Growing Family

New Mommy Folly

This is my fourth time to become a mother. Each time has been completely different. Adoption is not the same as giving birth "naturally" is not the same as having a c-section is not the same as foster care.

I am not little baby Ant's mother, but he needs me to act like it. I am acting like I am. I am feeding at five a.m. I am cuddling a thousand whimpers as they turn to cries. I am anticipating needs and meeting them. I am praying in the night. 

For so many reasons this mothering experience is markedly different than my previous ones. One way that is really impacting me at the moment is the expectations I am placing on myself. 

With my babies I always gave myself permission to step away from life for those initial intense months. With Small Sun I wrapped us up in a cozy bubble and spent months working on our bond and attachment. It took the highest priority and I was okay saying no to anything that interfered with that effort.

With The Sprout I was forced to only focus on myself and my babies (Small Sun was 18 months when Sprout was born so I did have two babies), because my delivery ended up being traumatic and it was weeks before I was up and about. After I started to heal physically, I could only manage the tiny circle of my two little children. Caring for the two of them took just about all the energy I had.

It wasn't until Finch that I discovered I was nearly anemic and started taking iron supplements. Doing so really did change my life. Now I can start to clearly identify when my iron is low and I need to ramp up my intakes. Then, with Finch's birth via c-section, I was forced to take it easy again until I healed. As with my other children, my mothers (my mother and my mother-in-law), and other relatives came to help. We are so blessed to have family that surrounds us with help when we need it.

But this time? This time I am going solo, and I am going hard.

Don't get me wrong, we have an amazing community that has brought us meals, helped us move, taken our children for play dates, and helped us out in a myriad of ways. Our community is amazing: I'm not writing this about our community because they are everything we could hope for.

I am talking about myself. I have not given myself any permission to take it easy or to let things go. I am busting my tail, and nearly losing it some days, trying to keep everything just like it was before the little Ant arrived. Once in awhile when I am explaining why I forgot my money for playgroup/haven't volunteered at school/attended the second playgroup/run out of bread and milkagain/forgotten to return a phone call/forgotten my own phone number, I say "well, can you call it baby brain if you're just caring for a baby and you're not recovering from childbirth?"

Just caring for a baby.

Like it is a little thing I do on the side.

I am trying to do this like it is a little thing I do on the side.

I am always apologizing to everyone. 

I am always feeling guilty.

I feel like a failure in a million ways. 

(I'm not trying to write a downer post - blame it on the Captain, he's playing melancholy music.)

No, this is not a sob-fest, I am just trying to get it out there. I am trying to reveal the chokehold on my throat that has grown tighter and tighter until I'm fighting for breath.

Why can't I just spread the "no, can't - new baby in the house" excuse blanket out like I have in the past?

Well for one thing, I have a child in school now, and I am more invested and committed in a variety of activities than I have ever been before. There is more to keep up with, period.

Also, I wonder if the fact that this mothering relationship is temporary plays a role in my approach to it? I don't want to clear my life's schedule for something that won't last. I want to do my solid best by this baby, but I don't want to give him my heart completely like I did with my babies, because he won't be staying here.

How do I do it? How do I love him enough that he knows love, and not so much that my heart breaks when he leaves? 

I'm trying to tack him onto our life like a post-it note. I am trying not to let things change for my children, while also trying to let him be the center for some space in the universe, as babies should be. 

I'm trying not to let anyone down, or come up short anywhere. 

Now, more than ever, I am trying to get dressed for me in the morning. I try to be fresh and energetic when I go out into the world. And other than the days when all four of my children end up standing, crying on the uphill walk into school, revealing the fragility of our balancing act, I think I look like I am pulling this off. People call me supermom and admire my cape.

I am mostly honest about how difficult this is. I tell people that it is hard and we sometimes struggle, but I don't know that people believe that when my hair is done, my lip gloss shiny, and my children adorable. 

I'm not sure what I'm writing about in this post (the moody music is pulling me all over the place!). I think what I am trying to say is that I'm pulling this off, mostly, but I feel like a failure a lot of the time. I sometimes suspect that it that lousy Evil whispering lies like a bad song that you hate on the radio until you've heard it so many times you begin to sing along out of familiarity. 

