Tag Archives: emotions

Ten Bits of Wisdom for a New Adoptive Single Mother

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I talked to a colleague this week who just adopted a little boy five weeks ago. She’s single and in her forties and asked me what I thought about single parenting and adoption.  I said “mothering is full of ups and down….usually within the same second.” And though my kids are still pretty young, here’s what I’ve learned so far (a bit more than I shared over the phone with her):

Five “hard” things that will surprise you:

You are going to fail. It’s really hard when you’re used to being a successful, professional woman, but it’s true. There are moments in mothering that you are going to totally and completely bomb. And you’ll know it. You’ll know it the moment you are in it…and yet you won’t be able to do anything about it. You’ll be in the moment and you’ll be doing it all wrong. But…. that moment will end. You will forgive yourself. Your ego will be bruised for a while, but you’ll forgive yourself. And you’ll learn that all moms do that. All moms fail at some moment. What makes a mom great is realizing it, forgiving yourself, trying to learn from it (yeah…..), and moving on. Because you love your child and your child loves you.

That’s the hard one. But it’s true. Here’s another hard one. There will be times that you hear this little voice in your head that says “I wish I never made this decision.” It’s probably somewhere between wiping the poop off the crib railings and stepping on a lego in the middle of the night. It’s probably somewhere in between 39 months of no more than two nights of real sleep in a row and lugging a stroller, diaper bag, kid and two suitcases down the airport hall. It’s there… somewhere. It’s fleeting. It’s shocking. But it’s also real. Life just flipped upside down, you’re on a rollercoaster in the dark, and sometimes you’re not sure you can handle it. And you are scared. But you can handle it. You really can. And you know in your heart of hearts that this is exactly what you want to be doing.

Hmm, I’m on a roll with the hard stuff, because there also comes that time when you realize that parenting has brought out the worst of you. The really ugly side comes out….like anger, grumpiness, impatience. And previously, if you didn’t like a situation you were in or the way it made you feel, you could leave. But now, you can’t. Parenting is 24/7, it doesn’t end. You wake up – the kid is there. You go to sleep – the kid wakes you up. So you must find yourself some breaks and forgive yourself again.

You are going to miss your single life. You’re still “technically” single, but it is so very different now. It’s hard to come to grips with the new limits on your life. No longer can you just jump in the car and head out of town for the weekend (without some serious planning and a trunk full of crap). No longer do you meet up with friends for dinner (without first finding a sitter and contemplating the balance of how many evenings you are away from home). Spontaneity is a whole different version now – you can still have some….until the baby is old enough to need a schedule and then spontaneity becomes “which room do I clean first today?” Gone is the time when you wake up on a Saturday and say “hmmm, what am I going to do today?”

And, you might struggle with the concept of adoption. You might have some bumpiness in bonding with your new one. You might grieve that this child, as beautiful as he is, doesn’t look the least bit like you (or you might rejoice in this). You might be hurt by other people’s glances or words. You might even go so far that you doubt your parenting ability for the child and wonder if some other family should have adopted him. And for this reason, you must have someone in your life who tells you as often as needed, “you are the very woman who is supposed to be his mom.” Because this is true.

Believe me – you will not survive this alone. Don’t even try…for many of the reasons that I’ve just listed. You must have some allies in your camp – a cheering squad, a supporters group, a cadre of friends. (And it’s helpful if all your friends don’t know each other so you can whine to at least 5 or 6 of them about the same thing that the little kiddo just did.) If you have family, move as close to them as you possibly can. Build up a network of people who can take the baby for a couple hours, drop off a gallon of milk in a moment’s notice, sit by you in the ER when the little one is sick, or get out of work early to get the kiddo off the bus on the day you have a really important 3:30 meeting. Cherish these people. They will keep you going. And do not be afraid to ask for help.

Oh – I’m squeezing in a number 6 — Parenting is painful. That surprised me. I never really considered how many times my head was going to get knocked by a flying block. Or a door slammed on my big toe splitting the nail. Or being jumped on from behind when you’re squatting to put on a siblings shoes and falling onto the floor. But the one that always kills me is leaning over your kid to plant a tender kiss on their head, only to have them rear back to look at you and split your lip open or bloody your nose. Real nice. (Okay, back to my list….)

