Yesterday I threw myself a pity-party. I was disappointed in our families for their lack of celebration happening for our adoption. I focused on how no-one is showing us any excitement. How instead of instant excitement when we announced our plans to adopt we got comments like Maybe surrogacy is a better option? Are you sure you cannot have a biological baby have you tried everything? How one side of our family is excitedly celebrating the joy of an upcoming baby for another family member (as they should) and how we are feeling pretty left out. How at the end of the day, we really just want people to celebrate with us and to be excited for our baby and our family. Baby shower or not, we just don’t see that happening for us and I think more then anything yesterday’s baby shower invite just made me realize how much I wish the people in our lives were excited for our child, just like they are for any other baby.
Yesterday I turned my back on hope. Heck, I titled the post I’m Not Hoping, Not This Time – clearly hope and I were friends off yesterday. At least we were, until I started reading all the comments I received. Each and every one of you showed me that our child is already loved and being celebrated by so many people in the world and that I was clearly wrong to so quickly turn my back on hope.
You showed me that our child is so incredibly loved. And so am I, and so is Mr. MPB. You have reminded me that it really doesn’t matter what our traditional family members do and say because we have so much love coming at us from around the world. In fact, I feel so much love that I’m at a loss for words and I have been crying happy tears. Honestly, just reading the comments yesterday I sat at my computer with tears running down my cheeks (thank god I’m my own boss!). We are loved. We have so many who are celebrating with us and that’s just amazing. It may not be a traditional celebration, but who cares, nothing about what we are doing is traditional so the shower doesn’t have to be either! I am beyond thankful for each and everyone one of you for reminding me of that.
I have to acknowledge that I was and still am completely shocked by the offers to shower our child with love with baby gifts. Honestly, shocked! I kind of feel guilty about my whining because I know everyone in the Infertility and adoption community is facing their own bills that just seem to keep piling up. I know that what we are facing is no different then what virtually all of you are facing financially. And the cost of all of this is just another down side of being reproductively challenged.
Mr. MPB and I talked about all of your kind offers (he is just as touched as I am), and we have decided to share our registry with anyone I know who emails me requesting it. Honestly, we spent a lot of time talking about this. We tend to let our independence get in the way frequently, but we ultimately decided that your offers are most welcome because the gifts are for our baby and they deserve to be surrounded by love. Additionally, we promise that anything we receive we will be sure to pass on to someone else who will benefit when we no longer need it – we want to pass on the love!
You also reminded me that I cannot only think about the people who have already hurt us or who we think might in the future. Instead I need to focus on the people who love us. Our great friends, and those who will want to celebrate with us. Yes, we may get hurt by some of the people we love, which always makes the hurt sting just a little bit more. But, I cannot focus on that. I need to focus our effort and our energy on those who do care. Those who always support us and always love us, because at the end of the day those are the people who we choose to spend our time with and who will know and love our child without any strings attached.
Lastly, I want to thank each of your for reminded me that I really shouldn’t turn my back on hope. While I am still not feel that that our family will come through in the end, given their past track record, I did take reassurance and comfort from those who suggested that maybe they will mobilize once we are matched/place. It is also possible people aren’t bringing it up yet because they don’t know how, or when the time will be right. Maybe they just don’t know how to approach us? Adoption is different and we are the ones charting this new territory, so in many ways it is unfair to expect our families to figure it out on their own, when this has been thrust upon them. Maybe they are still struggling to wrap their minds around all the adoption stuff, and they just aren’t there yet? Or maybe it’s just difficult for some to celebrate a child that they do not see in a growing pregnant belly? Regardless of the reason, what you reminded me is that, we don’t know any of their reasoning and it doesn’t really matter. All I did yesterday was jump to the worst possible conclusion. I told myself a story based in my own personal fears and choose to believe it. This is not helpful and it really just makes me feel worse then I need to and it also probably isn’t fair to most of the people in our lives. And even more importantly, the reality is that no matter how bad I’m feeling in a moment, I know better then to turn away from hope. We all need hope in our lives to be a bright ray of sunshine that keeps us going. And thankfully you reminded me of that!
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. I am honoured to have such great friends in my life.
