Knocked Up...Knocked Down

People say the darndest things

As I take some very early steps toward adopting a baby, I sometimes question the wisdom of talking openly with people about it at this point.  At times it is excruciating to work through my feelings regarding trying to ease my grip on my dream of a successful pregnancy and a biological child while trying to learn about and digest and cope with the realities and complexities and losses that adoption entails for all involved. I sometimes feel that it would be wise to keep my plans to adopt to myself until I have more thoroughly worked through my thoughts and feelings about adoption.  This might be preferable to telling people that I am pursuing adoption and thereby subjecting myself to hearing their often woefully uninformed opinions.

This feeling is not at all aimed at those of you who have left thoughtful and supportive comments on my previous posts regarding adoption; I greatly appreciate those.  Also, I am not trying to stick my head in the sand and avoid input from people who have experience with adoption in various forms.  To the contrary, I have gone out of my way to seek people out and to hear the stories of adoptive parents, adopted persons, and mothers who made adoption plans for their babies.  I have sought input from people involved in domestic infant adoptions, adoptions of older children in foster care, adoptions with varying degrees of openness from totally open to totally closed and situations in between, international adoptions, transracial adoptions, etc.  I have also been reading various books about adoption. 

No, I'm not trying to stick my head in the sand.  I'm not trying to avoid difficult realities about adoption.  I just would like to avoid being the object of unsolicited and usually uninformed adoption comments for a while.  For some reason, EVERYONE has their own opinions about adoption and, despite the fact that most people in the general public are fairly ignorant concerning adoption issues, they still for some reason feel entitled to share their opinions with me when they find out I am planning to adopt when a simple "that's nice" or "congratulations" would suffice. 

Harrumph. 

Fertile couples can make decisions about how to build a family in the privacy of their own bedrooms.  Couples who seek to build their families through adoption (usually after a long and heartbreaking struggle with the inability to conceive/pregnancy loss) must expose everything about themselves to strangers (adoption agency personnel, etc.) who determine whether they are worthy enough to become parents--understandably so and with good reason, of course:  a vulnerable little human being should not be handed over to just anybody.  This process of exposure and evaluation is a very necessary process, but not a necessarily comfortable and pleasant one for prospective adoptive parents.

This aspect of being a prospective adoptive parent--this being opened up for judgment--seems to bleed over from people who have a right to have a vote in the matter (adoption social workers and parent[s] who are seeking adoptive parents for their baby) into the general population.  It seems that if a couple conceives a biological child together in the privacy of their marriage, they are lauded and generally are not bombarded with inappropriate commentary about their decision to build a family.  After all, that's their business; it's their "own child."  When a couple seeks to adopt someone else's child, it seems that every acquaintance of the couple and everyone under the sun who knows about the prospective adoption feels that they have a stake and an opinion to share in the matter and the right to question or judge the couple's choices.

Let me share some of the unsolicited input that I have gotten in real life when I have expressed that we are at the beginning stages of pursuing  a domestic infant adoption:  "Oh, you don't want to do that...(cue myriad adoption horror stories)."  "We have been been wondering why you have been putting yourself through miscarriage after miscarriage when there are so many needy children who are already here and need good homes."  "Wow, that's really wonderful of you.  There are so many poor orphans who need a good home."  "Why would you choose a domestic infant adoption when there are so many AIDs orphans in Africa and children in orphanages in Russia who desperately need good homes?"  "Well, I'm glad that you're not adopting from Korea like so-and-so did; I think it's wrong for Asian children to be raised by white people who have no connection to their race or culture (this from a Korean American)." "Good for you for adopting an American baby.  We should be taking care of our own first."  "Why are you ruling out the adoption of a black baby?  Is your family racist or something? Do you feel unable to love a black child?"  "If you stay in touch with the birthmother through letters and pictures, aren't you worried that she might change her mind and kidnap the child?" "Are you going to have contact with the REAL mother?"  "Once you adopt and relax, then you probably will get pregnant and have your own baby."

Why would a person think that any of these comments are the appropriate response to "We have started the process of adopting a baby"?

Ugh.

