Ever changing
Jun 4, 2004 Adoption
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?
Possibly related posts
June’s featured author
Jun 3, 2004 Read/heard/seen, Writing
This month’s author is Donna Jo Napoli because I dearly love her inspired retelling of fairy tales. She’s an interesting woman, too. When I was looking for pictures of her (I end up not featuring a lot of author’s whose pictures are unavailable or unusable), I read some interviews and found out that she’s pretty fascinating.
I recently read her book Breath, which tells the Pied Piper story and explains the events by poisoning Hamelin with ergot. It’s a horrific read, to tell you the truth and I’d be surprised to hear that they’re teaching it in any middle schools. That’s why I chose the quote for her that I did. I liked it, in any case, although it was really disturbing.
Possibly related posts
Tags: featured author
Wow — that’s a lot of comments
Jun 3, 2004 Parenting
Madison’s evil doctor story must have really hit a nerve.
I do worry about this — not about her being fat but about being a girl-child who may (or may not be) prone to roundness in a fat-phobic world. Madison’s birth family (on both sides, apparently) happen to be bigger people in way that’s absolutely right for them. It may very well be that she will be chubby, then again it may be that she’ll be thin. I don’t know but whatever way she’s meant to be, I want her to feel good about it.
There has been such a huge, enormous bunch of noise about childhood obesity of late and all of the attention has been on weight as a measure of health instead of nutrition and fitness. (Read Big Fat Blog for more radicalizing information.) I recently wrote an article that argued that weight is only one measure of health and is, in fact, the least accurate and that parents should be careful about evaluating their children’s health status based merely on their size. I haven’t seen the edited version (it’s in And Baby) but I hope the message that got through was size-positive.
I interviewed Frances M. Berg, author of Underage & Overweight for the piece. Ms. Berg addresses the past 20 years of research in her book and is adamant that our focus on obesity and not on nutrition and fitness does way more harm than good for our kids. I highly recommend it to every parent, whether your kids are of a size that gets glances of disapproval or not.
Hey, you don’t have to be chubby to be size-positive!!!
Possibly related posts
Tags: Madison
Stupid doctors
Jun 2, 2004 Parenting
(The following is a personal rant; read at your own risk.)
I forgot how much I hate well-baby checks. If I could, I’d skip ‘em or at least cut way back. Well-baby checks have their place but I’ve got 47 million books here on child development and I know what she “should” be doing at this age and she’s doing it and she’s healthy as a small pony so I don’t see much point. However, since the agency will have legal custody of Madison ’til October — per Ohio law — I have to go so there I went yesterday to answer nonsensical questions such as, “How much does she sleep at night?” Me: “I don’t know. I don’t look at the clock when she wakes up.” And then I face the pursed lips when the doc figures out that we’re co-sleeping.
We got in an argument (or shall I say, discussion colored by vehemence) about how much Madison eats. I have no idea how much she eats so when the doctor asked how many ounces, I made a wild guess and said, “I don’t know, I wash bottles, what, twice? And there are four or five bottles in a load? And we put 4 oz in a bottle so I’ll take a guess and say 36 oz but she always leaves at least an ounce in every bottle so maybe 27, I’m not sure.” I mean, really, I have no idea how much she eats; we’re feeding on demand.
So the doctor looks at chubby old Madison lolling about gleefully on the exam table and announces that we’re over-feeding her. And I, of course, start arguing and she, of course, plays her “I’m the doctor and you’re a housewife” card and starts quoting studies about “life-time obesity.” And I say I’ve read the fucking studies (only I don’t say fucking because that’s a sure way to make doctors not listen to you) because I just wrote an article about childhood obesity and then she says, condescendingly with false sympathy, that parents often think a child is hungry and stick a bottle in the kid’s mouth “and it may make then stop crying but then the parent isn’t really meeting the baby’s needs.” I was livid. And suddenly horribly guilt-stricken because she’s basically accusing me of neglecting my kid and I don’t think I am but what if I am and don’t know it?
The doctor said that Madison shouldn’t be eating more than 20 ounces a day, which is absolutely nuts (as I told her) seeing as how 20 ounces a day was what they told me she should be eating in the hospital when she was 8 lbs. One can assume that she should be eating more at two months. “Well then,” the doctor reluctantly amended, “24 ounces.” For a 15 lb baby, no less. 15 lbs 2 oz, to be exact and 23.5 inches, although her head was a bit tilted and I’m betting she’s taller. (Noah, I must add, was 11 lbs 11 oz and 23 inches at that age, which was exactly 50th percentile making him alarmingly average.)