Five wonderful things that will surprise you:

You are going to be amazed at how much you love that child. It is such a powerful emotion, that makes you wipe snot off a nose for the thousandth time. That leads you to lie down beside them long after they’ve gone to sleep just to watch them breathe and their eyes twitch for a few minutes. That causes you to fiercely defend them even when they don’t need it. The love between you and your child is better than anything you could have dreamed of and you can’t even imagine life without him.

You have never known pride until you’ve been proud of your kid. Oh sure, you have felt good about an accomplishment of yours. You’ve been happy for your team or colleagues. But when you watch your son kick his first soccer goal or your daughter stand up and take her first steps – wham! That is powerful pride.

The first time you say it – and believe it! – that you are the baby’s “mother” is pretty fantastic. When you say to yourself, “wow, I’m a mommy. Wow!” It will finally settle in…and your new identity forms. But what’s even more delightful is when your child looks at you and for the first time says “mommy” – you won’t ever forget that moment.

You will spend an entire day getting absolutely nothing done and you’ll be okay with that. You’ll be amazed at how long you can just sit and stare at a baby. You’ll wonder why it took two days to do a load of laundry when you’ve had to sort and fold the clothes over and over again when the boys have “underwear war!” You won’t worry about the dishes in the sink anymore or the crumbs under (and in) the couch – your new “accomplishment” for the day is to have fun, tickle and kiss….and keep the kid alive.

You will understand that becoming a mother was truly, truly the best decision you ever made. Sure you might want a little less vomit to wipe up, but you will know that there’s no other description of yourself that’s more important than to say that you’re a mother. You will be worn out more than ever imagined. You will be frustrated and confused at times. You will do things you never expected to do. And you will be happier than you thought possible – and so grateful for your child and the chance to be a mom.

Call me or a friend to share any of these 10 things…and for anything else.

(Oh….and here’s a couple other simple words of wisdom
– subscribe to Adoptive Families if you want to do a bit more reading and get some suggestions
– definitely sign up for Amazon Mom for free two-day shipping ….including diapers!
– always have extra milk or formula in the house – running out at 9pm is a huge mental drain!
– keep babywipes (and tissues) within an arm’s length…ALWAYS)

Surprise…again

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I guess kids should surprise you.  I mean, why wouldn’t they?  They are their own little independent selves, interacting with a world from the perspective of adult knees and trying to make sense out of the chaos of noise, lights, movement and touch that surrounds them constantly.

They are naturally built to focus in on certain things.  They know to look at the human face to read emotion. They know to pay attention when enumeration begins, but that it’s possible to ignore for quite some time the word that’s supposed to signify their identity (ie, the eldest responds to “One….” much faster than he answers to “Micah….”).  They know that if they crawl into bed at 2 am and say they’re “scared,” the warm body there will accept them and drape an arm over them in protection. They know that the relationship between a mother and her child is vital to the child’s survival and they will attempt to repair it whenever needed.

But they also seem to know that it’s pretty unconditional – and that relationship can be pushed pretty far and stretched out and pulled and yanked… and yet the coil will still spring back. So my kids love to check the pull of this coil.  They love to see how loudly they can screech as they chase each other around the loop of the house.  They love to test how much water is too much water out of the bathtub as they splash gleefully. They like to explore the effects of cheerios flying through the air and scattering upon the carpet and then eating them up “like doggies.” They like to measure how frequently the word “no” can be said before it is followed by a long tirade of how and why “no means no,” or a distinct rise in the ending tone of the word, or a movement of a large parent towards them to block their original goal.

It still surprises me, though, when Micah has one of his really big blow-outs. Like this afternoon, when we decided to get into the car and go someplace fun, but he gets upset and starts the fight with removing his seatbelt as we’re driving 50 mph. This calls for an immediate pull off the road and a discussion on safety….and yet it’s followed by repeated hitting of his brother, taking off the seatbelt and throwing things in the car.  Each time, I pull over and remove him from the car.  I breathe deeply.  I count to 10. I try to remember all those tips from numerous parenting books (none of which has mentioned specifically how to handle a size 2 boy shoe thrown at the back of one’s head while driving…hmmm….). We work ourselves up to 4 hours of time-out upstairs by the time we’ve spent 40 minutes in and out of the car… going nowhere. I feel bad for the other two in the car. And when Micah and I finally talk about it later and I ask “why,” he says, “my brain tells me to be bad.”  Okay – what do I say to that?

