Growing Family

Rememberings

Lately, without intention, I have been remembering my pregnancies with vivid intensity. Perhaps it is because of the dream I had, shortly after the meeting with the immigration attorney. In the dream I was in transition, the scary intense part of labor, that is unlike anything I have ever experienced before or since. The feeling is so other-worldly that I have never been able to re-create it in my mind.  Since plunging into it, in my dream, the feeling has come back several times, and I have remembered birthing my daughter with greater clarity than I have since the experience occurred, 21 months ago.

Then, today, I am remembering my first pregnancy. The one that ended early on, in a painful miscarriage. I am remembering being in the airplane bathroom, an hour from Schiphol airport, soaked in blood and panicked with grief. I am remembering staying at my husband's relative's house, excusing myself from a large family dinner, to sit on the toilet and lose my baby, spending hours in bed sobbing, and in pain. I remember feeling so empty, like there was a vacuum inside where the life had been, sucking all the color out of me.

Having children, bearing children, and raising children is intense. Most of the time here I focus on the intensity of my adoption experience, but these last few days, my experiences with carrying life in my body are often on my mind.

Conversations of the Week

Conversation #1

Last week, we were walking down the street when a man was looking for the entrance to a construction site near our house. I pointed him to the entrance.

Man: "are these both your children?"

Me: "yes, my son and my daughter."

Man: "but they are...but he is...are there two different..."

Me: "we adopted my son"

Man (puzzled): "what"

Me: "we adopted my son"

Conversation #2

Visiting a home-group for a church we're considering, the members asked lots of questions about our family and were interested in Small Sun. We had already told them that we adopted him into our family.

People: "what is he?"

Us: "he is black American"

People: "is he all black? because his skin is..."

Us: "yes, he is biracial"

People: "the other half, what is it?"

Conversation #3

Today at the park, my kids were playing with a little boy who was there with his grandmother (I think she was his grandmother but she might have been his nanny.). 

Grandmother: "these are your children?"

Me: "yes, my son and my daughter."

Grandmother: "he is brown and she is white"

I nod.

Grandmother: "is he from mixed

I say "yes" while hearing her continue "mixed marriage?"

I don't correct her.

Grandmother: "children from mixed marriage are the most beautiful children. Such beautiful, beautiful children."

It might bear mentioning that the man in conversation #1 had accented English and appeared to be from the Middle East, perhaps? In conversation #2 the participants were Malaysian immigrants and Australians with Vietnamese heritage. In conversation #3 the grandmother was speaking accented English and another language with the little boy. I believe I recognized Italian, given that our neighborhood is historically Italian. Also, the more I look into it, the more my initial impressions are confirmed. Adoption is not common here. No one has assumed that possibility. At the playgroup I've attended for the last month, I'll mention that we adopted and people will say "I wondered why they looked so different" or someone asked me "does your husband have hair like your son?" with my daughter there as an obvious contrast.

I am facing two obstacles: back in the U.S., I would have quickly put people in their place for asking such forward questions. Here, I don't know what the cultural rules are, especially given the great mix of cultures, both first and second generation. Then there's the matter of Small Sun being at the age where he is listening and internalizing my answers. I feel like I'd know what to do, back in our old stomping grounds. But then again, back in our old stomping grounds I don't think I'd be fielding these type of questions. Or at least not three in one week! Suggestions?

Being a Mother

It's funny how I am so enamored with what I've got, I can't imagine anything better.

We adopted Small Sun first, and then decided to try for a pregnancy. I tried to imagine what a little "us" would look like? My template for perfect was a little mocha baby with the shiniest, dark, curly hair. I was concerned that I might find our pale biological child to be wan or splotchy. I was worried that our white baby wouldn't be as pretty as our brown baby. It's laughable now, but it was my secret concern during my pregnancy. Not a huge one, but something I thought about.

In this whole process, trying to find a way to adopt again, the alternative is having another biological child next and waiting for an opportunity to adopt. We did plan on having a "blended" family that way and we haven't discounted having more children that I carry.

I found myself thinking "but if we have another child with our genes, it will be exactly like The Sprout. We want to have different children with different personalities and not little carbon copies." Hm. Someone shout some logic at me. It didn't dawn on me how silly my thinking was until I was looking at a blog where the author has a picture of her four biological children as the header.  It struck me that Tamara's children don't all look exactly the same. I don't know them personally, but it sounds like they each have their own personalities. Oh yea, and what about my girlfriend's twins who are so different from each other?

That's something crazy about loving what you've got. On one hand it's so great that I want more. On the other, I can't really imagine what "more" looks like. If the next child is adopted, I don't know where they'll come from or how old they'll be when they get here. If I birth the child, I really don't know what they would look like either.

