How do I spell happiness? H.O.M.E. I know, I know, it’s all I talk about these days but I am just so unimaginably content. I love doing everything in our house, our home. I love doing the dishes. I love doing the laundry. The other night I was up at 3am cleaning up after my violently ill husband and it was so oddly satisfying. Not that I was happy he was sick of course, but I didn’t mind at all the clean up process. I don’t know if it will last or not but for now I have a deep desire to take really good care of this home of ours. It’s not like I am exactly being a clean freak or anything, although truth be told I have been tidier, it is deeper then that. It’s like for the first time I really care about my surrounding. I always thought I did care, but this is different. I don’t feel like I explaining myself very well but that’s okay you get the general idea.
I am not completely anxiety free mind you. Gil’s recent bout of stomach flu/ food poisoning re-sparked my “Gil’s going to die and leave me all alone” anxiety. This of course has been much more acute since Michelle lost Kevin, more often then not I can keep it in check but seeing him so sick really broke me. I wonder if I am strong enough to deal with a serious illness. I would like to think I am but I have a great fear that I would freeze like a deer in headlights. I love my husband more then anything or anyone in the world and I can’t imagine anything worse then something bad happening to him. My problem is that I spend too much time doing just that. I know it is an irrational fear (as most fears are) and he is the picture of health. I know he will likely live a long healthy life. But that is probably what Michelle thought too.
There are also days where I find another thought creeping into my mind. Gil and I will be making big plans or doing something spontaneous and I feel so happy and so complete and I think…”Maybe we shouldn’t have kids. Maybe we would be happier just the two of us.” A totally crazy thought I know as we have tried so hard to have a baby and started the process to adopt. I am not sure where the thought comes from. I have wanted to be a parent so long but now I find myself questioning my motives. I have wanted to be a mother forever. I love kids. But I find my patience for certain child related things growing shorter. I love the life I have with my husband and wonder from time to time if it isn’t enough with just the two of us, maybe even easier. Or maybe I am just trying to get my mind used to the idea that there may never be a child in our family. Filling out adoption paper is certainly no guarantee that we will one day have a child of our own. I want to make sure we are doing all this for the right reasons. I am sure that Gil is, but I need to make sure that I am. This is one of the reasons we are also considering respite care.
Respite. Synonyms include breather, break, relief, reprieve
I can’t count the number of times I have heard “So&So adopted and then boom they got pregnant right away!” I am tired of those stories. They are even worse for me than the “I just stopped trying and boom I was pregnant!” stories. We are not looking to use adoption as a fertility treatment. When I made that first call to Community Services on January 14th I was not thinking “hey if I do this then maybe I will finally get pregnant with my own baby.” I was thinking “It is more important to me that we are PARENTS then it is for me to give birth.” And I still feel the same way. When we started the adoption process we were still doing the fertility treatments, I considered this to be a kind of concurrent planning, it made sense at the time, but it didn’t last long. It didn’t take me long to pick the path that was best for me and best for our family and that path is adoption. This may not be the way I always envisioned having my family but it is not second best and I never EVER want our child to feel that way. In fact when I think about my own family and Gil’s I wonder if adoption isn’t divine providence for us. We more than most people know that families aren’t blood they are love.
Respite we are told may be a good way to get our foot in the door. It may be a good way of getting us to our end goal faster. I would be an idiot and a liar if I said that didn’t have merit, but I don’t want anyone to think that we are doing this solely as a short cut to get our own kid. We both were intrigued with the idea of respite as soon as we heard about it. We hadn’t known that such a thing was an option. I don’t think I could be a full time foster parent. I think I would get attached and then I would get hurt when the child had to leave us. I know myself too well. Maybe after we have adopted our kids and we have more emotional strength. I don’t know but in the mean time a weekend every month sounds like exactly what Gil and I should be doing. Getting our feet wet. We both love spending time with children but we could both use some practice with our parenting skills. I am hoping that this will give Gil and opportunity to be a little more hands on than he has been with the other children we have in our life and perhaps make him a little more comfortable in that regard. I on the other hand need to get used to sharing children. I have a problem with the way the system is set up and I need to get over that in order to help my future child. Also I need to learn to be more …firm; Sometimes it is okay to say no, sometimes it is okay to be the bad guy. Heck sometimes it is even for the best interest of the child to be NOT be their best friend. I have a hard time with that, I know I do. I had a hard time with Brianna for the same reasons. Sometimes I wasn’t able to say no when I should have because I wanted to be liked.
(I have been dealing with that same issue my whole life, and in a nut shell it describes the first 10 years of my dating life.)
I want my kids to like me, but not at the expense of them growing up to be little decent people so if from time to time they have to dislike me, I need to okay with that. It is part of the job.
I guess by what I have just said I do want kids. Of course I still want kids and I think that Gil does too. But it is dawning on us now how much our lives will change with a child in the picture. We, especially me, would like to think that everything will go back to normal after a period of adjustment but that is just not true. Once you have a child nothing is ever the same again. For example we are planning a trip to see Shannon and Damon and the girls for Christmas of 2010. That will not be an easy trip to take with a child. I will still DO it. But it would be easier if it were just Gil and I. When we are wandering around the house mostly naked, or hanging out in the living room with the lights off watching the lightening, when the house is so quiet on Saturday morning while I putter around and Gilly is still sleeping. When we are dreaming about the two of us driving across the country together, these are the moments when I have doubts. I guess that is normal.
