Loss is Loss

Maybe I’m just coming to a less selfish point in my life, and realizing that not everything is about me or directed at me in some way.  What a shocking revelation that is….  It has occurred to me lately that we all need to take a step back and see things for what they are—nothing more and nothing less.  In all the adoption classes we’ve taken, and the difficult experiences we’ve had over the years with failed fertility treatments, a failed adoption and everything in between, I have found it interesting that we all compare our grief.  I’ve heard it from both ends, too.  I’ve had people who feel that the things they have experienced have been worse than what I have experienced and they say something in the form of “well, at least you didn’t have to _____________”.  And I’ve had people who were amazed at what we have been through say something like “Wow, I’ve had ____________ happen, but that was nothing compared to what you’ve dealt with”.  It’s as if all the painful experiences in life can be measured on a line, with one standing behind the other in some grand descending order.  So, how does it go?  Does having to give my soon-to-be-adopted son back to his father trump your miscarriage?  Is losing a parent farther down the grief line than losing a child?  What if it was a more tragic death? And what about dissimilar experiences?  Does your ongoing chronic health problem match up to my losing a job?  Does my frustration with my weight win our over your depression?  We even do it with children.  My three-year-old can experience some pretty big grief over losing a monster truck—a seemingly insignificant thing, so should I just tell him, hey, I’ve lost a child, so suck it up?

What I have come to understand is that loss is just loss.  It is the same emotion though perhaps driven by different experiences.  I’ve had many, many friends over the years who were afraid to tell me they were pregnant, especially if it was unplanned, and especially if they were not wanting to get pregnant at that time or ever again.  So, does the stress and grief of a mother overwhelmed with several little children, who just found out she was pregnant again when she had hoped to wait until things had maybe settled down—does her grief go in front of or behind my grief at not being able to get pregnant at all?  What about when my grief is magnified by years of failed fertility treatments, including two very difficult rounds of invitro, neither of which worked?  Now do I win?

Loss is loss.  It is still grief.  There may be degrees, but it is the same sadness and pain and depression.  We would do well to stop comparing our emotions in an effort to either justify our level of sadness, or to make ourselves or a friend or loved one “snap out of it and be grateful for what you have.”  The truth is, most of us are very grateful for what we have.  But, sometimes we are just sad and hurt over something we have lost.  Maybe it was a loved one.  Maybe it was the dream of having that loved one.  Maybe it was the dream of a stable income or a good retirement or a healthy life or a home or a particular friendship.  During our adoption/foster care classes, we got a little refresher course on the stages of grief, and we learned how we have to move through each stage before we can progress to the next one.  No matter what the loss is, our feet must touch each step. Some may be quicker than others.  We might breeze through denial and then wallow a lot longer in anger before moving on, but they all have to happen.  It is something we all have in common, so, in essence, we would do better to stop worrying about whose grief is greater and whose deserves more sympathy, and just mourn with those who mourn.  Because, even though the driving force may differ, we are sharing in the same experience.  I’ve often told stressed mothers with several children who felt like they couldn’t break down in front of me, that it is okay for them to be sad and upset and stressed, and it's okay if I know about it.  I always say that they are learning the lessons of patience and compassion through the difficult journey of caring for their children, and I am learning the same lessons through the difficult journey of trying to have children.  Same lessons.  Because patience is patience and compassion is compassion and loss is just loss.  No grand sequential lineup.  It just is.  So cry on my shoulder because you’ve changed 3000 diapers today and soothed 26 temper tantrums and done 16 loads of laundry, cooked 3 meals and 12 snacks, all with your husband deployed.  And I will cry on your shoulder because the cysts in my ovaries are extra painful today and I still have health complications left over from the hormone manipulation that is invitro and my aging parents are experiencing health problems and I don’t have two shiny nickels to my name and my family is so far away and my long, long-awaited son keeps asking for a baby brother and I can’t give him one, though it is my greatest wish.  And, then, soon enough, we will eat some chocolate and laugh about our breakdowns and suck it up and be grateful for what we have.  But, for now, let’s let ourselves grieve together.  We just might learn something from each other that will make our lives a little bit better.

