this woman’s work

Frustrating days

Oct 4, 2003 Adoption, Parenting, Race

All of this talk about the impending baby have made Noah fidgety. We’ve had a ton of intense discussions lately and I’m plum worn out. First off, he got very upset when he learned that the baby will have a bottle. Noah was surprised to hear that my breasts don’t magically have milk all of the time although we’ve talked about it before. I guess he figured that if a baby shows up, my breasts will respond to the call.

“No bottles,” he said, tears actually welling up. “Feed the baby from these.” He added pointing reverently to my breasts.

So that was a discussion. Then we talked again why we’re adopting a Black baby and not a White baby. Noah is very concerned about this and at one point he said, “You know, I’ll let you use a bottle but only if you adopt a white baby.”

I (again) explained why we’re adopting a Black baby and this is the explanation: Daddy and I know that a baby is a baby and that what color people are doesn’t make a difference in who they are. We are happy to parent a baby of any color. There are lots of White families who feel more comfortable adopting a White baby because they want their families to match, just like you (Noah) do. It’s ok to feel that way and it’s ok to feel worried about families not matching. However, since there are lots of families ready to adopt White babies but worried about adopting African American babies, our agency was excited to hear that we just wanted a baby and so they asked us to please adopt a Black baby. We said sure thing and that’s what we’re doing.

Noah said, “But what if the baby gets lost and no one knows it belongs to us?”

We got out pictures of friends whose (bio) families don’t match (Thanks, Denise! and talked about that a little bit. Finally I reiterated that it’s ok for him to feel uncomfortable right now and it’s natural and once the baby arrives, a lot of his concerns will go away because he’ll see how it works.

We also recently bought a set of “ethnic Playmobil” (i.e., family-characters who are all black) and Noah was asking about this. I told him that I had noticed that all of the Black characters in his sets were bad guys and so I thought we needed some regular old Black people. He agreed and said he was happy to have more kid figures. Later he told Brett that this was good to have for the baby since the baby would need toys that looked like him (Noah wants a brother). But then he came upstairs and said, “Mommy, you know what? I like my White Playmobil better.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because I’m more used to them.”

“That’s understandable,” I told him. “Lots of people feel that way but that’s why it’s so important to have lots of different kinds of people around you, even in toys.”

I could tell that he’s bouncing these ideas off of me to get my reaction and I think that listening and exploring it with him is the most valuable thing I can do but damn, I’m exhausted. I’m dealing with my own convoluted feelings about relactating and waiting for the baby and it’s hard to intensely mother around those same feelings. I’m just beat.

I need some quiet quality time with Brett and Brett alone. Time to call in the grandparent reenforcements!!!

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