Archive for March, 2009

How many are there I wonder, mothers like me? Mothers who are missing a part of themselves. Mothers whose recurring thought is whether their child is safe and happy. Mothers whose lives have been forever changed through the birth and relinquishment of a child. “Be brave,” they said. “If you really love your baby you’ll give her up for adoption,” they said. Books on “grieving a pet” are plentiful – yet there are almost no books on grieving the loss of one’s child to adoption. Her face is etched upon my mind, round and pink and beautiful. Her slender fingers flexing and grasping at whatever is near. Her skin, so soft and flawless. I mourn her as if she had died in my arms. Epsecially today. She is fourteen years old today, the age I was when she was born. How much I have missed. Is she prepared for what is to come as she becomes a young woman? Who is caring for her, teaching her, nuturing her? Will she find herself in my position? No, I can’t believe that she will, because I couldn’t bear to think of another life lived disconnected. I want so badly to see her, to know her, but how would she see me? Could she forgive me? Could she understand what it’s like to be a mother like me?

As I sat and listened to the other mothers ooh and ah while telling each other how much they missed the “baby years”; I cringed in quiet disbelief. They went on and on about how cute their babies were and how much they loved holding them and watching them at that age – while I broke out in a cold sweat having flashbacks of the horror of it all. Do I miss the “baby years”? – Not on your life.

It was a baby shower and all the women were sharing their stories with each other in a truly believable fashion. It was at that moment that I realized there are those kinds of mothers and there are mothers like me. They continued on about the glory days of their children’s youth, while I sat on the other side of the table, white knuckles gripping the chair, trying to keep myself from running out the door, lest I have a panic attack in front of them all. I sat there with a glazed over smile nodding in agreement – pretending I knew where they were coming from. I am a mother of five, oh, and I work from home too – if that helps any. Now don’t get me wrong here, I really do love my kids, but the early years of their lives are not something I look back on with love and adoration. To this day, I will be the last person in the room to ask to “hold the baby”.

I didn’t start out this way. I went into motherhood with grand expectations and a can –do attitude. I know you’ve heard it all before and you may have said it yourself….nope, my baby wouldn’t change my life. I would relax while my newborn slept the afternoons away. I would keep my individuality and continue to pursue my dreams and goals while the baby played quietly on the floor beneath me. After the baby went to bed each evening, my husband and I would gaze into each other’s eyes and marvel at the wonderful creation we had made blah blah blah. It was a Norman Rockwell painting in my mind. What I got was scribbling on the wall.

After the first child was born….reality set in – and you must remember that I did this five times in a row – what the hell was I thinking anyway?? There is the first year of each of my little darling’s lives where I was thrown into a psychosis inducing cycle of sleep deprivation that translated into five solid years of my life where sleep was a mere fantasy. Let’s see how you’d do with that. It was a good day if I got showered and dressed and an even better day if I ended the day with as many children as I started out with. Then there were the endless hours of psychobabble that you must give to the oozing-from-every-orifice child that you created to keep them from wailing all day long – will someone talk me off the ledge please? Then there is teething. Oh and let’s not forget the crawling stage where you spend the entire day trying to keep them out of the kitty litter box. Then as they grow a little older, you must keep the creepy critters content for what seems like 50 hours a day with all the cute little toys you got as gifts at the baby shower, oh, and all those toys make noise. Truthfully, I find playing with toys about as much fun as watching paint dry.

Then suddenly, somewhere along the way, three of them grew up and the other two are on their feet and moving forward. After years of barely surviving this endless mind-bending re-run, they morphed into human beings and I like it and I like them. The baby days……bag that. I barely survived it.

There are mothers who cry on their child’s first day of Kindergarten, and there are mothers like me……”Have a great time honey, I’ll see you at 4:00!” – I believe it is unnatural to be so happy.