SIF affects the whole family

It is not just me who is affected by SIF. It is a family disease. My husband seems to have accepted the status quo for the most part - but still has to live with a wife who remains dissatisfied with her family of three. Therefore he lives with the ghost of SIF, even if he is okay with things being the way they are.

My six year old daughter is feeling the loneliness of being an only-child at the moment. For the last two days the promise and the hope of a sibling has been a big topic with her. I never instigate such conversations - it all comes naturally from her. It breaks my heart. She would prefer a sister and has plans for the two of them to share a room and with bunk beds. She wants to read to her little sister and to teach her things. She wants to show her round school and play with her at lunchtime. She wants to share her toys and help look after her.

It is hard to know what to say. I tell her that by the time she is seven years old we will know if a baby is coming to us or not. I say all we can do is pray for a baby and wait and see if God wants that for our family too.

I know underneath it all my daughter is lonely for other reasons - she is going through a phase of feeling disconnected at school with her peers and playing alone at lunchtime sometimes. She no doubt thinks having a sister could be the answer to all her problems. But of course having another little person in the house although joyful on so many levels, would also be a challenge and a big adjustment, no matter how much she claims to want it.

I went for a half-hour appointment in town this morning with a Dr (not my usual one) around menopause. Nothing new really came out of it. I just got a script for vaginal creams to help with er, lubrication and hopefully the estrogen deficiency I have. I'm also to take Vitamin D as a calcium supplement. I had a good talk with her and it wasn't that easy - I don't much enjoy having to relay my SIF history. She suggested I go for grief counselling. I said I'd consider it. But then I have been for counselling FOUR times over the last almost five years. I don't think SIF is something I can ever completely get through or finish processing. It is such a big part of me now that I know it will stay with me for life.

The Dr was sympathetic though about what 'd been through and particularly SIF. I don't get sympathy or understanding often and it opened me up. I left the appointment in tears.

I contacted our social worker this week via email as my husband starts a new job on Monday which means we will have to update our profile. We have made a decision that I will leave my job if we get picked as adoptive parents which I feel good about. I was an at-home Mum with my daughter all the way through, just working evenings and weekends until she was six months off from starting school and then I got a part-time day job that worked in with her school hours. I hope to be able to do that again if there is another child in our family. The idea of putting a child in childcare - especially one I've waited almost five years for just didn't feel right. Our social worker said there was no hurry to update our file as she would let us know if somebody wanted to view it. So no views or interest yet and we have been officially in the pool for prospective adoptive parents for five months.

It's a vulnerable day. After the appointment around menopause and the conversations with my daughter around a sibling, I wish I could once again change things. Obviously I can't change what is but if I could change my own attitude and stop this longing for another child, I would do it in a heartbeat. Eleven more months to go and we will have our answer as to whether or not we will be adoptive parents. I guess I can wait a few more months. What's another year or so tagged on to the long wait I've had already.

Footnote: I suggested my daughter write a letter to God after she came home from school exclaiming "I cannot live without a brother or sister!" Where does this come from?! When I asked her who she played with at lunchtime, she said no-one - and that she pretended to play with her sister and today asked a classmate if she would be her sister. When I told her I had a morning tea planned this Sunday with some Mums that would have babies (it's a get-together for the infertility group I started in town - for all the women that have had babies since the group started and any other members of the group that want to come) she asked if any of them might like to give us a baby! It feels so awful how hard she is feeling what I think is a very real loss at this time. Her note to God read: "Dear God, I would like a brother or sister to play with at home." So it is no longer just me praying for an addition for our family.

Empty Nest Syndrome

Mothers of Many don't get a lot of time to themselves. They often can only dream of time-out from their families. I know some Mums would envy the downtime opportunities I have in my week for myself. But today I envy them.

I have just been into town - had a meeting and a cuppa with the women from the autism group I am connected to. I went shopping - I bought card and stickers for sticker charts for my girl and art canvasses on sale for myself. I also bought my husband some new pants (as in trousers) for his job interview tomorrow and some clothes for my daughter.

I'm home now. The washing machine is going and I have stuff to do. But I feel it today - that lingering gnaw of an emptiness inside that was meant to be filled by another child.

I feel as though I am moving forward in my life in some ways - there is movement happening on the creative front. I don't feel completely stagnant like I did for so long. But the desire of another child coupled with the reality of one not being here - and possibly not coming any time soon - is painful today.

