It saddens me that I don’t get to name my first child, I
have no say in that aspect at all. I was one of those girls who had a name for
every doll, every pet and I thought painstakingly over those names to decide on
the most fitting name. I used to write down names I heard that I liked because
I wanted to remember them when I became a mother. But, this too has been taken
from me by infertility. I know some adoptive parents don’t care, they get to
raise a child so who cares about a name? I guess I just don’t see it that way. Yes,
I am incredibly grateful that I get the opportunity to parent children, but I
still feel so much loss in all of this. Primero’s county case worker was
supposed to come over last night, but she had something else come up. She had
asked for Primero to decide on what he wants his “new” name to be and
reiterated in her email she would like that information. I spoke to Primero
about it some time ago and he was reluctant to change his name, which I TOTALLY
understand. I would never dream of even suggesting he change his first or even
his middle name. I would, however, really like if we could share the same last
name. The problem is, he already has a hyphenated last name, so we couldn’t
just throw my name onto the back of his (which, I’ve always opposed because I’m
returning to my maiden name and it’s 13 letters long!!!). I had suggested
adding my last name as a second middle name, but he didn’t seem to like that
idea. He would rather have 3 last names, which is not only ridiculous
(especially when ONE of those names is 13 letters!) but I don’t even know if it
is legally acceptable. I know it’s stupid, but I feel like sharing a name makes
us a little more like a family, it’s a way to include him as one of “us.” I
plan on changing the last names of the little ones (I will keep Love Bug’s name
but change his middle name to my dad’s middle name giving them the same
initials – for Chica Marie I just don’t like her first name at all, so I plan
on making that her middle name and giving her a first name with an initial to
match the nickname we use), so that would mean Primero is the only one not
sharing our name. And that makes me so sad. It also makes me wonder about how
committed he is to the adoption, which again, is stupid. But what tie do we
have, other than a piece of paper stating we are a family? He won’t call me “Mom,”
he won’t have the same last name, he doesn’t share the same moral ideals or
religious convictions and sometimes I think he’s only interested in adoption so
he can have the freedoms he lost being in foster care. These are things I keep
to myself, mostly. I share them here to try to get my head straight so I can
soldier on.
It turned out being a good thing that the county case worker
didn’t come over because we ended up taking Love Bug to the ER last night. I
wasn’t at my desk at work all afternoon yesterday and the daycare was trying to
reach me to tell me Love Bug had a fever. Unfortunately, I didn’t get this
message until it was almost time for me to leave work. When I picked Love Bug
up he felt very warm. We went home and I took his temperature and the
thermometer read 104.6 °F! I took it again just to be sure and the same reading
came out. I called my mom and she advised taking him straight to the ER. We sat
there FOREVER. When the triage nurse finally took his temperature it was only
102. When we were called back to a room the nurse read his temperature at 103.
He was given Motrin and we waited some more for the doctor to come see him. She
said he didn’t look too bad and she was fairly sure it was some viral thing
going around that caused kids to spike very high fevers, but she wanted to be
sure so she ordered a chest x-ray (because he coughed in front of her) and a
urine sample. By this time, we had been in the hospital for well over 2 hours
and Love Bug had spent that time sleeping on my shoulder. He was not willing to
be disturbed for all this poking and prodding. For the chest x-ray they had a
plastic tube attached to a table where his legs would hang down and I would
hold his hands up out of the tube. He cried and tried to pull himself to me and
so I sang to him to try to calm him down (goofy songs because I’m no singer).
Then, they had to cath him to get urine and that was way worse than the chest
x-ray. When Primero heard what they would be doing, he freaked remembering his
own experience with a catheter last year. I held Love Bug’s hand and stroked
his hair as the nurse tried and tried to get some urine from him. But, we had
been there for over 3 hours and he hadn’t eaten or drunken anything, so they
could only get a little bit of urine and had to hope it was enough. After all
the poking and prodding Love Bug fell asleep and Primero, Chica Marie and I
watched a movie. We saw all of Aladdin and most of Despicable Me II while waiting.
Luckily Chica Maire was well-behaved the whole time, unlike the last time we
were at the ER with her for Primero’s issue last year. We got home around 11
last night and I was so exhausted I just wanted to crawl right into bed. Love
Bug was feeling a little better from the medicine and didn’t want to sleep, so
I ended up putting him in bed with me after two attempts to get him to settle
in his crib. The doctor warned me that he will probably still have 2-3 more
days of high fevers which I should treat with Motrin or children’s Tylenol. As
long as he doesn’t stop eating or become too sluggish he should be fine. In
hindsight, I think he has the same thing that Chica Marie had last week because
she too spiked a high fever out of nowhere and was lethargic, sleeping most of
the day. I hope we are done with this nasty fever virus!
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