Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Deepest, darkest time of my life and the road taken to get to acceptance and understanding.

In life there are two kinds of people those who put their needs before anyone else and those who abuse that flaw in others. I sit and remember back to a very dark time in my life and I'm not happy for all the things I did, but at that time they were things I did for me and no one else.

I have always been there for my friends and my family for whatever they needed. Much of my 4 years in High School I felt like a physiologist with as much listening I did for others. Even in college I was there to listen to others. While in college the people around me became people who would take the time to listen to me. I was still not to the point in my life when I would need people the most. It was about 2 1/2 years to 1 1/2 ago that I really needed people to switch that role and put my needs before their own some time...which I had always done for them in the past. When you are struggling with getting pregnant the last person you can go to is your husband, at least for me I couldn't. He knew he wasn't going to tell me to give up and he wasn't going to be mad at me for what was going on, but he was involved more and was hard for him to pull away and be rational with me in my darkest time. I needed my friends who I had been there for so many times before that. Instead I was ostracized from their life because at that time they were all having babies and being there for them was what I was suppose to do. I admit that part of the ostracizing was my own doing because being around baby planning was very painful at that time, but I wish people would have understand that even through the pain I was still happy for them, but it was pain and that can over shadow a lot in times.

As I came to acceptance/ understanding of what was going on and my husband and I starting researching adoption and foster care the pain became less, but unfortunately those friendships were no longer there anymore.  They can blame it all on me, but its not all on me. I guess that through this grieving process I wish I would have just had those people that I put my feelings aside for, for so many years put aside their ego, gloating, and expectations and understood that even while I was happy the pain was to deep and wouldn't allow my happiness to break through for a very long time.

Its hard to look back on one of the most depressing times of your life, but looking back what I see now is the people who were there for me....the unexpected people who I only knew for a few short years or even less, some whom were going through their own pregnancies but never made me feel less of a person for having my issues and understood how hard it was for me and who tried to help me with other possible solutions to our issue. These people I will always cherish in my life. I remember times of sadness with these people as they announced their pregnancies and all I wished for was the same feeling they had, but in the midst of all the excitement...they understood my sadness and grief and never made me feel that how I was feeling was wrong. I didn't jump for joy for them, I didn't cry with tears of happiness, I didn't scream with excitement....I was just happy for them, but at the same time part of me was dying inside with sadness and wanting for that same experience.

Now those feelings of pain are tamed ...I have a lot of ladies in my neighborhood pregnant or having kids and I can feel open to enjoying the happiness of children/ babies again because I know that when God shuts ones door he opens another. Some people never experience true depression and those people are very lucky. I just ask that if you have some around you going through depression in anyway try not to be selfish and try to understand what is going on before you blacklist them for not being the person they once were before because depression will change them into something they are not. I would delete people off my social media who were having babies or hide some of them because while I was happy for them the pain of ultrasound pictures and the baby countdowns and all that stuff was painful. It was something I had to do to make my life easier at the time. I don't regret doing those things....the things that helped me keep sane during the depression. I just hope that someday those people who stopped being my friend during that dark time can see and hopefully understand what I was going through and know that all I needed was for someone to listen to me and actually care. As much as people may not want to believe when you are struggling to get pregnant and reach the acceptance stage you have completed a full cycle of the grieving process. I completed mine and I'm very happy to be moving on. I just wish I had some of those friends that I had before the process began.

Lots of Love,
C&C

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Live, Laugh, Love

This week we completed week 3 of our adoption/foster care class. It was a much different feeling than week 2 where I was very overwhelmed. This week I anticipated would be difficult for me being about gains and losses. I thought they were going to focus mostly on infertility loss, boy was I wrong. The losses they showed us were losses that we all experience, these losses are called maturational losses. Examples are birth we lose the womb, but we gain life, or when we potty training we lost privacy, comfort (in diapers) but we gained some independence and dignity in being able to use the bathroom. These maturational losses and gains happen from birth till death, its the situational ones that are harder on us, like the loss of a job, or family member or in our case being put in foster care or being adopted means you have lost your parents. Now in most cases they didn't die but you lost what is normal to you and it wasn't planned that this would happen. In this class we became loss experts and we had to learn to identify what losses children had experienced and how to help them grieve. This also helped us identify what types of losses we could handle, if you have just lost a parent and haven't grieved yourself probably wouldn't be a good choice to take a child going through the same process, but if you have completed the process you could be a great choice to help this child through that tough time. We have to learn to live with what has happened and we learned that while children in foster care or who are adopted should never be forced or asked to accept what has happened to them, but to continue to live they need to understand what has happened to them and why.

One thing I love about our class is our classmates. All are there for many different reason and have a lot of experience. We can laugh about funny experience and learn from them. I was very overwhelmed last week and voiced that to my leaders and one of my classmates explained that its all about patience and love. I was told that with my experience in child care and seeing different levels of behavior I will be fine. All my experience in the past has given me a lot more hope that when we get our child (ren) we will be fine.  Our classes are not all serious we can laugh about funny things that are said or done and hearing how others have made mistakes that seem so silly now, but that you just have to be ok with apologizing for that mistake and hopefully you don't make it again.

We have our first home study visit next week and while I was very worried about that our class ensured us that we don't need to dust and go all crazy on cleaning, but there are things that are needed. Things even people who birth their own child should have. 1) fire extinguisher 2) carbon monoxide detector and 3) meds locked in a lock box. We learned that you should be no more than 40 feet from a extinguisher...that seems pretty excessive but they really aren't that expensive, ours was 18.99 at home depot. Carbon Monoxide is a big issue and everyone should have one in there house, just need 1 per floor. The one that most don't think about is meds. I have a lot of meds from my recent stint in the hospital for a blood clot and we were told everything down to Tylenol and sports rubs needs to be locked up. Again seems excessive but kids can get into this stuff at any age. We think of it mostly for babies or young kids but if you have a child who is going through depression in adolescents, pills could be a way for them hurt themselves, but if they are locked it reduces that risk. I would never tell anyone they have to do this, but we first thought this was going to be a pain in the butt, but it really has shown us how safe it will be. We are very excited for our home study because we will learn more about what types of children we want to take and ages and needs. I know that we are going to try to adopt a sibling group. I know many probably are thinking wow from no kids to two kids will be a huge change, but what many don't know is that sibling groups are really hard to place because people don't want to take that many children on. I would love to reassure a child that they will never be split from their siblings. The only thing I'm thinking about now as we go into the 4 class and our home study is only 6 more weeks and we can't wait to hopefully get 2 kiddos here to our family so we can just start loving those kiddos with all our heart.

Hope you all have a great weekend.
Lots of Love C&C

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Paper Pregnant

Last night I was doing my nighttime ritual where I get into bed and check email, Facebook, and Pinterest before I go to sleep. I ran across this neat blog that was talking about the similarities of the waiting process of pregnancy and adoption. This lady dubbed herself paper pregnant...I Love it.

While the typical waiting period can be drastically different for both you still have to wait and the same emotions come out during that time. From nesting to worrying about having everything right. I'm sadly going through this all now and it's crazy.

I can't dub ourselves as paper pregnant yet but in a few months we should be able to. 7 more classes left! Happy Hump Day!

Lots of Love C&C