Did I mention I hate transition?

How can a person who absolutely LOVES change, hate transitions? It doesn't make sense to me, but that's who I am. Actually, alot of my preferences and idiosyncracies don't make sense to me, but I digress. Anyway, what I want to say is that I HATE the transition period.

This is something alot of adoptive families won't talk about. Oh sure, there are families come home and live in "Perfect" (you know, the town in the Walgreen's commercial.) But for what I believe to be a majority of us, transition is hard. It's fraught with moments of peril, exhaustion, and absolute loss for what to do with this stranger in your home. Did you ever think about things like, how did she get herself to sleep, why does she sing non-stop (it's very cute, but I wonder if it's a stress coping mechanism for her because she seems to sing faster when she's stressed), why does she tug at her diaper and cry (is it before or after she's peed in it?) I mean, these are just the tip of the iceberg. You could go deeper with questions like, how do I make my other kids feel like their life isn't totally disrupted for her? How do I let my youngest (who's birth order has been disrupted) know that he is still just as precious and special to me today as he was a month ago? How do I help him, me, my DH, my other sons all cope with this new little person and the demands she brings with her. That's to say NOTHING of the soothing and loving I am trying to give her each day as I know she is under more stress than any of us. This tiny little beautiful creature has held up amazingly better than most of the rest of us.

Anyway, again I'm "on the road to Mexico", a term I'll explain some other day. What is really sad is that most families won't talk about this stress. After our first adoption, I felt like I didn't have the "right" to complain because we had tried so hard and so long to be parents. The couple of times I did express exhaustion, confusion, or discontent, I was met with responses like, "You waited so long for this." Or, "This is what you wanted." I mean, really, let's get serious people, would you ever say something like that to the mother of a newborn who has colic? P-L-E-A-S-E!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After my second adoption, my social worker even "criticized" me, saying that I was allowing them to have power over me and that they were trying to control me. Only our pediatrician was a light in the darkness of that transition! My oldest son HATED my middle son for many months. Every single photo of the boys from the first six months is exactly the same. Jack has his arm around Liam in what would appear to be a loving gesture. My neighbor said he was trying to love Liam to death because there was always an expression of gritted teeth on Jack's face and Liam was always screaming and trying to get away from the head-lock Jack was trying to pass off as a hug. We joke now when they fight and say Jack's still not over the fact that he's no longer an only child! :)

Now that we have Meg, I again feel that I am not allowed to experience a negative emotion. The old "this is what you wanted" keeps thumping through my head, this time a stark reality that this, truly, is what I wanted. And also, when you have four kids and you mention that you're tired, you run the risk of someone saying, "Well, duh, what did you think it would be like." I mean, so many people have made sweet and well-meant comments about "Four, wow, you guys are amazing." or some other such polite way of saying, "Have you completely lost your mind!?" But I know there are other mothers out there who are frustrated, tired, confused, exhausted, and just plain sick of TRANSITION! I am not ashamed to say that "Yes, I did want this! I STILL want it. I desperately wanted a daughter and thank God 21,347 times a day for her and the three other beautiful kids He's given me. I love every single thing about being a parent (well, maybe not the voyeurs who watch me shower, potty, and every other personal thing imaginable, but you know, most of it is great.) Anyway, I think you can have it both ways. I think you can absolutely love parenting. You can be thankful beyond words for the gifts God has given you, but also worn out by them at the same time.

