Ever changing
My feelings for Madison are still fluid in a way that frustrates me. I expected for it to be “just like” having a bio child since that’s what I heard from other mothers but I think it takes more time than I had anticipated.
I don’t feel indispensable to Madison in the way that I did with Noah. When he was this small and I would think about dying in a car wreck and leaving him alone, my blood would freeze up. When I think that now about her, I say, “Well, at least I’m replaceable; she shouldn’t suffer too much.” I know this isn’t true. Intellectually, I know that in many ways her adoption makes her need me more because stability is so important right now. But it’s there, that feeling. That feeling that I could slip away unnoticed.
My mother keeps asking me if Madison really feels like mine and if I truly feel like her mother and I’m not sure. Sometimes she does, sometimes I do. Other times I feel like an accidental caretaker. If not me, then someone else.
On a spiritual level, I do think that Madison chose to be in our family but in a very practical way, her presence here seems almost accidental. Another birth mother wanted to meet us but J. picked us first by a matter of a day or two. What would have happened had it been reversed? I tell myself that it’s all a moot point, something like imagining if the pregnancy I lost just before Noah had been the one that stuck around. I tell myself that the children who are here are meant to be mine.
It’s not that I don’t love her because I do — very much. This is separate from loving her. When I pick her up and she wriggles delightedly, it’s somehow heartbreaking because I think how vulnerable she is to us big folks who make these earth-shattering decisions for her — who will be mama and who will be papa. I want to sheild her from all of these complications. I want to engulf her somehow and fill in any empty spots.
I wonder if the pecularities of a domestic, infant adoption underline some of this for me. I wonder if I had brought her home from an orphanage, would I feel differently? Or if she came to us from a foster family, would I feel more justified? I didn’t save her from anything. Her being here means she will have a different life.
This is one reason we kept her name. Well, it’s the whole reason we kept her name. I felt like it would be too strange to think, “If I had been there I would be Madison instead of Evelyn/Charlotte/Blossom [all names on our short-list].” And I think that it would have maybe made her feel a bit like an accidental person. Kind of what I’m feeling now but in a more profound way.
I trust that as Madison grows and I begin to take her more for granted that my lost feeling will go away. I know that proximity goes a very long way to creating attachment for both of us. It wavers even now, how I feel as her mother. Half the time I feel completely hers but the other half of the time, I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience.
Does this resonate with any other adoptive parents out there?
Wow… You know, you said before how right Madison felt as a name, but I never really *got* it before you mentioned the alternatives… They’re all fine names (perhaps especially Evelyn, I love that name), it’s just… she’s Madison, you know?
Even our own children think this way…. Someday Noah will wonder what type of child he would have been in public school or if his parents had divorced or if you hadn’t moved …. or what if he had grown up an only child.
We all do the “what if thing”…. adoption just paints a bigger scope to pick the what ifs from….
-d
OH NO! I didn’t mean “our own” as if Madison isn’t your own…. I was saying that as a non-adoptive parent…. relating it to MY children.
Sorry for the mis-use of typed words.
- d
Dawn,
Mallory felt like mine before she was born. Don’t stone me birthmoms. Her bmom has said she felt the same way. Anyway I never had any problems bonding with her.
I too used to contemplate the randomness. We had another girl choose us the same day a N did. The sw showed her other profiles and she went back and found someone else. However, that baby was born the same day as Mallory. I used to go to agency picnics and marvel that child could have been mine. Weird.
I used to worry that if I died Mallory would’ve lost two mothers. Until she was 2, before we had other children, I had her bmom named as her guardian. I figured with the financial resources we would leave, that her bmom could handle things. Of course when I mentioned this to my family they were appalled, they considered Mallory theirs. Luckily it never came to that.
I remember when I gave birth to my second daughter- my first bio child- it took me longer to feel like hers than it did with Mallory. I was dividing my attention between two children, one I knew intimately and one who was new and didn’t have much personality yet. I experienced the same thing with my third daughter- bio too.
My last child, my son, came to us at 15 months. We are adopting him because he needs us. We were in no way looking for another child, and at times even resent we are back in the baby stage. There was also a long question on whether or not his bparents might get it together to parent him. We had 9 months of limbo, and I have definetly felt like a caretaker rather than mother. However now its very unlikely he could be reunited with bparents, so I am starting to bond.
I think everyone is different. It just varies. I think you are completely normal for you.
Lisa
I know you’ve heard it before, but some of that uncertainty sounds like second child stuff. That first baby steals your heart and changes your whole life all by his little, tiny self. Then the second comes along, and no matter how wonderful, it isn’t the same- maybe because it isn’t as life altering. It wasn’t the same with my daughter, born 8 years after her brother. I thought there was something wrong with me. That I didn’t feel the same way I did when my son was her age. I sometimes suspected she wasn’t really mine, and I’d be hearing from the hospital any day that they’d made a mistake (I think that had more to do with my previous infertility than second child stuff). She is three now, but I see her as far more separate from me than I ever have her brother. Which is odd, because she still nurses, and he only nursed for three months. I mean, she’s still there on me all the time. I don’t mean I don’t love her as much or like her less. At three, she already shares more interests with me than her brother ever did. I think she’s wonderful and amazing- I adore her. But I don’t feel as if we’re physically connected in the way I did (and still do) with my son. It’s something I cannot explain, and I know it makes me sound horrible. But I confessed this to a friend (she had a much older son and a little girl too) once and, without hesitation, she looked over at her own son and said, “Oh yeah. There’s just something about your first born.”
