on their community. I mean, Joseph was as far removed from being Jesus' "actual" Dad as he could be. Yet, when an angel came to him with a warning to get out of Dodge before that toddler was brutally murdered by Herod's army, he packed up his little family and left in the middle of the night, no questions asked.
Did Joseph love Jesus? Did he raise him? Or was he an obedient bystander, watching his immaculate wife raise her immaculate son, just following orders? Men are good at following orders, you know... WHAT THE HECK DOES IT MEAN TO BE A PARENT?
Here's the thing (oh, how many things... all the things):
1. Biological parents: Natural, instinctual, deserving of sympathy for all they endure to bring children into this world and put up with the tiny versions of themselves, opinions supremely respected in all things parenting
2. Adoptive parents: Almost as good as the real thing, wealthy, big-hearted, sensitive/please walk on eggshells around them because they might be a little insecure about the whole infertility thing, no right to complain because they've prayed for years to be awakened a hundred times a night, clean up puddles of pee and fight about bedtime
3. Foster parents: Lowest on the parent totem pole, martyr-like babysitters, slightly sociopathic in respect to the fact that they "allow" children to be removed from their home at the whim of the judicial system and then ask for it to happen again and again (delusional masochists)
Granted, these observations may not be completely objective, but I think I've summarized pretty accurately. If you asked me what childless couples think about those 3 categories, I can tell you, from our pre-adoptive perspective: anything less than biological reproduction is "giving up." Which is what made it excruciatingly difficult to even explore the idea of adoption. Excruciating. Especially in light of society's views regarding the above 1, 2 and 3. It's terrifying because the magic of "making a baby" is so highly exalted and, in most cases, taken completely for granted, even accidental, that experiencing the inability to do that with your spouse almost feels like your marriage is less than blessed, less than fruitful. Unholy? Broken? Something's broken, I can tell ya that.
I am a mom. My husband is a dad. My husband and I didn't "make" our baby: she was given to us. Politically correct, or not, that's what happened. We were incredibly lucky to start our parenting journey from the second our child's head ventured outside the womb, before she even breathed Earth-air. That's probably why, when we were at a meeting recently, our hands went up immediately when the coordinator asked, "Who has biological children?" Then, I put my hand back down when I remembered that I wasn't #1 on that list.
Don't get me wrong- please, please, I beg of you. I am not in any way downplaying the 2 completely different pregnancies, labor and delivery of my sister's beautiful children. She truly does have a different kind of connection with her babies than I do with mine. And the connection I believe I will have with my future adoptive children will be different than the one I have with Olivia. It is the validity of those connections that I believe is questioned and criticized and dissected to the point of treating one as superior to another, even subconsciously.
BUT, you know why foster parents are even necessary? Because perfectly valid and beautiful connections between parents and children were destroyed. No longer nurturing, attentive, anticipating needs- that stuff stopped happening. And who suffered? Both parties. Taking a step back to view this arrangement from a slightly more objective perspective, one might see that an entire family is damaged. Those children need parents. Those parents need help. Who's gonna step in to bridge that gap? Foster parents. Doing their best every hour of every day that they've been given with those hurting little ones (or big ones) to restore what has been lost, to seek repair for what has been broken. If the children stay, get a new last name, the work continues. If they return to their biological parents, the prayer gets more intense. Now, if that connection isn't valid, isn't "parenting," I'll be a monkey's uncle because selflessness lies at the core of valid parenthood. And it doesn't get any more selfless than having to say goodbye to the baby you've helped restore to health from drug-addicted newborn, to 19-month old, surpass-er of milestones.
I'm obviously smack-dab in the middle of a parenting transition, over here in Adoption Land, and I get intense about things when I'm trying to sort through my thoughts (that's what blogging is for, right??). I don't know everything about parenting. I can't exactly put my finger on the "definition of a parent" or discuss every element that contributes to the validity of the parent-child connection, but I am sure as heck trying, every single day (and, boy howdy, I can ramble on for miles about it). We all are, right? I mean, we should be. These little people didn't ask to be here, and I guess, neither did we, but we're the grown-ups, and they're at our mercy.
So, carry on, moms and dads. No matter how these kids came to live in our homes, eat our food and raise the electric bill, we're all they've got. And every choice you make to create a home that overflows with your unique combination of full tummies, warm fuzzies and that exhausting concept called "being consistent" is forging connections with those children. That's parenting.
That's what I think today, at least.
Love,
Hannah
The End.
No.
The Beginning. To give a little background to our happy dance, The Attorney Who Shall Not Be Named phoned us again, early in May. Oh gracious, we were terrified. This guy treated us horribly the first go-around and was pulling on our heartstrings, again with all kinds of guarantees and waived waiting period and blah, blah, blah. After a hundred phone calls and family meetings and pros and cons, we decided to take one more leap. I won't say it was a leap of faith because it felt like a failure before it even started, like, we jumped off a cliff, fully knowing the fate that would meet us at the bottom, but we did it, anyway. Sickening, actually.