Giving My Baby Back. The Worst Day of My Life.

I wrote a little bit about this in another post (see The One That Got Away:  Memories of a Failed Adoption for some of the background info I won't cover again here) almost a year ago, and in that post I said I would write more about the story later.   Well, today is the five year anniversary of that incredibly painful day when we had to hand over our little guy and I want to tell you a little bit more about that week.  I can't tell you everything.  I still have trouble writing about it.  But I will give you the highlights.

I will start with Monday, December 3, 2011.  I was at a retirement get-together at work.  It was a casual thing, so I had arranged to have Isaac with me.  The paternity test had finally been ordered and we were awaiting results.  Isaac was snuggled in his carrier on my chest.  It was mid-afternoon and I decided to leave, when I noticed a missed call on my phone.  My heart immediately began to pound as I recognized the social workers number.  I called voice mail as I walked to my car, hardly able to breathe.  I knew as soon as I heard her voice that she wasn't delivering good news.  The test was positive and our little Isaac was to returned to his father after almost five months of being our baby.  I was in shock.  I just kept saying "oh no, oh no, oh my gosh" as I walked to my car trying to keep it together.  I was physically shaking as I strapped him into his seat.  I don't know why the tears didn't come, as I'm usually pretty quick to cry.  I called the social worker back but she didn't answer.  I didn't call John because I wanted him to come home before he heard the news, as I knew he would be upset.  I called my friend, Genie, and told her, still unable to cry.  Somehow I made it home.  John is normally home like clockwork around 4:15, but wouldn't you know that today he decided to go buy new running shoes and didn't get home until almost 7:00.  I was dying.  Adrenaline was pumping for hours.  I wanted to be calm so I wouldn't freak Isaac out, but my world was crashing in.  So many years of trying to have a baby.  So many years of failed fertility treatments.  I had hoped and prayed so hard that the test would be negative.  It wasn't.  My stomach was in knots.  How was I going to break this to John.  I was feeding Isaac at the table when I heard his car pull up.  He walked up to the front door which was open and was upbeat as usual.  He stopped at the front door and noticed something was wrong.  "What's up?"  I said "The test was positive."  He said "Oh no!  Are you serious?!"  I said I was and he walked back into the yard and broke down.  And that's when my tears came.  And they didn't stop for four days, and even then, it was for short periods of time.  I am not exaggerating when I say I cried for four days straight.  I couldn't stop.  I didn't go to work.  I couldn't focus on anything.  I couldn't eat or sleep or pull myself together.  John went to work.  I think it helped him to keep a routine.  I couldn't gather myself enough to even get out of the house.  The dam had broken and there was too much force behind the rushing water to allow anything to even begin to fix it.  I prayed harder than ever, but I knew the answer was no.  I tracked down the biological father's e-mail and wrote him a long letter--a last plea that he might consider leaving him with us.  I knew it was probably in vain, but had to try.  We had an exchange of e-mails and I came to terms with the fact that it wasn't going to happen.  We did agree that he would do a transition over the weekend instead of just showing up and taking Isaac home.  I was grateful.  Friends and family fasted for us on Thursday (a practice in my religion of abstaining for food and water for two meals in order to focus on drawing closer to God, especially when there is a particular desire for help).  I think that is the only thing that got me through it.  I woke Friday morning December 7 (our own personal D-day) and was able to dry my eyes for the first time all week, and focus on the day ahead.  Isaac's father and grandmother would be arriving that evening.  This whole thing wasn't his fault and I didn't want to feel angry or show any harsh feelings towards them.  I didn't want to show how hurt I was.  I knew this was hard for him, too, and he had been robbed of these first few precious months with his son.  We were all victims.  I'm leaving out so many details, but to make a long story a little shorter, when they arrived and he walked in the living room and knelt down to see his son, I was so touched.  I even snapped a picture for him.  I could see the joy on his face and I felt the healing begin.  It would take years, but that is when it started.  We talked for two hours--Me, John, Isaac's father and grandmother.  We filled in all the gaps for each other on what had been going on and the lies that Isaac's mother had told.  It was a wonderful conversation.  We were still heartbroken over what would have to happen over the next 48 hours, and I still held out hopes that maybe he would change his mind, but we were beginning to accept it.  The next morning, they took Isaac for a few hours and then brought him back for a nap.  They took him again that afternoon, and brought him home for one last night with us.  My mother flew in that night to be with us, and I am so grateful for that.  I finished Isaac's scrapbook--got it all caught up with all the pictures we had taken and all the journaling, so his father could have a record of the months he had missed.  We packed up everything we had for Isaac--all the gifts given to us by friends at two different baby showers.  We gave them everything except three things.  One was the little onesie I had made for him that said "Superman was adopted."  I put it on a teddy bear my brother and his wife had sent us, and that bear still has it on today in my son's room.  The other thing was a little brown and cream striped sleeper he had worn.  I saw it in the box of stuff and took it out and tucked it away.  It smelled like Isaac and I wanted to keep it.  The funny thing was that John asked me later where that had gone because he wanted to save it.  I thought he might be upset that I was keeping it.  I smiled and told him I had already taken it and saved it.