Then there's always the fear that I think many mothers experience. Things are so great now, what if the next child would have poor health or a disability? What if adding to the family means changing the great dynamic?

That's the thing with kids. Each one is a risk. I think, for me, each one is worth the risk. In the case of special challenges, there are blessings to be found there as well.

I'm just laughing at myself that I didn't learn the lesson the first time around: each child is beautiful and unique and brings joy in the way that only he or she can.  And even though my two specific children nearly made me cry with stress when they decided to be ornery in a very serious, very long, very crowded, very un-friendly to children church service this morning, they will be the suns that I rise with in the morning tomorrow.

And The Award Goes To...

You would think that being hyper aware of the adoption losses of Small Sun and the way different experiences might induce anxiety for him, I would be more aware of how both my children may struggle through transition. Quite the opposite, actually. I get the award of the year for Oblivious Mom.

The Sprout had her 15 month shots about two weeks ago and the ped. observed that she had an ear infection as well. We agreed to watch it before doing antibiotics (which basically means that I say "okay, we'll watch it for a bit" fully aware that I WILL NOT call in for a prescription unless the world is coming to an end). So I've been focusing on her getting lots of sleep and good nutrition and vitamin C and fluids. On top of the effects of the shots and her ear, she's been cutting her incisors for what feels like FOREVER.

I feel as if I've been holding her non-stop for a week. She's always been a snugler but lately, the moment I set her down is the moment she starts crying. The Captain dubbed her "The Saddest Girl In The World" because when she cries it is SO dramatic, and SO heartfelt. Even if it's over something I can't see as significant, she applies her full energy to her grieving.

The last couple days she has been playing on her own some, but as soon as I turn to something I actually need to do, she plasters herself to my legs, crying with all her might, sprouting cartoonish tears, and falling down on my feet. It is A.N.N.O.Y.I.N.G. I've spent so much time holding and soothing and consoling her and I'm about worn out with it.

Then tonight, I was on the phone with my mom, and she was commenting on how it sounded like I was in a big empty space, and indeed I was: our house is about half full at this point. My mom made the comment that the Sprout must be having a really hard time, with not feeling well to begin with, and then witnessing her whole world and environment change without having the verbal ability to process it.

Dumb mom moment of the year. (I hope.) Here I've been talking Small Sun through every step. Prepping him for each change before it comes, saying goodbye to furniture before it leaves, rehearsing over and over what will happen in the next couple of months. I completely overlooked the little bewildered girl hanging onto my legs. How do I explain to her what's happening?

I think my attention to Small Sun's losses sometimes clouds my focus on the Sprout's need for guidance. I feel so bad that I haven't done more to help her through this. I've even been steeling myself for a rash of regressive behaviors in Small Sun, when we move to my parent's this week. I've got to take some time to figure out how to soften this transition for my baby girl too.

The Sprout is Weaning Herself

And I am soaking my pillow with tears.

I remember when Small Sun had his 9 month checkup and the pediatrician said "it'll soon be time to switch from formula in a bottle to milk in a sippy cup". I LOVED giving Small Sun his bottles. Nursing or bottles, feeding is such a sweet and special time. It is so bonding.

I went home and calculated how many more bottle feedings I had with Small Sun, determined to treasure each one. Somehow, after I calculated, the experience kind of lost its glow and by the time we switched to sippies of milk, I was fine with it. He wanted to hold his own bottle. He was so active. He was ready to move on.

The only good and full nurse the Sprout is taking these days is her morning feed. And today I was in competition with her brother playing drums on a cardboard box. The only way I got her to finish eating was to sit her up and nurse her where she could also watch her brother's show. When I try to nurse her lying down, which is my favorite snuggle time, she starts crawling all over the bed and when I try to pull her back in, she wriggles away.

She won't nurse before bed at all, which used to be our end of day snuggle time.

By the time my day is winding down and the kids are in bed, my br*easts are full of undrunk milk and my heart is heavy and sad.

Last night the Captain asked me "don't you remember when Small Sun was this age and we'd try to take him into our bed to snuggle in the morning, but instead he's crawl all over our heads and try to reach the radio?" I didn't. I'd totally forgotten. Because in parenting infants, the only reality is the one that is happening RIGHT NOW. Big picture? My big picture extends about an hour in either direction of where I am.

I wanted to nurse the Sprout until she was a year old. That's two and a half months away. I guess she's on a different time frame. I'm hoping that now that I've acknowledged what is happening - she wants food more than to nurse - it will be like Small Sun and the bottles. I'll experience the sadness and then embrace the little person she is right now: active, busy, strong, and sometimes snuggly.