The driving force behind all the i-dotting and t-crossing and debt-deepening that ensued after we agreed to work with The Attorney, again, was that fact that I was clinging to a final strand of hope that, if I could meet our daughter's birth parents as soon as possible, well before her birth, that face time could make a difference. Baby #1 slipped away before met a soul, and maybe establishing that human connection would make a difference.
I am speaking in first person because Tom would not be joining me on this adventure, not at first. Neither he nor I had any days off left at work, and there was no point in both of us putting an even greater dent in our income if I'd be flying right back home with no baby. My mother-in-law agreed to fly out with me to meet Olivia's birth parents at an OB appointment for the scheduling of the pending C-section. Moral support. Much needed.
I've told this story so many times, in varying levels of detail, I'm afraid I'm going to keep this neat and sweet. We flew in on Monday, May 11th, 2015. The OB appointment on Tuesday, May 15th turned into a one-way trip down the hall connected to the clinic for a C-section that very afternoon. Olivia's mother had already starting having contractions and bleeding, and the surgeon didn't want to wait. At 2:11pm, I was the in the OR, furiously snapping photos of my daughter emerging into the world. SURREAL. I was suddenly a mother. We even had our own room in the hospital, and I stayed with her for the required 2 nights, matching wristbands and everything.
A lot of drama, crying, paperwork and days of waiting in a crappy hotel room later, both Tom AND my parents had joined us to celebrate the most precious and beautiful thing that's ever happened to us. We made it official with a judge in Arkansas and flew home, still in a daze. Olivia was only 10 days old. We'd agreed to an open adoption, so photos and chit chat are exchanged through private messaging on a regular basis. There is, unfortunately, a pretty significant language barrier between us, as Olivia is Marshallese, and her parents had only immigrated to Arkansas a few months before she was born.
This language barrier, and probably a few other factors which we are struggling to accept will never be revealed, led to the birth and subsequent adoption of Olivia's baby brother this summer.... to a different family across the country. I'm still working up the courage to reach out to these folks. I'm not gonna lie- I almost lost it when I found out. Lost. It. I was actually out of state at a conference at the time, and I immediately retreated to my hotel room until further notice. I felt betrayed. I felt angry. I felt a deep, deep sadness for Olivia's older siblings who still live with her parents. I had spoken with her 9-year old sister on the phone, a child who was clearly misinformed about the finality of adoption, as the United States defines it. She told me "white people took him," and that "he will come back when he gets a little bigger." The gut punch: "Is Olivia a little bigger, yet?" She truly thinks her little siblings are coming home, soon. And I have to add that there is yet another sibling, still living in the Marshall Islands, with family, I assume. Five Olivias, spread across the world, literally. I've attempted contact twice with The Attorney since this discovery, as our initial (and frustratingly, only verbal) agreement was that we would be contacted immediately were there to be siblings born later, as is common, apparently. Zero response to voicemail or text.
And that sits on a shelf, for now, my heart, heavy.
Twenty-eight-ish months after that fateful day in Texarkana, we have begun the education required by the state of Arizona to become foster parents. We'd like to adopt, again, but adoption through the foster care system comes with the incredible emotional risk of, well, not adopting. We think we're up for it, but, holy criminoly- what a crazy journey we're about to begin, and- controversial.
In my experience thus far, here's how the outsiders (and we're all outsiders to someone) view the path to parenthood....
Have sex.
Oh, you're having trouble getting knocked up?
Relax. Stop wanting it so much, and you'll conceive right away.
Still having trouble?
Fertility treatments.
No success?
More expensive and outside-the-box fertility treatments.
Unwilling, or too expensive?
Give up and adopt.
Preferably a snuggly newborn, as fresh as possible.
Awwww, you guys are real heroes, just so incredibly blessed to be a blessing to an unwanted child.
EVERYONE SHUT UP RIGHT THIS MINUTE.
Everything I just said is ridiculous. Kind of nauseating, actually. Call me angsty, but every action, every conversation, every decision involved in this intricate, confusing, inexplicable journey to "Mama" and "Dada" is intensely personal. Unique. Private, if you want it to be. Not private if you're me. And our intensely personal, unique choice to become foster parents has made me ultra-conscious (and admittedly, quite sensitive) of the staggering difference of public opinion toward Adoptive Parents vs Foster Parents.
The words "my child" are not spoken lightly, but, oh, how possessive we are of these little humans we are working so hard to mold into good people, per each parent's definition of "good," that is. The parents who share DNA, endure (enjoy?) pregnancy, have "offspring" in the most technical way possible- can those parents say "my child" more accurately than, say, an adoptive parent? Does an adoptive parent say "my child" in error, or with disregard to the fact that "my child" was actually created biologically by other people?
