Second choice vs. Second best
May 30, 2008 Adoption, Infertility
Sang-Shil Kim has a moving post explaining why sometimes we adoptive parents don’t do a whole lot of good with our fine platitudes. Still I think our platitudes are the best we can do. I can’t rewrite history and the truth is that first I tried to get pregnant. This may hurt Madison or it may roll off her back — I don’t know. It’s one of the things I can’t control for her.
I’m not abdicating responsibility here but I’m recognizing the limits of my influence. I can’t make things not hurt Madison and it seems developmentally appropriate for an adopted person to process his or her adoption through their parents’ narratives (both by birth and by adoption) and so at some point she likely will need to integrate my infertility story with her birth/adoption story.
As a parent, one of my challenges has been to find the careful balance between taking responsibility appropriately and taking on too much responsibility. For example, my infertility journey wasn’t such a terrific thing for Noah. I was preoccupied and depressed and Noah couldn’t understand why I wanted another kid when he was so happy being an only child. There’s an entry somewhere in my archives where he said to me, “Why am I not enough for you?” I know it’s not the same as an adoptee struggling with hard-core feelings of rejection but I’m saying that every parent has to understand the way their choices impact our kids AND the limits of our ability to address that impact. Ultimately, our kids need to figure out how to live with inconvenient truths. I don’t think it helped when I said, “Oh Noah, you’re just so swell that I need to have another one of you little ankle-biters around the house.” But it’s all I could say. It was true that I wanted another baby and that having “just” Noah didn’t fill this need in me. It was also true this wasn’t about him only how could I expect a 5-year old (I think he was five) to understand that?
Madison — like every adoptee — gets it coming and going. For one, she has to find a narrative that works to explain to herself why she is not with Pennie. She can go to Pennie for answers but she’ll need to find a way to make sense of it herself. For two, she has to find a narrative that works to explain to herself why I tried to get pregnant before turning to adoption. She can read my blog and watch me work through it in virtual time but that doesn’t mean it will answer all of her questions satisfactorily. This is one of those times where I can’t fix it.
I don’t abdicate my responsibility to her to help her process this but I do recognize that it’s her work to do and that even if I do the best job I can, I can’t control her feelings around it.
May 30th, 2008 at 6:30 am
[...] and her way with words and her sensibilities about the world and adoption and the way it all works. Second choice vs. Second Best explains why I need to let this go, that while I’m responsible for explaining how things [...]
May 30th, 2008 at 6:33 am
Oh, God bless you, Dawn.
May 30th, 2008 at 6:36 am
I’m so glad you’re here to say what’s in my head.
I’m quite conflicted at the moment about how to respond and react to the “second best” “second choice” experience. Simply acknowledge knowing that it’s not something I can influence? Present my point of view? Do nothing?
Haven’t found my balance yet, but reading what others think helps. Thank you.
May 30th, 2008 at 7:39 am
One of the reasons I prolly just don’t “get” it is that for me, pregnancy was really disconnected to the baby that resulted. I didn’t feel a mythical bond, or anything like that, not before I saw her. I was sick (first trimester) and fat (third) but the baby I took home might as well have been dropped off by the stork for all the continuity I felt with the previous nine months. I “get” intellectually that she carries my genes but I don’t really “feel” it in an atavistic sense. I love her for the unique person she is, which doesn’t seem to have an awful lot to do with me.
I may simply be odd.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Dawn, thanks for linking, and thanks for writing this. There are some times when I wish adoptive parents would stop trying so darn hard to FIX everything for adoptees, and instead let us hurt, heal, and learn at our own pace, on our own terms.
I know that this will obviously have to be age-appropriate and that children DO need help and guidance, but as an adult adoptee I often feel that people (including APs who are not related to me) are STILL trying to explain things away and make my emotional “ouchies” all better. As you can imagine I find this ineffective at best, and insulting/patronizing at worst.
I wish I could tell these people that not being able to solve all your kids’ pains and problems doesn’t make you a bad parent. Rather, it seems that giving them the space (along with the foundation, tools, and support) to solve those problems themselves would go far in making you a good one. It’s not doing nothing; it’s actually doing something very complicated.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I’ve always looked at similiar to dating. You try lots of different ways before the right way lands in your lap.
-d
May 31st, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Does it help to believe that everything happens for a reason? If you had immediately gone the adoption route rather than trying to get pregnant, you would not have Madison.
May 31st, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Molly, I think the danger in that route is that it means that the reason PENNIE had to have an unplanned pregnancy and lose her daughter is for ME. I don’t think everything happens for a reason but I think we each have the opportunity in hindsight to find our OWN meaning in what’s happened to us.
For me, going through infertility was an opportunity to get to know myself better and to learn compassion but I can’t say that my journey will be any comfort to Madison nor that it SHOULD be comforting to her. (Me, I have no truck with my path to parenting either of my kids — it is what it is.)
June 1st, 2008 at 4:46 pm
[...] addressing) second choice vs second best Posted by cynthia under adoption, parenting Dawn and others have written about this whole second choice vs second best thing in adoption recently, [...]