I gave an electronic baby gym we were given to Amelia's teacher who has a three month old. He was pleased with it and I was happy to give it to a good home.
If I can't sell the rest of the gear or find homes for it within the next couple of weeks, then I guess I will just take it all to an op shop. I could have done that to begin with but I like to take my time processing things and letting go of all this under five gear has been quite emotional.
But at the same time, the feeling still sits very clearly with me, that this is the right thing for us to be doing. It really is time to let it all go. There is something powerful in letting go.
I ended up having a lovely 43rd birthday, despite having laryngitis. I wasn't well but had a nice day with my husband including a relaxed lunch out at a cafe followed by cupcakes at our place. We had fish and chips for tea followed by more cupcakes with our daughter. I felt at peace that day - and free from SIF. Free from living with a broken dream. It really does feel as though the sky is looking blue again.
Yet despite my more contented state of late, I seem to have had a couple of weeks where pregnancies have been thrown in my face. And through lovely, lovely women who of course deserve to have babies. But it's always hard to hear about babies that were "accidents" or who were unplanned as I always feel old and inadequate. I cannot help but feel envious and probably always will when I hear about a pregnancy.
There is a terrible "joke" going around Facebook right now within New Zealand for Breast Cancer Awareness - females get forwarded a message from female contacts and basically it consists of two lists that match your birthday month and birthday date. You have to choose from the list the matching numbers and fill in the following with "I am _ weeks and craving_." Hmmm. One of my friends did it and the joke (?) is, males aren't meant to know what it's all about and just read the status. So my husband saw it and yelled out Is such and such pregnant?! I read it and assumed this friend of mine was and felt so hurt and angry that she'd announced her pregnancy like this - without telling me - only later to find out it was a joke....So not funny and so not a cool way to raise awareness for what is meant to be a good cause. I don't think so, anyway.
I found out one of my good friends had a miscarriage recently - with her second child. She went through primary infertility and has been through a lot already. Despite our history and closeness around so many topics; somehow it isn't quite there around infertility. It is interesting how taboo infertility actually is - even between good friends! I was surprised to hear she'd miscarried a few months back. She cried on the phone and shared how much she wants another baby. At least I was able to say that it is so, so natural to want another sibling for your child. Because it is.
It has been an interesting process adopting a dog who is seven years old and comes with a lot of history - some we know about, some we don't. We've had her for a month and at first she was quiet. Pretty settled, but quiet. But now her true colours are coming out and she barks and is cheeky - even friends have noticed that she is happier. She must miss her previous owners and was probably wondering what was going on at first.
After just a week of having her, it was obvious she had some issues with one of her legs so I got that checked out with the vet. We were told she has a torn knee which will one day get worse. When the time comes, we will have to make a very hard decision. Her previous owners emailed me not long after I got the news so I passed it on. We exchanged a few emails and I know they were sad about the prognosis as are we. They loved their dog a lot but weren't about to keep her with their new lifestyle. (living in a motorhome).
Being in touch with our dog's previous owners and going through this whole dog adoption has of course been uncanningly like going through an adoption for a human child. It has in fact changed my perspective around the relationship between birth and adoptive families.
When one of the previous owners dropped their dog off to us for the last time, I gave her a hug and said she was welcome to be in touch as much as she wanted and that I'd leave it up to her. It feels so right and natural that we have an open adoption with this dog. If anything bad happened to her, I would tell the previous owners. Somehow I have been given a lesson about ownership. This dog isn't one hundred percent ours. She lives with us now but she has a past.
Our profile needs to be updated - my husband has been in his new job for a while and we now have a dog - and now, I'm just processing my thoughts around contact with the birth family with an open adoption. Perhaps we have the capacity to be more open than we thought. God is helping me with this one so I am just sitting on it and will update our profile all in one go when the time is right.
One morning recently my husband and I woke up early - somehow before our daughter, kitten and dog! - and talked about fostering. I guess once we get to April next year we will reassess things. I can't do this again - this waiting in the pool of prospective adoptive parents. I don't want to reapply to be prospective adoptive parents when our time runs out. But fostering is possibility. Maybe.
We think we couldn't take on a child older than our daughter as she is our firstborn and also would be influenced by any behavioural challenges an older child may have. A toddler also wouldn't work as that is the age group our daughter struggles with the most - it would be different if a baby came into our home and grew up but to just bring a toddler into the mix is asking for trouble! So we agree it would have to be a child that was around four or five years old.
I guess I would be interested in going through the fostering programme next year if an adoption doesn't happen for us, just to hear more about it. There are all kinds of fostering - respite, short-term, long-term - and for life. I'm not sure if any of them would be the right fit for us. But I guess we've gone this far that we may as well look into fostering as well if it comes to that.
I can't imagine a baby in our homes anymore. It feels as though that ship has sailed. But we have a spare room and lots of love to give and space in our family - it just seems fostering is something we ought to at least consider.
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