One Week Left

One week left. A week from today the children will be in court for the official reunification with their mother. When the case worker was at my place last week she wasn’t 100% certain the children would go straight home after court but she conceded that this case has been highly unusual from the word “go” and so she didn’t really know the exact date of return. There is no question that the children will be going home, it is just a matter of when. My previous case worker was under the impression that the children would return immediately following court. This case worker has been trying to get an answer from the county but has not had much luck in getting her phone calls returned. Welcome to my world……

 

I had such a lovely weekend with the baby. And this may sound odd considering he threw up on me twice Saturday afternoon, but he was rather well-behaved before and after the vomiting incident. He was crabby later on that day, but nothing over-the-top. Saturday we went with a friend of mine to a fall festival in which they shut down a major thoroughfare and had various artists set up tents to peddle their wares along with the various specialty boutiques sprinkled among the 6 block stretch. It was a warm and semi-cloudy afternoon, but still nice enough. We had made our way through nearly the entire fair and stopped in a bakery for my friend to take something sweet home for her son. The little guy began to gretz and wanted me to hold him. I slid him out of the stroller and when I picked him up, he put his head on my chest and he felt warm. I had just finished telling my friend he felt warm when I felt something sticky slide down between the cleavage crevice. The vomit slid down the front of me onto the floor, splattering my feet and sandals. I switched him to my right arm and dabbed at the puke with my left hand, mostly concerned for my scarf and the purse strap when I felt the warm sticky feeling running down the outside of my right arm and splattering to the floor. People ran in fear and I felt awful for chasing away customers, but at the same time I was covered in puke and the lousy paper napkins were doing nothing more than smearing the goo around. The baby began to cry. I aborted my attempt to clean us off and cuddled him as my friend grabbed the stroller and we marched back to the car. We had about 2 blocks to walk and carrying the vomit encased little one was a struggle because he is a big boy! But, we made it, I stripped him down to his diaper and plopped him in the car. Luckily I was wearing layers and was able to take the one shirt off and drive home in my tank top. After a double shower and costume change we headed out to my sister’s boyfriend’s mothers 50^th birthday party. The little guy was feeling better and actually ate quite a bit of food but towards the end he was feeling warm again, so we left early and put him in bed. Sunday morning at church I was sitting down and he had been sitting on my lap facing forward as we sang the worship songs. At one point he turned and laid his head on my shoulder and fell asleep. He has only ever fallen asleep while I was holding him one time and he was much younger than he is now. I took advantage of the cuddle time and tried to put the feeling of impending doom and loss from my mind.

 

It is so hard for me to imagine not having these kids with me. It is hard to think that (hopefully) in the near future I will be cuddling another baby and getting a different child into a routine. It is also so hard for me to imagine keeping that child and having all the agency stuff wither away and let us live our lives as a family. I feel a lot more somber now in my approach. I think I am more emotionally cautious and unsure. Previously, I felt so righteous about deserving to be a mother; it was hubris. Being a mother is not a right, it is a gift. I can blubber and blather all I want about *my* plans and *my* desire and how I can provide stability and love and wonderful family connections – but in the end, I am no more or less deserving than any other woman to be a mother. I’m not the same person I was in December of 2008 when I agreed to toss out the birth control pills and delightfully start a family, blissfully unaware that my ovaries were so disinclined to accommodate. The whole first year it was playful banter and guessing which month would be *the* month. But, as the year whizzed by and no pregnancy was to be seen, doubt and fear began to creep in and it wasn’t long before the fears were confirmed – there was a problem. But, sometimes the solution is first to identify the problem and then determine how to fix it, so with renewed hope, we marched on to the infertility clinic, only to once again be let down. We regrouped and took up a new tactic – adoption. With a mixture of caution and hope, we plodded through the paperwork and the training and the waiting. We got excited with each and every phone call until we got our very first placement! I will never, ever in all my life forget that feeling when we drove home from CHOR with a little one and all his stuff jammed into the backseat of our car. I kept peaking  behind my seat to stare in wonder at this miracle – they really let us drive off with a child in our backseat! He was ours! The journey has come to an end! My heart was elated, my spirit soared in a way it hadn’t in over 3 years. But, this joy was short-lived and the dreams came crashing down, shattering my entire world, plunging me into a darkness I am only now pulling myself out of. After all of this, after the newness of this endeavor wore off and the naiveté was replaced with determination, the elusiveness of the dream still encompasses my life, it still clouds my ability to see a brighter future. It’s like I have infertility PTSD; I duck and cover when I see an incoming pregnant woman, I have nightmares that are in fact my own reality, I remember seeing my dreams die before me feeling so helpless to save them and yet so responsible for their demise. I cannot function in the “real world” like a normal civilian because I am always looking over my shoulder seeing an invisible enemy. I don’t know if this pain will ever go away completely. I cannot rewrite the past and I cannot ignore how much this chapter in my life has changed me. I was telling a friend that I was approved as an adoptive home last Friday and that I have been communicating with someone special I really like and she said “it seems like things are all coming together for you” and I could not find it in myself to joyfully agree with her; there was still something painful lurking just under my rib cage, a twinge letting me know that it was all too precarious to trust wholeheartedly. I hate that feeling, but I just could not shake it. The old demons might have left but they did not go far; they hover just above me ready and waiting to snatch away any small shred of joy I manage to acquire. I don’t think so much about my next placement as I used to. I made myself stop daydreaming about “the call” or what gender/age the baby will be. I just wake up and put one foot in front of the other, praying for guidance, for wisdom and praying for my baby; and then I get on with my life. My hands are open, my heart is ready, please dear God bless me with a baby……