That’s the thing about well-baby visits. I can intellectually know that the doctor is insane but still whatever they say goes into my brain and rattles around shaking up my confidence.
I remember when Noah was 9 months old and he quit gaining like he had been. He’d also started walking and babies stretch out when they move. He was totally NOT into solids because all he wanted to do was fuel up at the breast and then run around like a very small lunatic. The doctor said he was too skinny and that I better “butter his broccoli” to fatten him up. I said, “He doesn’t eat broccoli or anything else so buttering it isn’t going to help any.” Besides, I pointed out, Noah was following his very tall, nicely built father’s growth curve exactly. (Brett, being the first-born, had a meticulously kept baby book, which came in handy, let me tell you.) The doctor didn’t believe me and told me to supplement him with formula to fatten him up.
I switched doctors that time, too.
Madison is in the 90th percentile for height and a little over 100th percentile for weight. Which means that she’s tall and chubby. Babies grow up and out and the height/weight proportion aren’t wildly out of sync so I’m not concerned. Also, her birth mom was a big baby (breastfed, I found out too, so she was meant to be big) and her birth dad is currently the size of my refrigerator so it’s not beyond imagination that he was a big baby, too.
Anyway, I was pissed so I came home and spent the last 24 hours carefully logging how much Madison eats. That meant dumping out the left-overs from her handy-dandy collapsible bottles into the easier-to-read regular ones to monitor what she was getting. And the result? 24.5 ounces. But here’s the thing, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, whose review book I have right here and whose name was invoked in hushed, reverent tones by the stupid doctor, the recommendation for formula fed babies is 2.5 ounces of formula per pound of body weight, up to 32 oz a day. Meaning that the docs recommendation of 20 ounces was insane and that we are apparently underfeeding her since it’s appears to be scientifically impossible that she has the caloric support to grow. A fact I can happily deny by pointing to her copious rolls.
If Madison was a giant breastfed baby, I would have had no trouble rolling my eyes at the doctor because I know now that however breastfed babies grow — provided that they’re nursing at the breast on demand and providing the requisite number of wet diapers — it’s absolutely perfect. Skinny Noah was perfect, my friend’s 19 lb 3-month old was also perfect. It’s a bit more difficult with formula fed babies because sometimes they want to suck but not to eat. A breastfed baby can change his/her sucking to get exactly what they want — fluttersucking for comfort, shallow sucking for thirst-quenching foremilk or deep sucking for tummy-satisfying hindmilk. Formula fed babies are at the mercy of their bottles. Brett and I have had to learn how Madison signifies wanting to eat versus wanting to suck but we’ve figured it out now because we are attentive parents and don’t stick bottles in her mouth every time she squeaks, despite the doctor’s assumption otherwise. I really resented the implication that we might be pacifying her with food instead of meeting her emotional needs because we’ve worked hard NOT to do that.
Oh gosh, I have no way to wind down this rant. I’m going to go squeeze on my squishable daughter.
Possibly related posts
New volunteer job
Jun 1, 2004 Writing
I’m over at Literary Mama as the commentary editor. I must be insane because I have no time and things are picking up on the job front (my job demands go up and down and currently they’re up). But I thought this would be fun. Anyway, here are the submission guidelines for commentary editor:
We are looking for sharply focused, compelling, provocative, and persuasive personal essays in which the author expresses her views on a specific topic or topics. Humor, angst, righteous indignation, social/political analysis, and thoughtful musings all have a place in our published commentary.Points of view can range from highly personal to global. While the essays may draw on outside sources to make their case, they should be written in the first person and shouldn’t read like a reported feature or straight journalistic piece. If it looks like a column, it belongs here. We welcome submissions of 750 - 2000 words on all topics related to motherhood.
Send submissions to commentary@literarymama.com
Here’s what I have to add: Literary Mama doesn’t pay, sadly, but it’s getting some press so I think it makes a nice clip. Also, I want to add that I personally think that for online articles, which will end up being all on one page, 2000 words is an awful lot of scrolling. I think a tighter, more focused submission is the way to go. (It’s different in venues where they break the pieces up into pages.) If you’d like to submit something, let me know at that there address in the fancy colored font previous. I think I’m going to try to update that part of the site about twice a month.
Possibly related posts
Tags: essay
