The disclaimer

* I always wanted to adopt.

I manage to insert that disclaimer into nearly every blog post. It's a fact. I truly have always wanted to adopt. mrohkay and I never had a "should we or shouldn't we?" conversation. It was only a matter of when. Should we try pregnancy again or wait? Adopt now or later?

And yet, when I write "I always wanted to adopt," there's a defensiveness. Maybe you sense it; maybe you don't. I know it's there lurking.

The thing is, I miss my lost babies. Often desperately. No one is surprised by this revelation - I still grieve for them. So I write "I always wanted to adopt" to offset that. I feel defensive about still needing to process the emotions of recurrent loss even after months or a whole year has gone by. I feel defensive about whether you will think that I wasn't ready to make an adoption decision yet.

I am confident that adoption was the right choice for us right now. We're six months into the process and I have no regrets - only excitement (and, yes, impatience). I don't need to be convinced that our decision was well-reasoned and emotionally appropriate. I say, "I always wanted to adopt," to convince you of what I know in my heart is true: "I am so glad we're adopting."

And yet I say, "I always wanted to adopt" to convince myself of something else. That I can be thrilled to adopt even while I still grieve for the loss of my babies. That missing my lost babies is not "cheating on" my adopted baby, who probably exists already (!). After all, I care for each one of the lost babies and wish they had survived even though life for any one of them would have resulted in the non-existence of the other two. And the baby I'll be matched with - the baby that's meant for me - would never have become my baby if one of the three lost babies had survived.

So when you read my disclaimer: * I always wanted to adopt, what I mean is: * I still grieve, but that's okay.

Left behind

My sister was due yesterday. Baby hasn't arrived yet. I am terrified. I can't even sort through the happiness and excitement and jealousy yet because I'm just so afraid that my bad baby luck will rub off on her. That something unthinkable will happen and it will somehow secretly be my fault because I wasn't happy enough about her pregnancy.

Ridiculous, I know. Part of the issue is that I'm the big sister. I've experienced practically everything in life before her. And she's about to go through this huge thing that I can't even imagine. She never really "needed" me anyway, but the guiding big sister role is the role I've always felt. And so my mind wanders to what I know. I don't know anything about labor or newborns but damn do I know grief. So I reel my mind back in and tell myself that nothing bad will happen. She will be fine. The baby will be fine. My "expertise" is not needed here.

The baby's birth isn't about me. It's soooo not about me. But sometimes I really resent that no one in real life understands how hard this is. That my sister's baby isn't technically the first grandbaby. That I would have given birth already. Twice. (And once more in 10 weeks.) That I both look forward to and dread this baby with all my heart. But it doesn't seem to occur to them. Or maybe they just don't know what to say so they don't say anything. It wouldn't take much. "I'm sorry. This must be hard. Your babies mattered to us too. We wish we'd had the chance to meet them."