Saturday night in the middle of the night, Isaac woke up screaming and was inconsolable.  It was the weirdest thing.  He had never done that before and it was upsetting to me.  It was as if he knew a big change was coming.  I held him and we stared out of our bedroom window at the moon together as I talked to him. He finally settled and we put him in bed with us--something we had never done--and he slept the rest of the night with us.

Sunday, December 9th was the day.  They were supposed to come get him at 10 a.m.  I tried to keep Isaac awake, but he was so tired.  I was sick to my stomach.  John was pacing waiting for them.  Isaac fell asleep right before they got there and I was worried about sending him off asleep and just having him wake up in a car on a five hour drive with two people he really didn't know.  One of the hardest things about this whole day was thinking that he would feel we had abandoned him.  As far as he knew, we were his parents, and then one day, we hand him over to someone else.  That bothered me for months, and actually, it still does.  They got there, and I lost it.  I felt the fear wash over my face as I knew the moment had come to say goodbye.  Isaac's father would tell me later that it was the worst day for him, knowing he had to take him away from us.  His mother cried and kept saying "I'm so sorry.  I'm so sorry."  I told her it was okay, that it wasn't her fault.  I said we would be fine.  She had a niece who had struggled with infertility, so she had some idea of what this meant to us.  I woke Isaac up, slid him into his carrier and kissed him goodbye and they left.  it was 10:30 in the morning and it was over.  I wasn't a mother any more.

I laid on the sofa in tears and shock for awhile.  A few friends stopped in to check on us, and by the afternoon, I felt like I was pulling myself together.  But grief is like the ocean.  It washes over you and then recedes for a time and then hits again, and sometimes the waves are lighter and sometimes it's like a Tsunami and you think you won't recover.  I cried every single day for months.  I couldn't sleep at night.  I worked and worked to the late hours hoping I would be so exhausted I would just crash.  No such luck.  I would lay in bed and hold that little bear with the onesie like it was my baby boy, and just cry.  Christmas was the worst.  I had been so close to my first Christmas with a child, and that had been ripped out of my hands.  John was just as bad as I was.  It was a tough time in our lives and a tough time in our marriage.  But we survived.

Oh, there is so much more to tell, but I will end this story here for now.  December 9th hasn't come and gone since then without revisiting that weekend.  And although life is good now, and I love my little guy, nothing will ever take the place of my first child.  I think about him every day.  I keep in touch here and there with his father and I see pictures of him and he is handsome and perfect.  I don't know why we had to experience that horrible event, but we did.  I understand grief and loss now more than I ever did before and that has made me more compassionate and kind, so I suppose that's the silver lining.  Isaac's father gave him a new first name, but kept Isaac as his middle name, which I thought was a beautiful gesture.  His middle name had been John, but that allowed me to give D that middle name instead, so it worked out.  Five years, though, and I can feel that pain as if it had happened this morning, at 10:30 a.m.

