So today I had my first hormonal meltdown
in the office. I am mortified. It was my entire fault and my (male)
colleague didn’t have a clue what to do…
All he had done was asked some questions
that I was willingly answering. I am an
open book and maybe some things I shouldn’t share as they are painful, but I
just wanted him to understand my prospective – And sadly instead, I was unable
to answer and just ended up more frustrated.
The thing is, I am very open. Especially when it is about adoption as I am
passionate for people to understand that my baby girl is MY baby girl. My colleague, who I will call S, hit a nerve
that is a constant worry to me. He said
that I would feel differently towards my DD then I would towards my biological
daughter because it is a “scientifically
proven fact” that biology accounts for more than nurture. This I vehemently disagree with. I mean, if that were the case, why are there
so many babies and children placed for adoption? Why are children around the world being
abused? Why are mothers happy to go on
vacation, leaving their children to fend for themselves? This I could answer, but then when he asked,
“Aren’t you worried that you will love your biological child more?”
I just broke down. It is sad really as the easy answer is,
“No. Not at all!” But it is this type of
questioning that I fear my DD will have.
It petrifies me to think that one day she will think this too – even if
it is for a hormone filled millisecond - at some point she will feel that pain,
and I just have absolutely no idea what I can possibly do about it.
It frustrates me even more that I was so
emotionally upset and beside myself with trying to speak these fears out loud
that I just broke down sobbing. In a
room full of men. In a room full of men,
who don’t have children and could never possibly understand the fears that a
mother has and the all encompassing urge to constantly protect her children.
It frustrates me that people don’t have the
empathy to understand this. that they
don’t expect the response that I give; especially as I am 7.5 months pregnant
(to be fair, S was expecting it to a degree and felt horrific afterwards).
I was kind of blindsided by the line of
questioning really. I knew people would
think that as most people I meet have no idea of the emotional turmoil you go
through in your dream to adopt. That you
experience the exact same emotions at various stages of the adoption that you
do with your own personal pregnancy. The
only difference is that the stress of adoption is far far greater than having
your own pregnancy; in our case, we were at the mercy of three governments, yet
we had the bond with our DD the second we were sent her photo. She was thousands of miles away. We could see her only at weekends and had no
idea what was happening the rest of the time.
When we were told she had pneumonia at four months old, panic set
in. Could she get the right treatment? Would the treatment be as good there as in
Dubai? Would the orphanage administer
the treatment correctly in our absence?
What will be the long-term implications of it? Is there anything we can do from thousands of
miles away apart from keep in constant contact with them? What happens when she is crying and just
needs a cuddle? We weren’t there to be
with her through all this and that thought is so painful you just couldn’t
understand…
When you are pregnant, you know that your
actions are directly affecting your own baby.
You know that if jump out of building you will hurt your baby. Ultimately though, the decision to jump is
yours and yours alone. When you have a
baby in another country, being looked after by amazing people (but they are
ultimately strangers), that decision could be taken away from you. OK. This
is a tad extreme, but you get the drift.
Everything is out of your control and the stress that this brings is
huge.
It scares me to no end that someone with no
brains will think that it is OK to ask these questions when my DD is around. As I said to S today, I would not have been
responsible for my actions had he have asked these questions in front of my
daughter. The poor man… how does he know
that this is something that has kept me awake at night more often than anything
else – that at least twice a week I lie in bed worrying about this from 2am and
give up at 5am trying to get back to sleep?
Realistically, I should have stopped the
questions before they began but I don’t really have that stop button. I need to grow one though I have now
realized. What good will I do for my
daughter if I can’t field these questions in the future? How on earth is that going to remotely
protect her?
What is ironic, is that literally 10
minutes before this all happened, I had posted a viral thread on Facebook from
Sandra Bullock who is also frustrated at people saying she isn’t a real mum to
her son. She is an “Adoptive Mum”.
Take it from me, love from a real mum isn’t
the love from someone that produces a child biologically - As amazing as the
human body is, most women can do this in one form or another. Love from a real mum is someone who sits
watching her child sleep at night and feels the most overwhelming sense of
love. Love from a real mum is someone
who holds her child tight when they fall, and worries about them when she sees
them testing the boundaries. Love from a
real mum is someone who petrified, jumps in the car at 2am racing to their
child to hospital only to be told by a Dr that it is only a temperature and
there is no need to worry. Love from a
real mum is an overwhelming unconditional love.
You do not have to give birth to love like
a “real” mum.
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