There are some themes that run through the pesky comments, such as adoption is second best, babies and children who are available for adoption are pitiful and adoptive parents are saints to take them (or sometimes, conversely, are baby stealers for doing so), adoptive parents aren't real parents, and the only acceptable motivation for adopting is helping a child in need by rescuing a poor orphan or a child with special circumstances or needs.  Balderdash.

Let's focus on that last opinion regarding acceptable motivations for adopting.  Do I think that it's a laudable, positive, wonderful thing to help orphans living in poverty and children with special needs ?  Yes.  Of course, I totally agree that those children deserve good, loving homes where their needs are met.  Absolutely.

However, it irks me that, in my experience, the people who have expressed the opinion that it is my particular moral obligation to adopt such a child are always, without exception, fertile people who have one or more biological children and have never pursued adoption themselves.  Why do those people think that because I have been through the heartbreak and hell of six miscarriages that it is more my responsibility than theirs to adopt an orphan from an impoverished nation or an abused/neglected/special needs child?  Do they think that because they are fertile that they get a free pass from any responsibility to provide a home to a child in need?  Do they think that they don't need to "go there" because they have children of "their own?" 

Furthermore, have they researched attachment disorder or the results of fetal alcohol syndrome or in utero exposure to crack, for example?  Do they understand the struggles of an older child who has been sexually or physically abused or neglected to the egregious extent that a court terminated their parents' right to them (and do they understand the child nevertheless considers those parents his family)?  Do they understand what that all entails?  Are they willing to integrate a child with those issues into their homes and their own lives?  The answer for people who have touted their unsolicited opinions to me is "no." 

God bless people who ARE willing to adopt children with particularly difficult special needs.  I respect and admire them, and I also suspect they are the last people who would try to shame a person who realistically and thoughtfully decides not to pursue a special needs adoption.

After much consideration, I think that adopting a special needs child can be a wonderful thing, but it is not something to choose lightly. Especially for someone like me who has absolutely no parenting experience, it is not something to choose lightly.   I think it is a calling, something that God particularly puts on a person's heart and gifts them to handle.  I considered adopting a special needs child--particularly an abused/neglected older child in the foster care system.  I trawled social services websites, looking at photos and biographies of waiting children.  They broke my heart.  I attended a two day conference on issues regarding the child welfare system and such children, and I walked away with the feeling that I honestly just don't have the heart or the skills and experience to handle the challenges that are involved. 

After prayer, I don't feel that I am being called to a special needs adoption.  I'm not particularly proud that I don't have that calling, but I'm not ashamed, either.  It is what it is.

Like most prospective parents, I am hoping for a relatively normal, healthy child.  Why do some people think that it is that okay for a pregnant woman to want a healthy, normal baby but not for a prospective adoptive mother to want one?  I know that at least one of the babies whom I lost had a trisomy.  If that pregnancy had continued to progress, and if that baby had been born and survived I would have loved him dearly and done my best to care for him tenderly to the best of my ability, but I certainly would not have chosen that trisomy and the troubles it would have entailed for the child or for me. 

I think the crux of the matter is: what is the point of adopting for most prospective adoptive parents?  According to a book I just read, 95% of people who adopt do so because they are unable to have biological children.  Their motivation for adopting is that they want to be parents, to experience the joys of raising children and having a loving relationship with them, plain and simple.  It's the same motivation that anyone has for having children.  They just want to have a family. 

That's why I am considering adoption.  I just want to have a family, hopefully a happy one.  I am childless at this point and have no experience whatsoever with parenting.  Like any prospective first-time parent, at times the prospect of parenthood, while wonderful, makes me feel a bit unsure of myself.  The prospect of the realities of of parenting a normal, healthy child in today's world can at times seem daunting.  If I adopt, I already will be adding a layer of adoption issues to the parenting realities.  As a first-time parent, that's enough for me to handle.

So, when considering adoption, I choose to pursue the domestic infant route.  I chose this route in large part because if offers the opportunity to adopt a very young baby.  According to my research, if an infant does not bond with a caregiver properly by having his needs consistently met during the first six months of life, it can create some devastating and lifelong emotional, relational, and behavioral consequences that to me as a prospective adoptive parent seem pretty scary and overwhelming.   If I'm going to parent a child then I would prefer to be there during those first six months to create that bond with me and to make sure that the child is well cared for and not neglected or abused in any way during that crucial developmental period. 