Gosh, I’m glad he doesn’t surprise me too often with this. But it does stop me in my tracks. I start to wonder what’s going on…and if I’m supposed to be doing something else with him. Am I working too hard and ignoring my kids? Should we go back to therapy? Does this kid need something else? What sparked all that? Is this something I’m triggering or continuing? Is he starting to react to the stress of the craziness that is hitting our lives recently?tracks in the tub

I prefer the surprise of being called to “look what we did!” and finding car tracks encircling the bathtub. And sharing the joy of creating something new out of connecting toys. And smiling at the surprise of making a tunnel under a pile of snow. And giggling together over a video of funny cat tricks. I so often hear the phrase “oh, the joys of parenting” and there are many joys for sure, but the sarcastic tone that sometimes accompanies that phrase is also very true some times. There are some “joys” that are hard to handle. But the coil always snaps back into place….

It is a very tight coil built of the strongest material ever – love.

(8:00 pm addendum: Now I’m wondering if today’s blow-up was a harbinger of illness. Micah fell asleep on the couch at 6 after complaining of “being cold” which he never is and a headache. Sigh. Gotta love these viral-infested little guys!)

Disturbances of the peace

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I am on my couch with a new laptop…replacement #2.  Somehow my 1-month-old laptop started confusing its numbers with its letters (a feature I found quite annoying) and I returned it and got a smaller, sleeker more fun model :). So I sit reflecting on the week, with a laptop in my hands, an empty ice cream dish beside me (my current concoction is a mix of Edy’s French Silk, Archer Farms Belgium chocolate, and a dash of Ben & Jerry’s VolunTirimisu – don’t even ask!), and a 3-year-old dreaming on the couch nearby.

I glance over at Noah sleeping on the other half of the replacement sofa (courtesy of the foam-hungry police dog’s owner. I’m going to shy away from leather sofas in the future though – they’re ice cold as our temperatures plummet and the boys have noticed – didn’t take long when they plop down in their undies in the morning – and now jump onto the comfy chairs).  Noah looks so peaceful….and I realize I wish I could be in that state – blissful slumber without a care in the world (other than the fact that Micah using the purple lightsaber all day was just “not fair”).

Instead, my peace this past week has been disrupted by too many “incidents” – teen boys in New Jersey who lured and killed a 12-year-old girl, two infants hospitalized here in the city from injuries by their parents, a nanny in New York killing two children in a family.  I feel the pain of these families.  I fear the world in which my boys are growing up.  And I wonder about my ability to prepare them for this world.

It seems parenting is hard enough just taking care of the physical aspects, like

–          Micah throwing up three times on Monday just as I put him to bed…and again and again as soon as I change the sheets

–          Stephen emptying a whole half gallon of milk onto the dining room table and splashing in it in delight as we hurriedly wiped it up with any and all available towels

–          Taxiing Micah to basketball for half a session, rushing by the house to change into soccer gear, and dashing off to stand in the rain for the final game of the season (shhh, don’t mention that we’re missing next week’s make-up game…there’s too much going on as it is already!)

–          Trying with all my will power to breathe quietly and drive safely as the 3 older boys chattered and teased and fought and screamed for an hour and 15 minutes after we left a Halloween party near Cleveland last night – and just as the third one finally drifted off to sleep – the baby awoke and whimpered and cried and spluttered for the rest of the way home.  7 minutes  from the house (according to friendly GPS Jane), the car was quiet….and then we carried them all inside!  (must remember never to do that again!  Or just give in and turn the TV on – who cares if they don’t fall asleep for a while – they didn’t anyway!).  And whose bright idea was it to give the boys tons of dessert and candy and then put them in the back of an enclosed moving vehicle and buckle them up?!?

But it’s more the emotional challenges that drain me, like

–          Trying (unsuccessfully) to stop myself from scolding Micah for soiling his underwear.  I know he didn’t mean it but I keep saying “you’re 6 years old….why do I have to clean you over and over?”  And I know full well that this is not only NOT a useful tirade to be on, but it is not healthy for his emotional state.  Yet, I am frustrated to be dealing with it again.

–          Worrying about whether my boys are in the “right” care settings and how well they’re handling them, especially when Micah states he doesn’t like one of his afterschool teachers because she’s always putting him in “time out.”  And I keep thinking that I don’t want him to develop a construct of being the “bad kid,” but he certainly does pull for a lot of disciplining.