Nursing

I bottle fed Small Sun (even though you can induce lactation and breastfeed a child you adopt) and I remember my mom watching him strain his head in all directions while feeding. She laughed and said "I guess they do the same thing with the bottle they do with the b*reast.

Now I'm getting to see what she meant.

It was around now, 8 months or so, that Small Sun began to be able to hold his own bottle. I think. Facts are fuzzy these days. The Sprout grabs my b*reast in both hands and pulls and squeezes like I'm some kind of sports drink bottle. No, mauling mommy will not make the milk come out faster.

I think the majority of people who have biological and adopted kids usually have the biological ones first, then adopt. Maybe because of secondary infertility (having a successful pregnancy but not any more after that) or broadening perspectives on family building people adopt a second child. I don't think I know anyone else who chose to adopt first and then had a biological child second.

That puts me in a unique position. Even though I've been pregnant and birthed and nursed a child, adoption is what happened first. So it is my "normal". Most of the time I don't realize that until times like now, when the Sprout has got her little fingernails dug into my flesh and I'm thinking "oh look, she's trying to hold her own bottle!"

Mom to Two

By now, with the Sprout being eight months old, we are really into the swing of two kids. By about four months I was surviving. By six I was feeling pretty good. Now I can't imagine our family any other way. There is a certain struggle in the transition that is hard to process.

My good friend just posted on her blog about her experience transitioning to two. She said

...[I'm] realizing that the pain in childbirth that Eve brought upon us, is not limited to labor and delivery, it's in the transition of post-partum and the hecticness of transitioning from one child to two. (Operating system 2.0 as my husband puts it.) Its in the blue fog of post-partum harmonal chaos. Its in the emotional separation from the first child to the fierce "mommabearness" attachment to the second. Its in the heartbreak of that separation. [emphasis added]

I've seen animal shows where the mother keeps the offspring with her until a new litter or baby comes along. Then she runs off the older siblings in order to be able to nurture the new life. I think when you have children close together, where the older child isn't old enough to think reasonably and act sensibly, some of that dynamic comes into play. When you're still in pain from childbirth and trying to learn to nurse a very fragile, newborn baby, and your toddler tries to hurl himself at you with all the vigor he is used to, he suddenly becomes the thing that the new baby needs to be protected from. Everything in your hormones at that point is telling you to protect the baby, even if that means shunning your beloved child. It's rough. Judging from my friend's perspective, having birthed both her children, I guess that feeling can be present regardless of how children join the family.

I am much happier now that the Sprout is a robust little thing who can easily handle her brother's strong loving. My stress levels still skyrocket when I come into the room to see him "riding horsey" on her back or feeding her raisins, but at this point I can leave the room for a second and know that she will be able to survive. It's hard to handle the period when your one child can, quite easily, maul the other.

Now that we're through that danger zone I find myself falling in love with Small Sun all over again. The things he is doing now are so delightful. I didn't realize that a two year-old could tell me "it's funny" about something or begin to conjugate his verbs. I didn't know that a child this young could be so full of empathy and compassion that he says "sorry" and gives kisses when he imagines someone else might be hurt or upset. Or that he would be able to, on his own, go get a blanket to put on a sleeping person, in case they are cold. My son is amazing and in between seeing red when he screeches and whines, I am smitten.

The kids are finally sleeping in the same room. It has been the easiest sleep transition we've made yet. Before I had the Sprout I decided we would put them together at four months, which is when Small Sun started sleeping in the nursery. At four months we weren't ready to move her. It was only about two weeks ago that she began waking up early to look at me from her pack n play to fuss and fuss until I picked her up and nursed her. Then, she'd fuss and fuss after I put her back because she wanted company more than food. So after a few days in Michigan of all of us sleeping in a room together, our beds within touching distance from each other, that we put the kids together at home.

We were finally ready, and they seem to be ready too.

This spot where we are right now is such a sweet spot. It's not without its struggles and trials and it is still HARD work, but both kids are in stages that are really wonderful, at the same time. How great is that? Any of you out there thinking about having or adopting a second? I say DO IT! Our family is just having so much fun right now.

Blogging, Causes, Spouses, Partners

For the last week or two The Captain and I have spent our nights together in the living room, each immersed in reading. I'm trying to catch up and keep up with blogs, he just started Infidel. I began to feel disconnected, each in our own separate spheres, bobbing in the living room.

