Scene: Thursday on the couch while we as a family cuddled under the giant polarfleece blankets my mom made us and waited for Pam and Jim to have their baby.
Noah: I love you, mama.
Madison: I love you, too, mama.
Me: Thanks guys.
Noah: You are the BEST mother in the whole entire world!
Madison: Yeah, you are the BEST … wait, except for Pennie. YOU know. You are the best ADOPTIVE mother in the whole entire world! But Pennie, yeah, best birth mama.
Me (laughing): Thanks.
Madison: It’s just, you know, hard with the adoption and all. You know, with Pennie like the best mama because I love you but I love Pennie more. You know, because of the birth mama and everything.
Me: Sure.
Madison: But I love you, too.
Me: I know you do. I never doubt that you love me. I love you, too.
Later Madison told me that with adoption, the reason you love your birth mama BEST is that you love her FIRST.
Madison: See, if you adopt another kid, it will know its birth mama FIRST and love her and then it has to MEET you before it can love you.
Me: So it’s about loving your birth mama the LONGEST so you love her BEST because it’s the LONGEST.
Madison: Right. Because you’re in her uterus and everything.
Me: Well, that makes perfect sense to me.
Madison: Good.
And it does, too.
(I told Madison I was writing this on my blog and she said that was fine. Just so you know.)
I hope at some point Madison can have an overnight with Pennie a week or something of the sort!
So far she’s felt nervous about spending the night anywhere but when she’s ready she will most definitely do that.
Wow. What a smartie she is…did she really say UTERUS? I am way behind in parenting with proper anatomy lessons!
I love these kind of conversations with my girls. They are so beautiful and moving. I am thankful to you for sharing and for M giving you permission
YES she definately said uterus Im almost certain…
Well be sure to let her know that she’s the best birth daughter ever! and I miss you guys
we should have another date night again very soon I start school in two weeks
Oh my god, I can’t believe you start school so soon. What will your schedule be like?
This is interesting – and yes, it makes sense to me too. I really wonder how kids of, say, egg donation will feel. Born to a mother they’re not genetically related to. Who will have grown up in the uterus of their “adoptive” mother. Who won’t have a separation at birth … and most likely will never meet their biological mother. I wonder if they will ever feel that call of the blood, so to speak. Or the loss.
At any rate, Madison is super, so Pennie and you are obviously doing something very right.
Jessica, some of those adult children do feel that way and some don’t. There definitely is a movement growing that mirrors the adoptee movement in lots of ways. My impression (I haven’t read a ton) is that much of the anger comes from being denied access to their own information.
I have a new good friend who was a an egg donor 7 years ago and is going through a lot of stuff that so parallels adoption… its been so informative to me in terms of understanding how a little bit of information in open adoption can be hard. when i have time, i’m writing a post on it. so that’ll be in, like, 3 years maybe
I can understand how being denied information would cause a lot of frustration.
I love this post.
I know that sometimes I feel that feeling of loving her first. Of knowing Cupcake before Dee even knew she existed. That feeling (that we ALL have as Moms) that we love our kid more than anyone else – because it’s hard to fathom it being POSSIBLE to love more than we do. Logically, you know her other Mom loves her as much, which her whole being as well, but there’s the little tingle inside that remembers that “first” time.
And it’s one of those things I’ve always been afraid to say because I don’t want to hurt feelings, but there you have it.
What an interesting way for her to describe it. I love that she has the freedom to express herself like that. It makes perfect sense to me too.
[...] @ 6:33 am Tags: adoption, adoption fail I’ve been thinking about writing this post since I saw this comment of ThanksgivingMom’s early this month, but Cynthia’s comment on my post yesterday has [...]
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