Even in town I found myself wondering what my daughter would think of the clothes I bought her - how she would of course have input around which coloured pieces of card I purchased for her sticker-chart. But she wasn't with me. Her second year into school, she flew the nest well over twelve months ago. Yet I miss the early days, when we did have our trips into town and cafes and did our own thing on our own schedule.

I found out this week that a workmate is pregnant with her third child. She would be about my age. It was an unplanned pregnancy, apparently. It still feels like a new shock some days - that my body cannot produce another child. It is very hard to get past the feeling of feeling very old.

I have made an appointment to see a doctor next week for a half hour appointment about (early) menopause. It will be good to have the whole half hour appointment to have the opportunity to discuss the various menopausal symptoms I have.

I have organised a morning tea with the women from the infertility network I have started up in a weeks time. One of the women from the network is hosting it and it is child-friendly this time so some of the babies who have arrived since I started the network will be there. I was in a good space when I suggested the get-together - I'm just hoping this vulnerable phase will pass before the morning tea.

It still amazes me how SIF can throw me off in an instance. Today it was about simply coming home to an empty house after some time in town missing my daughter's company.

I have been trying to live my life simply with no expectations and for the most part that works. In four months time it would have been five years of hoping for another shot at motherhood. What a long, long time. I cannot believe I have had an unfulfilled dream for so long. The dream - the longing and the wanting - has never changed. I have never once over the last four and a half years felt as if I have moved on from this dream. Many times I have wished I would - but it is still a very real desire - as it was all those years ago when we first TTC our second child.

Apparently there is a programme on tv at the moment about reuniting people and it features adoption stories - New Zealand ones - called Missing Pieces. I'm not quite ready to watch that, I don't think. Another workmate commented about parenting a newborn in her forties - that she'd find that hard and she didn't think she could do it (in reference to the work colleague who is pregnant in her 40s). I think I would find it hard too, with my menopausal symptoms going on - and that worries me. That perhaps the reality is I couldn't cope with a young baby. I'm glad I haven't disclosed to work that I am hoping to adopt. I couldn't handle being questioned about it - however well intentioned. I'm glad I've kept it quiet.

Mothers Day - a bittersweet occasion

It's Mothers Day here in New Zealand. It is the fourth Mothers Day I've had since trying to add to add to our family. Our daughter was two years old when I had my first Mothers Day within this SIF era - she is now six.

Every single Mothers Day for the last four years has been the same - bittersweet. There is that sheer appreciation and gratitude of having the one child that I know many dealing with primary infertility would kill to have. But it is tainted by the pain and heartache caused by a longing that has lingered for too long - to have another child.

In some ways I am in a good place - or at least a better place around SIF. In other ways the ongoing angst of living with a broken dream makes it hard to push on and live life on lifes terms. Days like this - Mothers Day - are what I consider to be milestone days for those of us that fall into the infertility bracket. No matter how healed or how much acceptance there might be around infertility - it tends to flare up at times like this.

Perhaps it was a blessing that today when my husband and daughter decided to take me out for a Mothers Day lunch that because we hadn't booked, we ended up driving around and having more of an afternoon tea at a venue that wasn't overloaded with Mums of many. I know today is one of those days that I needed to not be around completed families. So it was nice to end up in a cafe that wasn't so child-friendly (but still very nice).

My SIF guilt rares it's ugly head on Mothers Day. Especially because my daughter was so excited about it this year - she woke up at midnight and stood at our bedroom door and asked if it was morning yet! She had bought a present with her Dad and had planned a special in-bed breakfast - pancakes which she bought in on a tray for me. We sat in bed and shared them together. A lovely morning and I felt truly pampered.

I started off the day after that feeling hopeful that perhaps this Mothers Day the emotional backlash wouldn't occur - that I'd feel good all day and that SIF would remain in the background. But the feelings are up there - the hurt and the longing for a dream that wasn't to be. I cannot help but wonder where we will be a year from now - it will be the Mothers Day after our file expires in the adoption pool. At least we will have an answer on where things lie around adding to our family by then.

I emailed our social worker recently and said to her my husband and I want to just keep to our original plan - to see what happens over the next 11 months. We will review/reassess things next year to see if we want to venture down the fostering route. At the moment fostering doesn't feel like the right option for our family so we will have to wait and see what happens.