And then there are the foster parents. "Parents," that is. As you may know, the biblical Joseph has been referred to as Jesus Christ's "foster father." Donated zero DNA to Jesus. Didn't even have sex with Mary. Yet, he raised Jesus as his own son. As far as the neighbors and fellow synagogue-goers knew, he was Jesus' father. They had relocated as a family so frequently by the time Jesus was an adult, actually, the gossiping townspeople who knew Mary was pregnant before they were married were long gone, too far away to have influence on their community. I mean, Joseph was as far removed from being Jesus' "actual" Dad as he could be. Yet, when an angel came to him with a warning to get out of Dodge before that toddler was brutally murdered by Herod's army, he packed up his little family and left in the middle of the night, no questions asked.
Did Joseph love Jesus? Did he raise him? Or was he an obedient bystander, watching his immaculate wife raise her immaculate son, just following orders? Men are good at following orders, you know... WHAT THE HECK DOES IT MEAN TO BE A PARENT?
Here's the thing (oh, how many things... all the things):
1. Biological parents: Natural, instinctual, deserving of sympathy for all they endure to bring children into this world and put up with the tiny versions of themselves, opinions supremely respected in all things parenting
2. Adoptive parents: Almost as good as the real thing, wealthy, big-hearted, sensitive/please walk on eggshells around them because they might be a little insecure about the whole infertility thing, no right to complain because they've prayed for years to be awakened a hundred times a night, clean up puddles of pee and fight about bedtime
3. Foster parents: Lowest on the parent totem pole, martyr-like babysitters, slightly sociopathic in respect to the fact that they "allow" children to be removed from their home at the whim of the judicial system and then ask for it to happen again and again (delusional masochists)
Granted, these observations may not be completely objective, but I think I've summarized pretty accurately. If you asked me what childless couples think about those 3 categories, I can tell you, from our pre-adoptive perspective: anything less than biological reproduction is "giving up." Which is what made it excruciatingly difficult to even explore the idea of adoption. Excruciating. Especially in light of society's views regarding the above 1, 2 and 3. It's terrifying because the magic of "making a baby" is so highly exalted and, in most cases, taken completely for granted, even accidental, that experiencing the inability to do that with your spouse almost feels like your marriage is less than blessed, less than fruitful. Unholy? Broken? Something's broken, I can tell ya that.
I am a mom. My husband is a dad. My husband and I didn't "make" our baby: she was given to us. Politically correct, or not, that's what happened. We were incredibly lucky to start our parenting journey from the second our child's head ventured outside the womb, before she even breathed Earth-air. That's probably why, when we were at a meeting recently, our hands went up immediately when the coordinator asked, "Who has biological children?" Then, I put my hand back down when I remembered that I wasn't #1 on that list.
Don't get me wrong- please, please, I beg of you. I am not in any way downplaying the 2 completely different pregnancies, labor and delivery of my sister's beautiful children. She truly does have a different kind of connection with her babies than I do with mine. And the connection I believe I will have with my future adoptive children will be different than the one I have with Olivia. It is the validity of those connections that I believe is questioned and criticized and dissected to the point of treating one as superior to another, even subconsciously.
BUT, you know why foster parents are even necessary? Because perfectly valid and beautiful connections between parents and children were destroyed. No longer nurturing, attentive, anticipating needs- that stuff stopped happening. And who suffered? Both parties. Taking a step back to view this arrangement from a slightly more objective perspective, one might see that an entire family is damaged. Those children need parents. Those parents need help. Who's gonna step in to bridge that gap? Foster parents. Doing their best every hour of every day that they've been given with those hurting little ones (or big ones) to restore what has been lost, to seek repair for what has been broken. If the children stay, get a new last name, the work continues. If they return to their biological parents, the prayer gets more intense. Now, if that connection isn't valid, isn't "parenting," I'll be a monkey's uncle because selflessness lies at the core of valid parenthood. And it doesn't get any more selfless than having to say goodbye to the baby you've helped restore to health from drug-addicted newborn, to 19-month old, surpass-er of milestones.
I'm obviously smack-dab in the middle of a parenting transition, over here in Adoption Land, and I get intense about things when I'm trying to sort through my thoughts (that's what blogging is for, right??). I don't know everything about parenting. I can't exactly put my finger on the "definition of a parent" or discuss every element that contributes to the validity of the parent-child connection, but I am sure as heck trying, every single day (and, boy howdy, I can ramble on for miles about it). We all are, right? I mean, we should be. These little people didn't ask to be here, and I guess, neither did we, but we're the grown-ups, and they're at our mercy.
So, carry on, moms and dads. No matter how these kids came to live in our homes, eat our food and raise the electric bill, we're all they've got. And every choice you make to create a home that overflows with your unique combination of full tummies, warm fuzzies and that exhausting concept called "being consistent" is forging connections with those children. That's parenting.
That's what I think today, at least.
Love,
Hannah
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