–          And I’ve been very unsettled by an article written by two of our Child Advocacy physicians earlier last week about a recent court decision that would allow people who abuse children (as shown by “substantial evidence”) to not have their names registered as an abuser (because it’s not “clear and convincing” evidence). In which case, even though someone is a known abuser, they may still “clear” the background checks and thus drive my children to school, serve as their sports coach, even teach our children.  I’m pretty frustrated that my state shows so little concern for its children – the future for all of us.  And I realize that I need to be wary and even more protective of my children and yet not wanting them to grow up in fear.  What a balance!

So if you have any of this all sorted out, I’m eager to hear!

A Love Song

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I think I was mostly paying attention at a conference the past two days, although I’m starting to feel a little over-conference-ated!  (3 days at Prevent Child Abuse conference and 2 days at the Infant Mental Health conference in the space of a week).

Here’s what I learned (other than the fact that if you wake up boys 2 days in a row to make it to a conference, when it’s Saturday and you can all sleep in, they will obligingly wake up at 6:10 for you!):

– the “dance” of love in touch and expression between a mother and child is both fascinating and incredibly sacred.

– over the years, research has not really focused on fathers at all….very strange.

– my kids actually need to dance more, despite the fact that I am not a dancer (so I went out a bought a CD/FM/cassette player last night – who knew they still made cassettes?  The iPod/CD one was sold out….).

– there are probably a lot more environmental toxins affecting our children’s development than we want to admit and Rachel Carson (from Pittsburgh!) was way beyond her time drawing attention to environmental impact

– it is important to continue to develop our children’s sense of wonder – and our own!

– and when the mind drifts as a presenter drones, here’s what happens:

A love song:

Why is it so hard sometimes?

Why do we struggle?

We love

We hold

We play

We tickle

We smile

We laugh

We wipe snotty noses

We sweep up messes

We scrub dirty bums

We pick up toys

We clean up high chairs

We sit exhausted

We run and run and run

We become weary

Until we watch the soft sighs

of deep slumber

Rocking the angel

Who rests in our arms

In peace and hope

For another day.

Voice….less

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“Didn’t you miss me just a little, teeny, tiny bit?” I asked Micah when he first woke up.  “Nope,” he replied, “I was having too much fun.”  “Just a little?!?!?”  I tried consoling myself that this was good.  Clearly he wasn’t miserable that I was gone for 3 days.  Clearly he had a good time with grandma and Aunt Kathy, but seriously, can’t you miss me just a tad.

Well, I missed the boys.  I was away for 3 days at the Prevent Child Abuse – America national conference and can’t even remember the last time I was away, not even for a day, much less three.  It was the first time for Seth who is almost 18 months, so he had quite a lot to say about it in his body language.  Noah, however, gave me the sweetest tightest hug when I woke him up in the morning after returning home late Sunday night.

I confess, it was nice to have some time away – without noise, without 68 pounds of deadweight in the bed beside me, without the demands of feeding hungry mouths or giving baths or getting them to bed “on time.”  I also had a visceral reaction to seeing families in the airport carrying babies in front packs and remember getting back from Disney World last year and being so thankful not to have the weight of a baby constantly strapped to my body almost 24/7.

But I missed them and I missed having a physical presence in their day and knowing what they were doing.  It’s not the same to listen to them on the phone (the 6 year old doesn’t really want to talk, the 3 year old just repeats himself, and the one-yr-old just stares at the phone).  I missed sharing in all their activities and joys (like winning the soccer game again – still undefeated!).  I missed interpreting their world for them as they moved through it.  I missed being their voice.

I’ve been contemplating that concept today – being a voice.  My kids clearly have a “voice” but they really don’t know how, much less when, to use it.  And often they use it at decibels I wish they wouldn’t or to talk about subjects I really wish they wouldn’t.  But they don’t really have a voice in their world and in their community.  For the most part, that is funneled through me – their mother and protector.

Yet, as I think about the project I am working on – to develop a crisis nursery (a safe place for temporary care of young children when their families hit crisis) – I realize that the real reason we need this is because the very little children in our world and in our city do not have a voice.

My safe, secure, fun-loving boys do not have a voice….and so too the child who has been hurt at some time in his life or has seen one of his parents hurt.  And the child laying in the hospital bed being treated for multiple injuries has no voice.  And the little boy hungry and dirty and cold….alone in his house…. has no voice.  And the teen “graduating” from the foster care system and moving into a world all on her own where she might one day get married and have no one to walk her down the aisle has no voice.  And the four-year-old who has moved from one house to another and one apartment to another until he ends up in a cold dark homeless shelter has no voice.  And the girl taken from her family and ravaged by the human trafficking nightmare that is upon us has no voice.

