My Hang-Ups (From August 14, 2014)

I think I thought that there would be some kind of release when I finally achieved my goal of motherhood – some sense of centeredness, of rightness, a lessening of pain and fear and worry. Thus far, this has not been my experience. I find as much angst in my new role as mom to a teenager as I did in my role as an infertile. Motherhood is wonderful, but there is still an awful lot of pain involved (and obviously, I don’t mean childbirth). Weekly, sometimes daily, I find myself in tears over being “mom” and not Mom to Primero. It’s stupid stuff and my hang-ups not his. I don’t tell him about it because he shouldn’t be concerned with it all. I only talk about it here, where I feel safe to express my inner fears and insecurities. Primero had posted something on Facebook asking people to give him a nickname only they would use with him. A bunch of his camp friends posted silly things and I posted the name I use for him here, Primero. He responded online with a “thanks [My Name]” in the same sentence mentioning others who posted. His biological mother posted “Adorable” to which he responded, “Thanks Mom.” I can’t tell you how crushed I felt. Maybe things will change with more time, but we are fast approaching six months together and I am still my nickname or (less often) my full name to him. Occasionally he will address me as “Mom” in a text and he has me listed in his phone as “mom” but he does not call me mom. It’s an imbalance that I don’t think will ever be rectified. To me, he is the world, my first son, (right now) my only son. He is my everything because I have no other children (I’m sorry if it sounds callous but I cannot count the foster children I have right now because their future is unknown and I know how hard it is for me to let go once I believe that a child is mine – call it self-preservation). But, to him, I am number two or even three because he considers the aunt that raised him until he was 5 a mother too. And while it is nice that he can be so inclusive and have such a big heart to love so many “mothers” it stings a little to someone who has spent nearly 6 years trying to become a mother. I don’t want to have to share that privilege with anyone else. It’s selfish, I know. I’m working on getting over it, I just don’t know how. And it’s not like I can ask him to stop calling his biological mother “mom” and stop calling me by my name. I might always be my name and never “mom” to him, so I have to come to terms with that someway and somehow. Oddly enough, the little girl calls me “Mommy” exclusively. She has since day one. She never calls me by my name, although I know she knows what my name is. So, I should just be content with that. I know I am important to Primero, I know he loves me and he feels like I am his mother, so what’s in a name? Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? I guess this issue, coupled with the common assumption that I gave birth to the baby, grates on very sensitive nerves. Shall I never be free from infertility’s grasp? I suppose not, for as I read in an article a few weeks ago, adoption cures childlessness but it does not cure infertility. The children I have now cannot be expected to “make-up for” the children I was unable to have biologically. So, perhaps this is where I have gone wrong, expecting those feelings of maternal longing to be fulfilled by adopting children from a stranger. Why can’t I just be content with what is? I have made peace with my reproductive shortcomings and I have travelled the painful road out of infertility. Motherhood is upon me and so I should gratefully embrace it and not look back, not think of what could have been, but concentrate on what is here and now. I have a son. I have a foster daughter and a precious newborn baby to love to pieces. I could not ask for more.