The One That Got Away: Memories of a Failed Adoption

NOTE:  This was originally posted in January of 2012.  I wanted to reference it and noticed it was gone from my blog, so am re-posting it.

 My little Isaac has been on my mind a lot lately.  I don’t know why.  It’s been just over four years since we lost him.  It’s not the anniversary of anything—not his birthday, or the day we took him home, or the day we lost him back to his biological father.  Maybe it’s because we have finally gotten back on the list to adopt our second child in the last couple of weeks.  Whatever it is, I’ve been thinking about him a lot more than normal.  Sometimes when people hear about our failed adoption, they make comments about how it’s good that we’d only had him five months or else it would have been even more difficult.  But the thing is, I always saw him as my child.  I bonded with him the first moment I heard about him over the phone, and by the time I held him for the first time at the foster mom’s house, I was done.  He was mine.  He was a low risk adoption—99% guaranteed to go through.  His mother relinquished rights and hand-picked us out of the pool of waiting couples.  She told us she didn’t know who the father was, and that she’d hidden her pregnancy from everyone, so nobody knew about this precious baby boy except herself and the social workers, and of course, us.  After years of failed fertility treatments, including two very difficult and unsuccessful runs at invitro, and then more than a year and a half getting through the process to get on the list for adoption, this amazing boy was ours.  I was elated.  I finally got to be the one at the baby shower on the receiving end, holding the cute little baby and telling my story.  It was a most wonderful time.  And then, the hammer fell.  To keep the story short, the birth mother had lied about everything, and after placing him with us, called the birth father to tell him he had a son, but that he couldn't have him because he’d been placed for adoption.  She looked us in the eye and told us she didn’t know who the father was and that she hadn’t told him, but she had.  It took a while for him to get the paternity test, and a few weeks before Christmas, he came to take his son.  That is all a story for another blog entry, but I just wanted to say that it didn’t matter that it was “only five months” (and it is still very painful to hear that comment from people).  We were devastated.  We had lost our long-awaited child.  We had a deep bond with him, and he had become a precious part of our lives.  I still have a hard time talking about it, and this is the first time I’ve written about it since just after it happened.  We still miss him.  I think about him every day, and I still shed tears every now and then when I look at photos and think of that difficult day when I put him in the car seat and kissed him good-bye, so afraid that he would feel I had abandoned him.  He is doing well now.  These pictures were taken two days before his father took him home.  I had been crying all week, and praying for strength.  I asked my friend to take some pictures of us so I could have some final shots of us together.  And in an answer to that prayer (although not the answer I REALLY wanted!) I woke up that Friday morning calm, and more prepared to face the impending weekend events.  
The strange thing was that I could not get him to smile, and that was very unusual.  I tried playing with him, as you can see in the photos, but no smile.  It was as if he knew a traumatic change was coming and he just wasn’t his normal self.  But, I’m happy with the way they turned out, and glad we were able to capture a sweet moment with him before he went away.I still consider him my first son, even though when people ask, I say that Dylan is the first.  In my mind, Dylan is our second, but I keep Isaac tucked in a special spot deep in my heart that I can only pull out in private.  Dylan will never take his place, although he did fill a deep void when he came to us a year and a half later.  If you know someone who had a failed adoption, I hope you never say "well at least he was only ____ months old", and I hope you never assume the next child will ever take his place.  You would never think that if you lost a biological child.  It is such a painful experience, and it doesn't ever go away.  I know he is with his father who wanted him so deeply, and I know that’s where he needs to be, but my sweet little Isaac will always be the one that got away. 

***You can read more details about this in my latest post "Giving My Baby Back.  The Worst Day of My Life"

Trading My Mother for "Lots of Toys"

You can try this activity at home.  Do it with your kids if they are old enough.  It is a powerful visual.

