Month: February 2018

WE ARE WAITING.

We have a date for what could be a final decision that our baby leaves us forever, or that baby’s placement with us will be extended for future reconsideration, or that baby’s bio parents rights have been terminated and we are one step closer to maybe making baby our permanent family. It could be for baby and siblings, it could be for just siblings. All the time, trial, and uncertainty, just for an outcome that can be even more uncertainty.

I had guessed a general time frame for a decision and that was nerve-wracking. But now we have a date for at least the first decision and it’s like counting down to your favorite holiday…or the exact opposite of your favorite holiday.  I have a giant calendar in my head, I cross off days, and sometimes hours. I’m not great at math, but I’m surprisingly accurate at hours right now.

Questions that have no emotional answer; would I rather have a decision that baby stays for 6 more months and then still goes home or that she goes home now?  It’s the worst game of “what if”? EVER! And I’m super good at what if!! Obviously, I would take 6 more months (or 6 more minutes, or 6 more seconds) with babyX2 over letting go immediately no matter what the long-term outcome even though I tend to have a pretty solid “get the pain over NOW ” philosophy.

I just… cannot believe the judge will do the clearly wrong thing. And I know he won’t do the right thing. I am generally fine with cognitive dissonance but this is just a stomach ache asking to be drowned in whiskey.

It definitely feels like the calm acceptance and letting go part of fostering works best for people who have either large families already and have room for love and care but without the desperate selfishness of people specifically looking to adopt, or with people who are older and past the “this is my last chance to start at the beginning” phase.  In another form of cognitive dissonance, foster care wants parents that strongly support reunification, that can let go, but that are also also always willing to adopt the child if that’s the direction life takes them…what an insane demand on us.  What an insane choice we made in walking this road.

Single parenting is NO JOKE, ya’ll.  I recently completed my second stint of single parenting, and I am, across the board, opposed to it and overwhelmed by the thought of people who choose that life (including my own mother).

My first stint was a few weeks ago, and I was playing the role of a working mother with no set day care. My amazing people totally helped, but also had their own lives. Every day was a patchwork of work while baby naps, bring baby to sitter, work, get baby, try to do chores with baby, put baby down, work at night. And, of course, my baby doesn’t sleep well, so with one person you are simply exhausted.  There was no time where I felt entirely good about the love and attention I was giving baby and no moments where I felt like my work was top quality and receiving the attention it deserved – there was certainly no moment where I felt like I had even five minutes to focus on myself and letting go of outside needs and pressures.  I felt like there was nothing I could control and no way to succeed.   I was pretty close to melt-down mode by the time my partner came home.

This time I worked some, but casually, and really got to play the role of stay-at-home single mother for the four days.  Wow.  Was that BORING.  There is only so much time you can spend staring adoringly into your baby’s eyes before you are both irritated and bored (that time is approximately…8 minutes).  We did stuff outside the house every day, often twice a day, and it was still isolating and exhausting, and if I was a stay at home parent I would belong to every club, gym, activity center, group, and society on earth, because NO WAY would I survive that experience otherwise (something I always knew, but 4 years of stressful work and baby-desperation had made me think I might LOVE a stay-at-home life).  This experience was much easier than the working mom experience for sure; by the time my partner got home I was not in emotional crisis of failure, I was just pretty tired and SO HAPPY to have him home!

Parenting is absolutely a choice (and NO ONE should ever be pressured into it, you better WANT this shit!), but let’s acknowledge it’s a freaking exhausting choice and even a two-parent household is often barely making it work.  Many many joint parents are run down, exhausted, and overwhelmed especially in our over-scheduled, over-worked, cult-of-busy, society – and especially if your baby (like ours!) does not sleep well.  I’ve now created the definitive ranking of relatively standard parenting units:

Working single parent: oooh fuuuuuuuuuuuck noooo

At-home single parent: ahhh fuuuuuck

Two working parents: fuuuuck

One working one at home parents:  well, fuck.

Two stay at home parents: fuckity!

It is my considered opinion that the most reasonable parenting unit for one household containing small children (under school age) is FOUR.  Yes, FOUR. That is how many people it would take to reasonably provide child care and love, time away with partner, time to pursue work and/or hobbies, and sleep.

We don’t have four people.  What we DO have, is the most amazing friends and family on this earth, helping take care of BabyX2, being family-friendly in our outings, sending words of support, and, most recently, sending me gorgeous pink ART that lifts my tired spirits!!

People keep having babies! And it’s SO GREAT for them, and I truly cannot wait to welcome each new loved one!  But I have considered just walking around screaming at the top of my lungs, “I HAVE DONE EVERY FUCKING THING IN MY ENTIRE LIFE EXACTLY RIGHT AND IT’S NOT FUCKING FAIR”. 