It was only last night that I realized I am venturing deeper and deeper into the ideas of anti-racism and adoption reform, only to look by my side for my trusted partner, to find myself alone. I confronted The Captain, standing over him accusingly as he struggled to read in peace. "Don't you care about the racism in our country (for it is his country too now)? We're raising a child who belongs to a race that is routinely discriminated against!" I struggled against his calm.

He told me "whatever chip that you have that sees racism and wants to attack it, I don't have that chip. I'm just not wired that way." My instinct was to accuse him of not caring, of swimming in white privilege that gives him the ability to not care. But, upon a moment's reflection, I know that is not true. Something else is at play here.

The Captain is European. Dutch. He went to college in Amsterdam. He grew up in an international family, doing international things. He is not saddled with the history of our country. Though he has become a citizen, our roots, so compromised with corruption, aren't his roots. I guess he could worry about whether or not his ancestors were part of the slave trade, but he doesn't. That's not who he is.

He has an indomitable optimism. A clear eye for beauty and truth. I'm glad that as I'm raking around in this muck he is standing tall, breathing in the wind, and holding my hand tightly.

I'd really like to know what it is like for all you other bloggers (who are all women on my blogroll, incidentally)? Does the person that you share your life with share your passion for the cause you blog about? If not, how do they relate to your passion? Does it alienate you from each other?

I'm heading off for a long weekend of bathing in lakes, playing in dappled woods, and laughing with my children and several generations of my people. The freckled Irish and dark-eyed french that brought me to where I am.

The Textures of Love

When you have a child by birth and a child through adoption it's not uncommon for people to wonder if you love them both "the same", or if you love them equally. I never really wondered that. I wanted to adopt long before I wanted to birth a child. In fact, I wanted to adopt more than I wanted to birth a child. Now that I've carried and delivered a baby, I am shocked by my feelings.

I love the Sprout with a ferocity that takes me by surprise. I love Small Sun with the same intensity. But when Small Sun was the same age as the Sprout, that ferocity hadn't taken hold yet. I did love him, certainly I did. But not the way I do now.

I spent the first year of Small Sun's life grieving his loss of his first mother. She was in all my thoughts. I parented Small Sun as if she was looking over my shoulder, always trying to do enough, to be enough, to be everything that she wanted for him, and imagined was embodied in me. I felt guilty that she felt she had to let him go, and I got to parent him. I doubted her choice. I floundered in anti-adoption rhetoric.

It wasn't until Small Sun's finalization in court that I began to come out of that haze. When the judge looked at me and asked me if I was going to provide and care for Small Sun, as if he had been born to me, for the rest of his life, I had one of those experiences where you're watching the scene like a movie. I looked around the courtroom. There was no one else but us. No first mother, no biological father present. I'm not saying that they should have been there, it's just that it was in that moment that it became clear to me that I wasn't holding back any other people from parenting Small Sun, I was holding back myself.

That was the turning point. I felt like I rolled up my sleeves and said "okay kiddo, I guess I'm really your mom." I had taken impeccable care of Small Sun before that. I'd invested all my focus into bonding with him, and encouraging his attachment to me. But in my heart there was reservation. Somehow I was afraid that if I sailed in, all love and kisses, that I was being disrespectful of his loss. I was afraid to claim him as mine, in case he would be taken away. In case my owning him as my child would alienate him from his first mother.

I don't think I'll make that mistake again. I'd read about the importance of adoptive parents feeling entitlement to parent their children. It didn't make any sense to me then. It does now.

Some people seem to knee jerk when I talk about Small Sun belonging with us, or him being ours. I don't see those statements as indicating that he doesn't also belong with his first mom or him being hers. I also recognize that he is an individual and that no one owns him. These days I feel the deepest love and pride for him. Every day I regale his father with the triumphs of his day. We are both so in love.

We plan on adopting again in the future. Each situation is unique. I know that future children will bring more opportunities to grieve their losses. I hope that in the future I can mourn my children's losses while opening my heart to them, with no reservations. I don't want to lose another moment of this fierce love.

Something Special

My Mom may be horrified.

I am pleased.

Yesterday, driving home from a nice day at my parent's place, we had the windows down and were listening to Madonna. Suddenly I felt three strong kicks right below my belly button. I have felt movement but I haven't felt anything like that. I don't know what else could have felt that strong, except kicks. I'm hovering in my seat saying "oh! oh!" and the Captain grins and says with a smile,  "just like Small Sun".

Small Son's first mother told us that the first time she felt him really move in her womb, she was driving with her girlfriend and listening to Lucky Star (Madonna). I have it in his baby book, even though my mother thinks I shouldn't. (She is a conservative who would rather Madonna not influence our young sprouts).

What a crazy coincidence (or Providence) for our kiddos to share.