We attended a class tonight, and one of the activities really hit home.  Actually, several of them did, but this is the one I’m writing about tonight.  When we adopt a child, we often think about the great life we want to give them.  And, in particular if we adopt a child out of foster care or out of an orphanage in a foreign country, the focus can often be on how much better their life will be with us than where they have been.  But we forget that the best day of our lives—the day that child comes to live with us, is the worst day of his or her life.  It is the day that everything changes for them.  Familiar people, sights, smells, textures, languages that are spoken in the home or city, pets, friends, and the list goes on.  In an effort to give this child a fresh start, sometimes we are too quick to sweep away the things we think are part of the problem, and replace them with the things we think are part of the solution.  And we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

 

So here is how the activity went tonight.  We had to write down on five cards the names of five attachments we have to important people in our lives.  I just picked the first five that came to mind.  My parents, my husband, my son and my sister.  (I really encourage you to do this activity as you read this.  The impact is so much greater than just reading about it.)  Then we partnered with someone and the instructor told us that sadly we were going to lose one of those relationships. We had to hold up our cards with the names facing us, and let them blindly choose a relationship to go away.  The first to go was my Dad.  She asked how that felt, and I said “painful” and I meant it.  My Dad has had a heart attack and two rounds of cancer in the last five years, and so I had already contemplated the fact that losing him might be a reality sooner than I thought.  It brought up those feelings again.  Then she said that now we were going to lose two of them, and she blindly pulled my sister and my husband.  I was standing there holding D and my Mom in my hand, and I can honestly say, I was starting to panic a little.  The thought of losing all three of those relationships was not softened by still having my son and my mother.  Then, she said we had to lose one more and she pulled D out of my hand.  My sweet boy that I have waited so long for was gone in a blink.  By now, my heart was really feeling physical pain at the thought of that loss.  She asked if anyone in the room had been left with the one relationship they would have picked of the five.  Nobody raised their hand.  That is hard for me to say, because I don’t want to think one relationship is above the other, or that I love one more than the other.  But the fact is, my husband would be the toughest one to lose.  He is my partner and his loss would affect every single aspect of my life in a much greater way than anyone else.  He is my son’s father.  He is the main breadwinner.  He is my daily support and best friend and the person I lean on the most.  The loss of my husband would have a much more devastating affect than any other one, even though I would mourn greatly for those losses, too.  Then, they picked five of us to come to the front of the room.  John and I were both chosen.  And they said that we now had to lose the last one, but they were going to give us something great in return.  The first lady’s new card said “My own room”.  I was next.  They took away my Mom and gave me “Lots of Toys”.  Lots of toys.  That was my trade for my mother.  They took D away from John and gave him “a pool”.  The next two people got “big beautiful home” and “dance lessons” in exchange for their cherished relationship.  It was a powerful moment.  The instructor made the trades with such excitement in her voice….something like “that is so cool that you are going to have lots of new toys!”  But how could that ever be a replacement for my mother?  And yet, that’s how we see it for these kids.  You may argue that their mother is a drug addict or abusive or something else.  But the fact is, that person is this child’s mother and he or she will always, always love her and want a relationship with her, and a pool, or a bunch of toys will never replace her, or heal a broken-hearted little child.

One of the other great things that was said tonight is that so much of this grieving and healing process is not to fix the problem.  The loss of these relationships is not a fixable problem.  The process is about learning to adjust.  A light bulb went on inside my head.  All the things that have impacted my life in a negative way cannot be fixed.  I have to adjust, not resolve.  I have to learn where to file that memory, not shred it.  It can’t be thrown away.  It can’t be shredded or burned.  It is a part of me.  What a relief.  That really was the conclusion I came to.  What a relief to know that I can heal without having to forget.  I can let go of the need to wipe out certain things and embrace just learning how to put that thing in its place and move forward.  Healing doesn’t mean we were never wounded.  It means our body has healed, and even if it still bears a scar, it’s not the focus of our life anymore.  It has been treated and healed as completely as possible, and now we get up and get on with it.