It is we who give voice to our children.  It is we who need to speak up and speak out for them.  It is we who need to demand a change for the sake of our children’s hearts.

Be the voice.  Be the change.  As often as you can speak.

Brave face….in the face of loss

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Our house has been on the market for over a year.  It’s a torturous process.  An agent calls, we work into the wee hours of the morning to clean up all remnants of 5 little boys, we vacate the house (often hanging out at my mom’s)….I carry 8-10 large plastic bins of cleared items (including the countless sippy cups and sippy cup parts from the countertop) down into the basement, stack them up among the 30-40 other storage bins already down there….and then slowly bring them all back up one by one in the days after a house showing as we remember things we need next.  Well, it’s usually me wondering things like, “where’s the bundt pan to make this cake?”… “what happened to the metal spatula that I like using to get the cookies off?” … “where do all the sippy cups keep going?” (some of them do find their way behind the couch or under the seats in the car, only to be thrown away once found if they meet the black-inside criteria).

All this is to say that having one’s house on the market is a Pain with a capital P.  But what has really been troubling me (other than my back when carrying all those bins) over the past year is a sense of a slow leak…a slow, yet accumulating loss of things.  I find myself often thinking, “I wonder where I put that x, y, or z the last time we packed up the house?”  “I can’t remember where I put….”  And, it’s almost like Christmas to the boys when we go to my mom’s house and they find one of the bins with their toys in it “Oh, look, it’s our Batman-mobile!!  Look, here’s our tractor!!”  I get the same joy occasionally – “Oh, look, here’s a bin full of cereal boxes…most of which have expired!”  But generally, I find myself frustrated and grieving the loss of items which I used to rely on.

Naturally, these simmering feelings were blown into gargantuan size this past week with the burglary of our house.  Frustration, grief, anger, sadness.  Kathy was on the local news the next day telling our story.  A friend called to tell me she was “coming up” on the news as I pulled into the driveway.  “Oh, I’ll run inside and watch,” I said….followed quickly by “oh, we don’t have a TV.”  Noah falls asleep in one of his unique, semi-unsafe positions and I long to reach for the camera and capture another “Noah sleeps” moment.

Yet, all of that is nothing compared to the loss of my memory.  I have sudden amnesia. Sudden Alzheimers.  And yet, I am not sick.  It’s just that I entrusted my memory to a machine because there was so much within my brain and now that machine has left me….and so has the memory of Micah’s first word and when he learned to walk.  So has the memory of how many classes I’ve done for “continuing medical education.”  So has the work that I’ve put into building a crisis nursery….hours upon hours of work….gone.

So I spent the week walking around with an ache inside and a brave face in front.  “Doing okay,” I’d say and then tell the story of how Bazer the police dog chewed up the furniture.  I’m really good at telling a funny story.  It keeps my own emotions in check.  And people have told me all week “Wow, you’re brave. You’re strong.”  And most of the time I feel like I am and then I crash – big time.  I come home late one night and the older boys are in bed without their respective pull-ups on….and the blankets and the sheets and the jammies are soaked through….and I explode.  Fueled by my anger of loss….it actually doesn’t matter what small thing sparked the explosion.  Fueled by an older son who does not want to hear that his dearest “blue blankie” is saturated with urine and thus must be washed NOW.  Fueled by the audacity of someone to invade our privacy and safety.   Slamming doors, kicking, muttering under my breath….I finally lay in the bed and sob.  That’s where the brave face falls apart sometimes.  And the words of Mandisa’s song “What if we were Real” run through my head:

“Well, I’m tired of saying everything I feel like I’m supposed to say

I’m tired of smiling all the time, I wanna throw the mask away

Sometimes you just have a bad day, Sometimes you just wanna scream ….

We keep trying to make it look so nice, And we keep hiding what’s going on inside

But what if I share my brokenness, What if you share how you feel

And what if we weren’t afraid of this crazy mess, What if we were real.”

What I’ve slowly come to realize in my week of working through this, is that while it’s important for me to be strong and protect my children – that’s the only face I show them most of the time.  The face that says “Mommy has this all altogether.”  I rarely show them the “real” me.  The hurt me.  The angry me (well, no – they know that one really well).  The sad me.  They need to see those faces sometimes too so that it’s safe for them to be “real.”  So tomorrow we’ll buy a dog bone for Bazer in case he wants to come back and visit sometime and we’ll all practice being real.