Likewise, in filling out the adoption agency's paperwork that requires me to state my preferences regarding a baby whom I am hoping to adopt, I am not going to check the box indicating that I would like to adopt a baby with fetal alcohol syndrome or in utero exposure to cocaine or certain other similar issues.  Like most prospective parents, I would prefer a healthy baby.

There are mothers of healthy babies in this country who choose to make adoption plans for their babies.  These babies need good homes, too; special needs babies, children in foster care, and children from other countries are not the only ones who deserve good, loving homes.

My personal choice--after much research, soul-searching, prayer, and discussion with my husband--is to pursue the domestic adoption of a healthy baby (a white baby, as I discussed in a previous post) through a reputable agency that, from everything I have been able to learn, interacts respectfully and in a non-coercive manner toward pregnant women who go through the agency to make adoption plans for their babies.  If some people negatively judge my choice, so be it; that's their problem.

No human gets a vote or the right to judge why or how I adopt except my husband, the adoption agency personnel, and the parent(s) who make an adoption plan for their baby who choose us to raise the child...and I'm going to point that out to the next person who mistakenly assumes that they have some say in the matter. 

Rant over.

Mothering my mother

Thank you to all of you who left supportive comments to my last couple of posts and particularly for the prayers and good wishes for my mom's health.  She had her cardiac bypass surgery two weeks ago today and came through the procedure okay.  We all were thankful that it involved only a single bypass that was able to be done through a small incision on the side of her chest.  Thus, she was able to avoid the more invasive traditional open-heart surgery in which the sternum is cracked open, and therefore her recovery was expected to be much quicker and easier than is the case with the traditional surgery.

On the day before the surgery, my parents called me and asked me to drive to be with them over the weekend rather than arriving earlier on the day of the surgery as I had planned.  Since my sister was going to take time off from her job to be with them during the surgery and initial hospital stay, they thought it would be a better use of my limited time off from my job to arrive later to assist my mom during and after her discharge from the hospital.  They wanted me to be there to help get her settled in at home.

I arrived two days after the surgery and ended up being there over a week because unfortunately my mom's recovery involved several complications.  First she experienced severe heart arrhythmia which delayed her discharge from the hospital.  Then, when she was discharged, she experienced symptoms that landed her in the emergency room less than 24 hours later because her lungs were filling up with fluid (a condition associated with congestive heart failure).  She was re-admitted to the hospital and her lungs were drained, but unfortunately she developed a nasty infection via the site on her arm where an IV was administered in the emergency room.  After a few more days in the hospital and some strong antibiotics she was deemed well enough to go home, but she was very weak. 

My mom is 79 and had already been looking elderly, but now she seemed noticeably more shrunken, small, old, frail, and vulnerable.   Her condition during her initial recovery required me to care for her like almost like an infant.  Seeing my normally independent mother like that and realizing that our role reversals were bound to continue as she aged broke my heart a little bit.  After all my mother has done for me, I was glad to be there to care for her, but it was bittersweet.   I realize the great blessing it is that both my parents are still living and am so thankful that God answered my fervent prayers that my mom would pull through her surgery.  Still, it is sad to watch my parents physically deteriorate and suffer through repeated health crises.

Many thoughts came to my mind as I sat in my mother's hospital room hour after hour.  Mainly I reflected on the importance of family.  I have a bond with my parents that makes me more than willing to drop everything at the blink of an eye to be there for them as they have been there for me so many times.  I contrasted the support my mom received from loved ones with another elderly cardiac patient down the hall, a man who never seemed to have any visitors.  The nurse confided that he didn't have any children, no family to help buoy him up and care for him during his illness.  How sad.  This is a hard world, and we all need a family to circle the wagons when times are tough.

I feel caught between the preceding generation, my parents, whose lives are winding down, and the total lack of a subsequent generation, my children.  I have been feeling the loss of all my unborn children more sharply than I have felt that loss in a while.  I realized that if my most recent pregnancy had not ended in yet another miscarriage, I would be entering my sixth month right now, round and ripe and full of hope (instead, my womb is empty and my period arrived, complete with severe cramps).  Losing my parents is inevitable, like a freight train coming down the tracks, and even if I adopt and have the incredible blessing of raising a child, I still grieve the abrupt amputation of my family line.  Once my parents are gone, it doesn't seem likely at this point that I will have a child who echoes their faces, frames, talents, or mannerisms.