P.S. I will respond to each and every comment that was left yesterday. Every time I have tried, I just end up crying happy tears and I haven’t been able to focus long enough to write anything. Again, thank you all.
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My mother-in-law is co-hosting my in-laws baby shower (the same in-laws I wrote about here and here). I received the invite. Thankfully they live far enough away that I don’t even have to contemplate going as we simply do not have the disposable income to pay for the flights.
I’m over the fact that no sensitivity was shown to me and there was no acknowledgement of how a baby shower might be hard for me. I’ve come to expect this from this part of our family. Heck, I’ve come to expect this from most people in my real life as it seems that no-one realizes how hard this stuff can be for us – baby loss has scared me and almost no-one understands. In fact they all think that we have been cured now that we are adopting. I hate it, but I do go it.
And I’m not upset that they are having a baby shower, they should. Everyone should celebrate their child and spend at least one day being showered with love and happiness.
But, what I can say is that I feel surprisingly envious. I want a shower for our baby! While I do not like the idea of sitting around opening presents and cooing over onsies, I do want to be surrounded by love for our child, and for our growing family. I want to see our families be excited for us. Our babies deserves as much and quite frankly so do we!
I want someone in my life to offer to throw us a shower. But since we are adopting and there is no timeline, we have had no such offers and I suspect we won’t. Honestly, I think most people don’t know how to do the adoption baby shower because apparently adoption just makes everything a bit awkward and a bit different. Because how can you celebrate a new family member when you don’t have an arrival date?
I’m sad that my step-mom has not offered (although not surprised, she didn’t even help with my wedding shower).
I’m hurt that my mother-in-law is co-hosting the shower for her other daughter-in-law and hasn’t even mentioned a word about wanting to help us celebrate.
I’m sad and feeling sorry for us. Not only do we not get to experience so many things about having a baby the old fashioned way (i.e. breastfeeding and/or giving birth), but we also don’t get to experience our family and friends celebrating with us. I know we will get some gifts from friends and family (and I am beyond thankful for this), but we will not get an overwhelming celebration of love.
And honestly, as bad as this will probably make me sound, I’m frustrated that unlike most people, we will be fully footing the bill for all our baby stuff – we realize that there will be no shower where people will gift us some of the things we will need. In all likelihood there won’t be a big party to celebrate where we get to be overcome by the love we receive. So now we realize that not only are we going to spend an exurbanite amount of money just to afford to adopt, we are also going to have to spend a tonne of money just to get the needed baby stuff. (I know, I’m whining, kids are expensive and I should get used to that, but that’s not my point right now). And to be fair, even prior to seeing this invite, we’ve realized that a shower is unlikely so we’ve started buying stuff monthly to help offset the costs of all the baby stuff we will have to buy. Buying stuff was initially hard for us, but we are over it (mostly) and now realize that we actually need to start buying stuff now so that we can slowly spend the money rather than having to drop a bunch of money in an instant.
All I know right now is that I’m feeling jaded. We announced our adoption before they announced their pregnancy and not a word has been whispered about the possibility of celebrating our growing family. Instead with our announcement we got the have you tried everything? Maybe IVF will work. What about surrogacy? Will your child be black? Oh, and congratulations. These types of comments hurt and while we will move past them, we haven’t forgotten. And now, instead of having our family’s offer us support as we are stretching ourselves so thin to afford to adopt and going through anxiety over the adoption process, we also get to face massive guilt for stating that we are unable to come meet the baby once it’s born as we are saving every single penny we have for our adoption and therefore our child. This isn’t something we want, but it is our reality – our money is allocated to our future child and it’s just that simple. Instead, we have others making us feel like our adoption and the realities of making our adoption a reality don’t matter as much as the child being born in a few short months. Somehow in all of this we are being painted as the bad guys in the situation.
Part of me wants to hope I’m wrong and even though I have been wrong once before I know to trust my gut and not to get my hopes up. Part of me wants to hope that someone comes through for us and surprises us with an offer to throw our baby a shower. But sadly, my gut says it won’t happen and I’ll be left licking yet another wound.
Given our families track records of being less then supportive, I’m just not willing to hope. Not this time.
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