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It has been a long week. Bill and I were going to watch a movie tonight, but we are both too tired. He fell asleep already - yes, it is only 9 pm. I am tired, but wired, so I've been reading blogs. I read one post that got me teary. I read of a couple announcing that they are adopting siblings from Ethiopia, hoping that they are twins. The beginning. I confess that I really, really hoped we would be referred twins. I thought that twins would be so wonderful since we requested at least one child under the age of one - twins would mean two babies. Have I ever said how much I love babies?
I read Straight Magic, Little Ethiopian and My Fascinating Life and just melted (I still do) at these cute, adorable babies. Twin babies. I read their referral stories and just gushed at their excitement, their surprise, their glee. I had a secret wish that the same would happen to me.
Today, I also read a post of someone who was almost offered a set of twins, but because of happenstance, the twins went to someone else. That person felt loss. That brought back some pain that I have not shared before on this blog. (I can say this now, right, since this blog is private.) Someone adopting from our agency was in Ethiopia picking up their child in the Spring of 2009. They wrote me an e-mail with these words:
"there is a set of infant twins at HH1. One is much smaller than the other (that's all I know). I'm thinking these two are going to be yours. I debated whether to email you but I'd thought you'd want to know. You are the next in line-they must be yours. I hope you find out this week."
Bill and I clung to these words. I started holding these twins in my heart even though I knew I shouldn't. It was a boy and a girl. Days and weeks went by with no word. We lost hope and we felt a loss. We were close to two years of waiting and we were feeling so discouraged. So reading about the hope of twins today struck an old chord. There is a residue of pain from the longing, the waiting for children that we went through.
I know you probably want to smack me right now, tell me to shut the hello up and quit feeling sorry for myself. But let me finish. Tonight, as I sat with my little family, Bill and I were saying what a wonderful age three is AND how wonderful it is to have a baby - specifically OUR three year old and OUR baby.
But I confess there is a residue of pain that comes up when I am exhausted. Even if we had gotten a referral for 2 week old boy/girl twins, they were never going to be exactly what I'd imagined. (Let me tell you right now that ONE baby is already so much more work than I EVER, EVER imagined!) They would be, as my children are, their own little beings, with their own personalities, their own little quirks, their own little bundle of joy and of pain.
As you can probably guess right now, I am an extreme sufferer of "the grass is greener ..." syndrome. Tonight, I write this post not wishing that my children were different. I wish I were different. I wish I had a little more grace with myself.
Just wanted to thank you for this post... although I'm not through the wait yet, I experienced some of these feelings when a blog friend recently announced their referral for siblings.
ReplyDeleteSince we had started out thinking we'd be referred siblings, and since we're now 99% sure it will be only one little guy, I had the weirdest mix of feelings and didn't know how to describe it. I was happy for the friend, but severely emotional at the same time.
I think one of the challenges of parenting is the reconciliation of what you imagine with your reality, no matter the composition of your family OR your dreams. You cannot help but imagine, and yet, your reality never matches what you think it will be. In the end, I think it is exactly what it is meant to be, but getting to that point has been a challenge for me. As an aside, I cannot wait to meet the boys. Much love to you all.
ReplyDeleteoh momma. we all grieve for what could have been, even while loving what is.
ReplyDeleteEvelyn...be easy with yourself! no guilt...please let go of any feelings of guilt because what you are saying here, what you are feeling is so ok! As new parents it is completely normal to go through moments of grief, loss, "grass is greener" syndrome. As a postpartum Doula, mother and friend to many adoptive families I see it/experience it all the time. why? because life is built of struggle and triumph. of being given opportunities to grown and stretch ourselves in ways we never dreamed. Being a parent we will always experience things that are nothing like what we expect. we will constantly be tested and have to dig deeper to get through. But there is always another side...always the light at the end of the tunnel...the silver lining. Grace.
ReplyDeletexo
I wrote a post once about grieving the loss of the little four year old boy that I imagined for 18 mos. And while I would not change a thing, I still do. I imagine that it would be more challenging than I can imagine, but I still read your blog and Julie's blog and think. oh man - that's what I wanted to do.
ReplyDeleteFor one reason or another (perhaps more reasons than one) this post got me all kinds of choked up.
ReplyDeleteI remember hoping we would be referred twins. We were approved for two babies but could also get one. SO glad we got our Ru....two would have been wonderful, but would have also meant getting a new car....:)And of course, we did get the perfect daughter for us!!!
ReplyDeleteHonest and Needed. Thanks for this.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your honest thoughts. It is so helpful to me and I'm sure to many others. What a tough situation to have learned of those twins and have thought they were yours... that would have been a loss no matter if it was one child or twins or another sibling pair - to hear that they may well be yours and then have them taken away is a real loss. I'm glad you're finding peace and much love with your boys!
ReplyDeleteJust read this and wow, do not know what to say. The part that utterly choked me up was reading the email that you were sent - we got pretty much that EXACT SAME email, word for word. And I remember with such absolute clarity the horrible mix of emotions that came afterwards - euphoria followed by guilt followed by more euphoria followed by ... well, you know. That bit of the wait destroyed me so much that, when we finally found out that they WERE ours, I was all out of emotions and utterly, utterly numb. Which I think I did post about.
ReplyDeleteWhat I never did post (and am only commenting here because your blog is private!) is that before we got our referral, there was another referral that seemed to me like it SHOULD hvae been ours, but wasn't, and I cried for days. Now I think back and think - how could I have ever wanted anybody other than these babies? But at the time....
I think that the referral process is probably the biggest mindflip in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE. Really impressed that you actually posted honestly about this.
I love it when you get this open and as usual, I can really relate. I can't seem to get this honest on my own blog but I will tell you here. The first time our agency called to ask us if we wanted to up our age range we said no. I WANTED AT LEAST ONE BABY, or so I thought, but then I cried and cried and cried and felt sooo guilty and confused by that decision. The next time they called us they said they had 14 month old twin boys who would be closer to 17 months old by the time they were ready to be referred. I flipped (in a good way). I also had wanted twins and although I thought I wanted the teeny tiny babies, I could live with this. But then 5 days later they called again and said "now we think they are closer to 19 months old" and then a month later they said "now we think they are more like 23 months old" and then finally they said "the birth mother says they are 28 months old". Somewhere in all of that craziness I learned that a local, in person friend with the same agency, who tragically lost a referral last fall, was referred 4 month old boy girl twins - exactly what I thought I wanted. All this went on for about 2 months and I was a complete and utter grief stricken guilty mess. Then I saw the faces and videos of these 28 month old (now 31 month old) boys and I fell completely in love! For now I am over the infant thing, I am aware that the desire for that infant, for something different, might rear it's ugly head somewhere down the road......and then we go back for a baby girl? HA! Not likely unless adopting almost 3 year old twin boys is a lot easier than I think it's going to be!
ReplyDeleteI think we just have to give ourselves time and patience and understanding and love and allow these feelings to work themselves out over time. Man, as claudia said, the referral process is one crazy mind flip, and as you said, there is residual grief that just isn't going to go away right away. Just wanted you to know, you are not alone in all of it.
Thanks for posting this...and for letting me pour my story out in your comments section. Oh, wait, I guess you didn't really have a say in that! In that case I apologize for the novella comment!