I think the jet-lag is just now kicking in. I've hit a wall today that I saw out there in front of me for several days. It's like I saw it on the horizon, I knew I was getting closer to it, but it still snuck up on me. When I hit it this afternoon around 5:00, it was as if it popped up out of the ground without warning and I almost panicked. I was at a swim meet with my two oldest boys. I stood up to take a photo of my son at the finish line and Meg lost sight of me (I didn't move, I was still right in front of her, but there was a crowd and it freaked her pretty bad), she started to sob! I picked her up and all of a sudden, my three-year-old just went off the edge he had been clinging to. He wanted to be held too. Mind you he weighs about 45 pounds and she weighs 23. It's not exactly an easy task to tote the two of them through a crowd and across a parking lot. I decided I had to leave NOW, but neither of them would get in the stroller or let any of the neighbors/friends moms hold them or help me. Now, I am a person with pretty significant clostrophobia. All of a sudden, I was trapped in the middle of this crowd of people, and all I could think of was, "How am I going to get out of here?" I didn't disguise my panic very well, but managed to hold the tears in until I got outside the pool gate. Luckily my sister (from another mother) was right by my side and just loving me in her amazing way. I made it to the car, drenched in sweat and tears and just utterly sucked dry. I had nothing left in me.

See, the risk I run in sharing this story is that people I know will read this, people who haven't adopted, and they will feel sorry for me. They will start to call and ask if I'm okay or if I'm better. They will imagine in their minds that things are worse than they are. (We've all had a bad day with our kids, it's just that during transition, you don't have the "answers" to getting it back on track.) They will form some inkling of a negative thought about how hard adoption is. I run the risk of overshadowing the AMAZING things the Lord has done for us in the past months. And He has showed out for us in a number of ways and a number of occasions. I don't want to take away from any of that. I want everyone to know that I can be exhausted, hurting for my youngest son in transition, hurting for Meg in her transition, hurting for my husband as he tries to bond with our daughter, worried about his stress level in trying to provide for six people, and STILL be over the moon, overjoyed, elated, ecstatic, and SOOOOOO thankful to have a daughter, this particular daughter, and be home and blessed to be experiencing this with my amazing family. So if I know ahead of time the risk I run and the reaction I will get from some folks, then why even mention it? Because I have counseled enough families who are ashamed of these feelings and feel alone in the wilderness of transition. These families are so surprised to hear that alot of other people feel this way too. This is something that isn't spoken of much in the adoption community. Our tidy little secret that most people won't even admit to themselves. I too even feel the need to balance the white flag of exhaustion with the disclaimer "but I am really happy... really!"

Anyway, I'm rambling (on and on and on) at this point. My main point is just to say that if you are in transition, don't feel like you don't have the right to those feelings. Don't feel like you don't have the right to be bewildered and confused and exhausted. Everyone knows that moms of newborns are exhausted. New moms are able to say they are tired and everyone understands, because alot of people have BTDT. It's no different if you've adopted... no different, so don't feel guilty about those feelings, they are just a part of it. It doesn't mean you don't love your child more than life! Even some new moms don't have the kind of friendships where they can be genuine about their feelings. I remember one time a family member went to dinner with me and my close girlfriends. We were all laughing about our kids, complaining about not being able to finish a phone conversation, talking about things that drive us crazy (mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, MOM!!! MOM!!!!!, get the picture) and my family member came away from that night saying how freeing it was to her to hear us sharing so genuinely with each other. She hadn't heard women share that honestly with one another about their feelings and she wondered why no one else felt as exhausted and worn down as she did until she heard my friends laughing about it and commiserating. So I am saying, this isn't an adoption phenomena by any means, but I think we have an extra veil of guilt about feeling anything other than absolute elation! So, I'm coming out of my closet, so to speak, and I hope you will all give me the grace to say this and not feel sorry for me or worried about it. It's a totally natural feeling in a long and tedious process of melding a family together. But it doesn't take away one ounce of the joy I feel for all that's transpired in my life to date. On the contrary, I already know three times over what the transition transforms your family into, how it stretches and strengthens ALL the relationships around you, particularly with your spouse, and it's one of the things that eventually is one of the greatest blessings of parenting AND adoption!

I really suppose I don't have to worry about many comments, if you're still reading at this point, you are definitely either very bored or a fellow PAP! :)

Hebrews 13:5
"Never, no never will I leave you nor forsake you."