As my mom reclined in her hospital bed, I looked at her midsection and marveled that my life began inside her body, that it nourished and protected me for nine months before performing the miracle of birth.  I must admit that I like having one sole mother--one mother who conceived me, carried me, gave birth to me, and raised me.  It's normal and simple and uncomplicated and awesome.  It saddens me that if I adopt a child it won't be simple like that for them as my child...or for me as their mother.  With adoption, there will always be another mother, and I understand that, I accept it, I am gradually embracing it, but it's a loss to me nonetheless not to be a mother who conceives and gives life to the child she parents. 

I also was faced squarely with mortality, not only my mother's but also my own.  If we live long enough, bit by bit almost everything that we hold dear will begin to fall away:  our physical abilities, our mental sharpness, our independence, our looks, our friends and peers.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  I personally can't fathom how people with no faith in God deal with that.  If this life was all there is, then it would be a horribly cruel joke to deteriorate and die.  It's hard enough even WITH faith, with the hope and promise of eternal life and the understanding that the inner man is being sanctified even as the outer man is falling away.

Sorry to get so heavy on you, but I have been feeling a bit heavy and blue lately.  Maybe it is an emotional hangover from all the stress of last week but it saddens me that at this point in my life, after six pregnancies, the only mothering I am doing is of my own parents.

At the same time, I'm thankful for so many things...that my mom and dad are still alive, that I have a loving relationship with them, that I have the health and ability to be able to help them when they need it, that my boss was supportive and let me take time to be with them, that I can get in the car and go see them or pick up the phone and talk with them, that I have a wonderful husband, that adoption provides a possible avenue for me to have a child even if it's not a perfect avenue, and most of all that I have faith and hope in a God that is bigger than deterioration and death. 

 

Today Show segment on neonatal loss

I just discovered that The Today Show (on NBC) is planning to air a short documentary tomorrow morning(Thursday, October 12th at 8:09 a.m.) about the struggles of infertile couples. It will discuss the topic of surrogacy (although I'm not sure that surrogacy will be the sole focus). I thought I would pass the information along in case others struggling with miscarriages or infertility would be interested in watching. If you have an opinion on the segment that you would like to share with NBC, you can e-mail them at today@nbc.com.

___________________

I thought the segment was well done and did a good job of conveying the anguish of losing babies and the importance of being enabled to grieve.  It tells the story of a couple who experienced two stillbirths followed by the loss of a premature son after birth and who eventually had three children through the help of a surrogate mother. While interviewing the couple, Meredith Vieira shared that she has experienced five miscarriages, which I did not know.  Here is a link where you can view the segment if you missed it:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15227236/ .

Waiting for the other shoe to drop

First of all, THANK YOU for the warm welcome back!  After having been missing in action for so long, I figured that my previous post would be greeted only by the sound of crickets.  I was touched by all of the nice comments that you left me.

I just received some worrisome news about my mom.  She has heart problems, and at her recent check-up with her cardiologist her stress test results indicated that she may have a blocked artery.  She is going to have a cardiac catheterization on Tuesday to find out.  It's a diagnostic procedure, but carries with it some risks.  If it reveals a blockage, further procedures will be necessary such as angioplasty and the placement of a stent at the site of the blockage or perhaps bypass surgery.  I am going to make the trip to my parents' house so that I can and be there with them at the hospital during the procedure(s).  (Thus, I will be away from the Internet for a while.)

I have been struggling with feeling down and worried since I got the news.  Sometimes it feels that one of the major themes of the past several years of my life has been loss of potential family members and the threat of loss of existing family members.  It wears on me.

In the past six years, both my dad and my brother had prostate cancer--at the same time.  My brother was 45 when he was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of the disease.  My dad was in his 70s at his diagnosis, and his form of the disease was less aggressive.  My brother had surgery and radiation; my dad just had radiation.  It was hard and scary at the time to watch them suffering through it, and I thank God that they both have survived and are doing okay now.

