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grerp: the PERSONAL side of AAR Rachel
Mild post-Mother's Day depression
posted Tuesday, 11 May 2004
For several years now, Mother's Day has been a holiday that has been hard to get through. It's pretty much a slap-in-the-face celebration for infertile people, like Valentine's Day is for singles.
This year I got my first Mother's Day card in the mail from my mom's best friend. That was so nice of her. She wrote a little note in it that read, "Dr. Laura says that the only difference between adoptive motherhood and bio motherhood is that one comes with stretch marks and the other doesn't." And then she wrote that she was praying for J., Max, and me. So sweet.
So, I thought I was holding up pretty well, and then yesterday the blues hit me over the head. I think that if you haven't gone through infertility, you'll never really understand what a blow it can be. How it feels to have always assumed dreams die slowly, in month-by-month increments. How it feels to watch other so much less prepared people become parents effortlessly and then watch those same people treat their children carelessly, overlooking the miracle of their existence.
People don't understand how unfair it feels to pay and pay and pay, sacrifice time, undergo humiliating procedures over and over, and allow strangers to examine your personal life and physical body again and again. I still feel angry that I had to prove myself to a social worker in order to be a parent. Angry that I will have to continue to prove myself to that same social worker in periodic visits even after the adoption is finalized. And I will have to pay for those periodic visits - through the nose, I might add. And that's after the expense of the adoption.
I don't think people understand that even after adoption, infertile people can still feel their loss. I don't think I will ever know what combination of genes J. and I might have produced - what a child of ours would have looked like, would have been like. After I am dead, there will be no genetic record of me. My biology will be erased from the face of the earth. I won't ever know what it's like to have a baby inside me, and I won't know what it's like to nurse my child. I won't ever have a childbirth story to tell. I won't be a part of that mother's club. People will ask me where my child's "real mother" is.
I am sad today over the baby we lost and the babies we never conceived. I'm so looking forward to meeting our Max, but I am, nevertheless, still infertile.
This year I got my first Mother's Day card in the mail from my mom's best friend. That was so nice of her. She wrote a little note in it that read, "Dr. Laura says that the only difference between adoptive motherhood and bio motherhood is that one comes with stretch marks and the other doesn't." And then she wrote that she was praying for J., Max, and me. So sweet.
So, I thought I was holding up pretty well, and then yesterday the blues hit me over the head. I think that if you haven't gone through infertility, you'll never really understand what a blow it can be. How it feels to have always assumed dreams die slowly, in month-by-month increments. How it feels to watch other so much less prepared people become parents effortlessly and then watch those same people treat their children carelessly, overlooking the miracle of their existence.
People don't understand how unfair it feels to pay and pay and pay, sacrifice time, undergo humiliating procedures over and over, and allow strangers to examine your personal life and physical body again and again. I still feel angry that I had to prove myself to a social worker in order to be a parent. Angry that I will have to continue to prove myself to that same social worker in periodic visits even after the adoption is finalized. And I will have to pay for those periodic visits - through the nose, I might add. And that's after the expense of the adoption.
I don't think people understand that even after adoption, infertile people can still feel their loss. I don't think I will ever know what combination of genes J. and I might have produced - what a child of ours would have looked like, would have been like. After I am dead, there will be no genetic record of me. My biology will be erased from the face of the earth. I won't ever know what it's like to have a baby inside me, and I won't know what it's like to nurse my child. I won't ever have a childbirth story to tell. I won't be a part of that mother's club. People will ask me where my child's "real mother" is.
I am sad today over the baby we lost and the babies we never conceived. I'm so looking forward to meeting our Max, but I am, nevertheless, still infertile.
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