I overcame poverty and abuse, I got the education, I didn’t get accidentally pregnant at an inappropriate or just life-altering age, I never got arrested, I’ve never even had a fucking overdraft charge in my checking account, I took time to travel and socially develop, I went BACK to school, I got the house, and the marriage, and the therapy to actually make the marriage and parenting work, I didn’t quit a job I hate and I even transformed it into a job I DO NOT hate and get some personal satisfaction out of so we can be financially secure and have a parent able to stay home with the baby, and I even started trying while it should still have been NO BIG FUCKING DEAL, and it’s just NOT FAIR!

But I know it’s not about me or even just me that is struggling. I know so many people who have lost pregnancies in just the last year – in my age range, but also at like…27.  Talk about doing everything at the right time, that’s PEAK fucking fertile years.  And I see people in the hospital with two pound premature babies, and people on round X of in vitro after losing multiple priors, and people living in the NICU, and it’s NOT fair and it IS so so so common, and the pain is mostly silent most of the time (because…vaginas?  I really cannot think why else…)  And that knowledge of being part of a sad and frustrated mass does something to ease the rage, but nothing to lessen the sadness.  While crying onto my partner last week after realizing my super-irritating opposing counsel was also pregnant, and trying, again, to consider every option I tearfully said, “I need a baby that is real and they can’t take away”.  I do not know for sure that if BabyX2 was actually MINE TO KEEP whether it would mitigate these feelings of sadness and loss and failure for the actual infertility. It would least be joy – like she is! – and would remove the current additional daily stresser of uncertainty and dread of loss.

Since I cannot do a damn thing about other people having babies, or me NOT having them, or the decision on our baby not being done yet, I’ve been trying  to channel my sadness into a deeper understanding of how much I CANNOT understand about the “model-minority” experience.  How fucking irritating it must be to strive always and endlessly, and to still know the police might just kill you, and to know that however much your white friends are listening, and paying attention, and caring, they just cannot KNOW what that is. I tend to believe, in my heart, the “be twice as good and you can get there” theory of life which has mostly worked for me – but it’s also just not true and so much of life is just deeply, entirely, UNFAIR.  I’m not great at understanding a lot of things I have not personally experienced so  I could take this personal experience as life telling me off for previous lack of empathy. But also, overall I’m pretty cool being done with learning experiences.

We are waiting.  I’m not super-big on waiting ever, and I am super not into waiting right now.  Especially not about this baby that I love basically more than anything ever in the history of everything (not hyperbole).  I do a pretty-good chicken-little impression, so I am REALLY GOOD at worrying (1) that the judge is just going to send these kids home, despite the very real and immediate reasons these children were removed, and the fact that it would basically mean the entire intervention process was worthless – literally EVERYTHING NOW is exactly the same as when the children were first removed, almost two years ago…(2) if the judge does the right thing, he will only do it for the older children, not my baby, because she hasn’t been in the system long enough – hey, you failed at these two and now they have a history of trauma and multiple home moves, but here take this perfect baby and see if you can do the same to her!, (3) if the judge does the right thing for all the kids, then someone is going to pop out of the woodwork to claim babyX…like a grandparent, who hasn’t been bothered for the last two years, and isn’t going to take the older kids, but hey, here’s a perfect baby and someone else already got it through the exhausting newborn stage, perfect!

I talk to other foster parents with children who do not have a good reunification in sight, and they feel the same.  It seems the universal foster parent feelings are (1) watching our foster kids with their biological parents is one of the most painful things on this earth for a large variety of reasons; (2) terror for the future for these children; and (3) not a lot of hope or faith in “the system” (something we entirely share with the bio-parents but opposite!). And I AM “the system” – I HAVE to believe!  But from everything we have heard, this judge is not likely to make the decision we want – even though it should be right under the law, and has been recommended by the guardian, and literally nothing has been done to make positive changes to create a safe life for these children at their biological home – in fact, affirmative statements have been made that the bio-parent will continue doing specific behavior regardless of the court’s decision! AMAZING!  And yet…no one can even say it’s more likely than not.  It’s just…waiting.

Shit is all over the place.  There is so much we are stressed about, hoping for, living through, sad about, waiting for, dreaming of.  But along the way, you take the wins that are offered.

This week I made my billable hours requirement, and made up for last week’s missed time while my partner was out of town, did a legal task I’ve never done before, got my hair cut and dyed, settled a big stressful case, and was home to rock my baby to sleep every night. Tonight I ate nachos and I’m watching a movie with my partner like adults. Damn right, it was a good week.