Tomorrow I'm going in nearly an hour before school starts to have a meeting with Small Sun's teacher. Then I'm taking the dog to the vet, then Sprout to catch her carpool to preschool. Next I'll head with the two little boys to a fabric store to get supplies to sew a dress for a friend's birthday gift this weekend. I'll get home in time to prepare the Ant for his contact visit with his mum. She wants to bathe him tomorrow so I'll have to pack all his bath gear. Then I'll clean the house while Finch is sleeping, and bake a cake because we're having friends over for a play date after school. I'll wake Finch up from his nap, run the preschool carpool, get Small Sun from school, pick up the dog from the vet, then rush home to receive the Ant on his return and host the play date. I imagine I'll make something for dinner sometime in there, and there will be the necessary homework and bedtime routine. 

I never would have attempted a day like that in the past. The very thought would push me over the edge. But I know a day like that is just an ordinary day for so many mothers, so I rally. I take my iron, I drink an increasing amount of tea, and I just try to make it happen.

Fostering is challenging my capacity and I can't always tell if I'm growing or cracking.

 

The Time, How it Flies

The Captain has declared me to have the lowest possible threshold for internet deterrent. That is, since we moved to the new house and have been waiting for our internet to be set up, we've had to use a wifi card. I have been on Facebook twice, only read my mail on my phone, and not read a single blog. Evidently turning the wifi device on, waiting 38 seconds for it to power up, and connecting to it through my computer is just too. much. work.

Somehow, waiting for my little internet making device has reminded me of another time in my life when I spent a lot of time waiting to get on to the internet.

When I was 15 and living in St. Petersburg, I met another missionary kid in Odessa, Ukraine. We became friends, and a teenage romance bloomed and blossomed. As has been the pattern with each relationship I've had, writing played a key role.

We used to spend the evening writing tomes back and forth. I'd receive a massive email from this guy, and immediately write an equally wordy response. With each email sent I had to wait for the crunching and screeching of the modem, with its little blinking lights, and then get offline again. We'd email back and forth, up to four volumes a night, finally calling it quits about 2 a.m.

While we were never officially dating, we were missionary kid dating, which means you are having a relationship but not calling it dating. I completely thought I would marry this guy. When we both moved back to the States, and he want to Bible school in Florida, I went down to visit pretty often. He broke off our non-dating relationship and I was heartbroken. Not long after, he proposed to a girl at Bible school.

Long story short, they got married, moved to Africa to be real-life missionaries, had three kids, moved back to the U.S. and eventually divorced in the midst of some really heart-breaking circumstances. 

When I was growing up and imagining my future, I always thought I would be a missionary somewhere. I envisioned myself single, or maybe married, living in an orphanage, taking care of kids. I nearly had that life.

This is a very odd way to blog about my eleven year anniversary with The Captain, but as we celebrated our marriage this weekend, I spent some time thinking about the life I almost had. I know some people think about what could have been, had they ended up with another partner. Whenever I look back at that relationship, I let out a sigh of relief. It was such a near miss. I could very easily have married someone who wasn't right for me, and who ultimately had some very big issues that led to the disintigration of his marriage. 

I don't know what would have happened if he hadn't dumped me. Would I have married him? Would he have asked me?

In the space left after my non-dating break-up, my friendship with the Captain had more room to grow. Eventually that wonderful and nourishing friendship developed some romantic tones and it was the gift of a lifetime to get to marry my best friend.

Eleven years in, I am amazed at how very perfect we are for each other, and how I respect him more now than I did before. I am amazed at what we are accomplishing as a team, and so, so thankful that the things that are closest and most dear to our hearts are still reflected in each other. 

Instead of living in a third-world orphanage, I am now living in a beautiful modern house. Instead of sacrificing everything to care for a whole lot of children, I am living a life of daily sacrifice for four children. And instead of being married to a missionary, I am married to a genius-brainiac-software developer with a voracious appetite for learning, the strongest work ethic ever, full of vision and passion, and motivated by compassion to live his life to benefit others, starting with his own family. 

Show me all the fish in the sea, and I doubt you could find his equal.

Eleven years in, I am so, so blessed to have a man in my life who loves me well, and keeps me connected to the internet.