I have had a bit of grief surface of late and it's more to do with a life on hold and all the pain that has caused me/my family over the last four and half years than the pain of not having a second child. Although my life feels as though it is becoming unstuck - that I am moving on from a life in standstill - I feel so much remorse for the pain my SIF grief has caused my family - even if it is only subtle.

It seems so unfair that for most of my daughter's life I have been grieving for an unborn child. I really feel this today - on Mothers Day - that my grief has overshadowed the joy of having my beautiful daughter. Oh how I wish I never desired a second child.

I have had a lot of positive feedback around an article I had published in the local paper lately. I am making a real effort to focus on my creative ambitions - my writing and art. Coincidentally that focus all halted once SIF hit - and SIF was all I wrote and thought about for over four years. Now I am writing about other things and painting again. So I am moving forward in my own way once again.

Acceptance

It's been a while since I last posted - around three and a half weeks - which is quite a gap for me. But I have been busy focusing on other stuff (besides SIF) in life.

Firstly I have spent any spare time I've had on writing an article about autism for the local paper (which was published) as well as getting some paintings done for the stall I had at a Fair over Easter. I have been creatively-focused!

It has also been the school holidays here (two weeks) and we went away for two nights to my Mum's holiday home. The day we left there to come back my Dad and half-sister, aged nine, arrived to stay for five nights. So I had almost a week of "mothering" two children. It was good but with my daughters ASD and my half-sister with behavioural issues; it was certainly challenging at times!

I believe I have had a shift around the whole SIF deal/adding to our family. I have mentioned the three "As" in recovery before - awareness, acceptance and action and how to get to action you need to move through awareness and acceptance first. I find myself very much moving into acceptance. I think for most of my SIF journey, I have sat within awareness - I was just not able to accept my fate for a very, very long time.

I believe I have accepted what God has dished out - early menopause and as a consequence of that - SIF. I still am a big WIP though around some aspects of acceptance - body image being a big factor. Yet I was able to talk to a friend who went through POF (premature ovarian failure) at a much younger age than me, around some of the stuff that comes up as a woman going through menopause so much earlier in life than anticipated. I had to cancel my appointment with the clinic in town that specialises in menopause last term but will reschedule that. I am also considering going for some counselling around early menopause and what a big impact that has had on my life.

My husband and I have mutually decided to not pursue the permanency (long-term fostering) route at this point. It took us two long years to go through the adoption process (our choice to take that long) so we really just want to give adoption a chance so will wait and see what happens over the next year. Fostering may or may not be in our future - I really don't know. It would be easy to force a solution and to go down that track but our preference is to parent from birth - in an adoption situation rather than as foster parents.

Also after having my half-sister here this week, it is a reminder of how difficult it can be for my daughter to share her space with another child. She had four full-blown meltdowns this week (including two in one day). Although she enjoyed having a playmate a lot of the time, she was out of her depth dealing with some of my half-sisters emotional outbursts. We did all learn from these scenarios - and talked about them. But I just have to trust that God will ultimately make the right decision for us and will guide us to fostering if that is the way we are meant to go. Obviously if it doesn't feel right; we won't go there.

In the meantime, while waiting it out in the adoption pool, I will continue to focus on my creative goals. I want to do more freelance writing and am aiming to have a permanent stall this Summer selling my art. Although I occasionally look at other jobs out there, I have a sense that I'm meant to be in the job that I am in right now. My daughter was exhausted in the last three weeks of last term and I ended up having her home a lot. I'm lucky that my job for the most part works around that.

I have noted that creatively I have pretty much picked up from where I left off four and a half years ago - when we first TTC our second child and SIF was obvious early on. For the last four and half years even my writing has been focussed on SIF and not much else. So it feels good to be moving out of focusing on just that and to be reclaiming parts of myself that I have lost over the years - little things like humour entering my art indicate that a lightness is coming back into my life again.

I also have to be realistic around my energy levels and menopausal symptoms - to accept the fact that I would be very challenged going through sleepless nights all over again with a baby. Perhaps God knows this already and is giving me time to come to this awareness and to therefore accept it.

I think also that fairy-tale endings just aren't always the way things go. Just because I've been through all I have with SIF; it doesn't mean I will get to be a Mum again. Perhaps it just simply isn't God's Will for me. From the outside when people go through their own trials and tribulations, it is easy to say that one event happened to lead to another event. But it is not always so obvious why things happen in life - especially losses. Perhaps sometimes they just do happen - to make us stronger or more emotionally and spiritually resilient and that's all.