I stood there holding my “lots of toys” card thinking how superficial and so totally unimportant that was to me, and how it didn’t even hold a candle to having my mother.  I felt a rush of empathy and compassion for these kids who lose everything that is the most important to them.  I felt worse for the kids whose adoptive parents think they are the solution and that starting over and severing ties was the best thing for them.  I hope they are not threatened by their child’s love for these people left behind.  Someone once said that love isn’t a pie, where if I get a slice, that’s one less slice for someone else.  Love is just love and you can give it all away, and still have all of it.  It’s magic that way.  That child can love all of you, so don’t make them choose.  Be a part of the healing process and let them know that they are free to love anyone they choose for as long as they want.  You might find that letting go and just loving these children will allow the love to bounce back and find you again, and it will bless your life an hundred-fold.  

The Infertility Checklist.

Infertility.   I know it’s common.  I know thousands and thousands of women (and even men for that matter) deal with it every day.  But even so, it’s interesting how few conversations I’ve had about it over the years.  Maybe it’s because it’s a painful topic, or maybe because someone is always giving you advice as to what to try next or trying to figure out what you’re doing wrong, and even though you know it’s helpful, it is hard to have those discussions.  For me, the difficulty came because I seemed to be the only one who didn’t eventually get pregnant.  Even most of my friends who adopted had at least one biological child, and so even though we’d been through a lot of similar experiences, it just never seemed like anyone had as much or as long as a battle as I did.  I’ve been trying to get pregnant since I was twenty-one and we got D when I was thirty-eight, so that gives you a small idea of what we have been through.  When we headed into adoption, it was after a year-long experience with our last option--two rounds of invitro fertilization, during which my body reacted horribly and I became extremely sick.  When the second round failed, we were done, and with feelings still raw and tears still fairly fresh, we went to our first adoption seminar to look at our options.

I suppose we are the classic example of why the county makes people go through this checklist and take their “Adoption After Infertility” class.  One of the hardest things about the whole process is how personally invasive it is.  As couples, we have so many personal and intimate conversations about everything from children to our hopes and dreams to marital conflicts we need to resolve, and most of those are kept private.  With adoption, nothing is private.  I have a love-hate relationship with the whole thing, because I know that they are just protecting the children from going from the frying pan into the fire.  And yet, sometimes you feel like it’s just none of their business.  But, I guess it is if they want to, with a clear conscience, place these children in a homes that will be good for them.

I have included both pages of a checklist we were both required to fill out (click on them to see them larger).  During the class we were required to attend, most, if not all of these issues were discussed, and you are supposed to openly and honestly share where you are in coming to terms with each of these “tasks”.  Of course I green lighted everything, and honestly, I do think I was telling the truth.  But a few of them still made me a little sick to my stomach to think about.  As much as I think we were ready to move forward with adoption, I don’t know that grief ever has an end, as implied in #1.   In regards to #4, I wondered if that meant 51/49 was okay, or was it supposed to be 80/20?  Numbers 6-8….hmmm…sketchy, but I’m sure I dabbled here in there.  Number 9-10?  Well, I think it’s hard to answer a question like that when you aren’t in that situation yet.  We all like to think we would be so intelligent in our dialogue, but even with extensive education, it’s hard to know how to handle certain things when it involves your child whom you love dearly.  And #11-#12….am I the only one that sees these as contradictory?  Having had a child placed for us for adoption and losing him back to his birth-father makes me think #11 may need to be reworded.

I do think this checklist is a good starting point for some open and honest discussion with your social worker, your spouse, and most importantly yourself.  You do need to be sure you are ready, although give yourself a little slack and don’t require such a complete, rigid standard.  You might not be 100% on everything, and that’s okay.  I’m still not, and I’m loving our little adopted boy and we’re on the list to do it again!


***Also, if you have experienced infertility, whether you adopted as a result or not, you might enjoy my post Plan B:  It's a Good Thing