I was quoting her there- but I should have changed it to say “first kid”. I didn’t mean to be disresepctful of parents of adopted children. Because really, it’s that first child that turns us into “mom”, whether or not we gave birth to him. And I think our feelings about that get all mixed-up with our feelings about the child and it can’t be repeated with the next kid. We’re already Mom.
I have to totally agree with Ivy. I sometimes feel guilty that I feel so intuned with Mallory. I adore my other children, but I KNOW Mallory. I think it is a firstborn thing. Mallory is adopted but she was #1 for 2 and 1/2 years. I experience everything with her the first time. Not just babyhood, but school, pre-teen, all of it, is done with fresh eyes with her. Its a marvel to watch this happen. It happens to all my other children after I have been there, done that. I sometimes lay awake wondering how this will affect my other two daughters.
I love them more than life, and I am trying to identify what they get from me thats different- I know they do. Maybe patience and experience.
Lisa
I know you were asking for advice from adoptive moms (which I am not yet), but I thought I would throw my $.02 in anyway.
When Maia was born, I kept waiting and waiting to feel motherly. I had read that the feeling can take a while, but after a month or two I started to get worried. After about 5 months, I just gave up. I thought, maybe I am just not ever going to feel like that. Maybe there is something wrong with me. She was always 100% in tune with me, but I just felt pretty numb toward her. I liked her and all, but it wasn’t much more than that. I felt like a babysitter who never got a day off.
But around 6 or 7 months, feelings started to creep up on me. That desired to hug her so hard I could squeeze her head off. I could tear up thinking about kids teasing her in elementary school. Slowly, gradually, I started to feel like her mom.
I really think it took so long because my pregnancy was so traumatic and stressful. Nobody told me it could take over 6 months, but if I had known it would have saved me a lot of stress. This is not to say your feelings are not adoption-related, but I felt that way too.
Umm…no. In spite of the feelings I had about “raising somebody else’s child”, I did begin to feel like a mom. I think it has to do more with her being the first (hopefully not the only, but time will tell) than anything associated with her adoption. I agree with Ivy; Alena, for better or worse, has made me a mom. No other child can give that to me - and nobody can take it away anymore either.
As the mother of two adopted children I can say that the angels sang the moment I saw Jackson. I knew instantly that he was my son and I was his mother. Though I loved Janie from the moment I saw her, feeling like she’s truly mine is an ongoing process. Never having had a biological child I wouldn’t know the difference, but since both of my children are adopted I can only assume it’s the first vs. second child issue. (And if I wasn’t such a lazy blogger lately you’d see posts very much like this one on mine.)
Well, I can look at this at a slightly different angle - I was a birth mom over 20 years ago. I can tell you undeniably and with complete certainty that I have never felt any “claim” to the child I gave up for adoption. She was placed in her home at 3 days old, and although I mourned her loss, I also knew that, in spite of any other lingering thoughts I had in my head, that she was meant to be there, and I was meant to go on to other things in my life.
I have 2 children of my own now, and I actually had the opposite of the “second child” syndrome happen to me. When I had my first, I was so nervous that I forgot to enjoy him! Seriously! I know it sounds stupid, but I was so busy making sure I was doing everything “right” that I forgot to fall in love! He was about 3 weeks old before the thought even occurred to me - the early spring sun filtered across his face as he lay on my bed, and I laid down next to him, and he turned and looked at me and smiled … and fell asleep. That was the first time I felt my heart ache (in a good way, of course!).
When I had my second, I was nervous, because I lost my mom when I was 7 months pregnant. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about this new life without her to share it with. But, in the end, I think because I knew how much joy, love and fun I was in for, I was in love with her the first time I layed my eyes on her! And I will always have a special unique, relationship with both - he was my “first love”, she was my saving grace …
Having said that in way too many words, I also think that when you have a second, you realize your spouse (or significant other) is a perfectly capable caregiver, and in some ways that can be comforting and discerning … I don’t think it is bio at all.
The first time I saw Ky I fell in love with her…my first words to her were “lets go home” and I meant the word “home” but I was acutely aware that she was not mine and that she was about to reunite with birth mom. That was the whole point and I wholeheartedly believe/ed in reunification as a foster mom (I never intended to adopt which is why I did foster care and not the fost/adopt). She was supposed to stay just a few days that turned into weeks, months and years. When it looked like reunification was not going to happen and that she could be picked by any of the couples waiting to adopt we decided to do it ourselves. We loved her dearly and her birthmom (and later birthdad) wanted it to be us over any other couple if they didn’t get her back. I felt like she was mine but we had some serious bonding issues and my heart broke and the bonding took even longer because I was hurt. I “know” it was irrational and believe me, after all the training I had and the children I cared for and even the words of encouragement I had uttered to other people who were impatient w/ a child not bonding I still reacted (I’m ashamed to say) in a really damaging way. My feelings were “fluid” too and still are but our situation was very different (in that she was not really mine until a she was five and we had her since she was 19 months) so I thought it was attributed to that. I’m glad you talked about it as it made me feel a bit less guilty. I adore her but unfortunately there are times I still feel “replaceable” as well…just like you said…an out of body experience. Then there are times these waves of love hit me so hard I know there is no other mama than me but then I know there is (there will always be) and I feel like that again. Hard to explain and to be frank I’m so exhausted today I’d be extremely surprised if I’m making sense. Anyway…just wanted to say that it did “resonate” with me. Hugs