About ten years ago my mom, a breast cancer survivor, was diagnosed with mild heart failure, but treatments to strengthen her heart muscle seemed to help.  Four years ago, she had a cardiac episode that appears to have been a mild heart attack, which led to the discovery that she had an artery that was 98% blocked.   The blockage was opened with angioplasty and a stent, but there were some scary complications that arose due to Mom's allergy to aspirin.   Since then, however, she seemed to have been okay heart-wise.

Three years ago it was discovered that my dad likewise had a blocked artery, and a stent was inserted to open it.  Last year Dad was in debilitating, crippling pain that led to the need for hip replacement surgery, and during assessments to determine whether he was healthy enough to withstand surgery from a cardiac perspective it was discovered that he had another blocked artery.  He had cardiac bypass surgery in July, followed by hip replacement surgery in September.

My husband's kindly grandpa had a massive stroke four years ago that left him totally debilitated in a nursing home for almost a year before he died.

Almost three years ago, my mother-in-law, whom I am very fond of, was driving on icy roads, and her sedan was hit by a large delivery truck.  For the first day or two it seemed likely that she would die, but she pulled through, and miraculously has had an almost 100% recovery.

Factor all of this in with the six miscarriages that I have had in the past four years, and you can see why I have started to have this feeling that maybe life is just one long string of crises.  (Add to the mix that I also had kidney stones that took three months to diagnose and surgery on a blocked ureter two years ago.)  Like I said, the theme for me lately seems to be the loss of potential family members and the threat of loss of existing family members.  I have logged in my fair share of long anxious hours in hospital waiting rooms.

The most important thing is that I have survived my miscarriages just fine, my husband is healthy and our marriage is going strong, and so far all of our family members except for my husband's grandpa have survived their various health crises just fine.  The fact that my mom, dad, brother, and mother-in-law are still here and are living fairly normal, active lives truly is a miracle.  When I think of people I know who have already lost parents or siblings, I realize how little I have to complain about.  So far, each family member's health crisis has resolved favorably.  For that, I feel very fortunate and blessed.  I think that perhaps all the crises have helped me to avoid taking my family members for granted, and that's a good thing. 

Unfortunately, not taking them for granted has not necessarily enabled me to be 100% present and to enjoy them fully when I'm with them.  Rather, I have gotten a bit flinchy, as if I always am waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Of course, my faith provides me with comfort at the prospect of death, but I am all too human in my dread of the grief that I will experience when I lose the people I love.  I think I'm a little bit too cognizant of the fact that they inevitably are going to die, sooner or later.   

For example, when I recently visited my parents, my mom took me to their back yard to show me her flowers.  Mom grew up on a farm and is an avid gardener with a green thumb, as the riot of vibrant colors in the flower beds attested.  I took a photo of her smiling face amongst the blooms and thanked her as she pressed an envelope into my hand that was filled with seeds she had collected from her blue larkspurs that I had admired earlier in the season.  She instructed me to plant them in my yard next spring, so that I could enjoy them every day at my own house next summer. 

On the surface, it was a pleasant mother/daughter moment, but for me it had a bittersweet flavor.  My mom is 79 and has health problems.  I couldn't prevent the thought from crossing my mind that my mom might not be here when those larkspur bloom next summer.

Likewise, when my dad opened his birthday gifts from me during the same visit with a pleased look on his face, it was slightly bittersweet for me.   The dread passed over me of eventually having to find that book and that shirt as I sort through his things one sad day.

I love my parents and am close with them.  I wish I could banish these morbid thoughts that prevent me from fully enjoying the time that I have with my parents today, while they are still here with me.  I wish I could banish my gnawing worry that the children I hope to have may never (at least in this world) know my parents who are growing more elderly and frail before my very eyes.

I wish that I could get over this flinchy feeling of always waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I wish that this acute awareness of how fragile all human life is that I have felt as a result of my miscarriages could help me to love people more now, to enjoy people more now with abandon and without being dogged by worry and tinges of anticipatory grief.  I know that God does not want me to have a spirit of fear.

If you are the praying type, please say some prayers that my mom's procedures will go well and pray for strength and peace for all of us...and if you know how to get rid of this dreadful feeling of always waiting for the other shoe to drop, please let me know.