Billie
Joined: 29 Apr 2000
Posts: 1206
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 A big/little sister?
(1 comment)
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I did something foolish today. Perhaps it is the day--mother's day--that made me feel like I could do even more mothering than I already do. I went to our adoption agency's website and found a little girl who tugs at my heart strings.
I have been saying for quite some time now that I am "probably" done, that our family is most likely complete with three kids. And yet I have continued to visit the waiting child list, once every few weeks. And in the nearly two years that I have been doing this, I have only found one other child who tugged at my heart strings like this.
(That child was born within two days of LiLi and would have created de facto twins. I even contacted our agency about her. I have always wanted twins, but our agency doesn't allow artificial twinning, and requires that children be at least a year apart in age.)
DH and I have said that if we have another child, it will be an older child and adopted, either internationally or from foster care. I always thought this would be years down the road, if at all, when our other kids were in high school and the adopted child would be the youngest.
Then, a few weeks ago, I thought I was pregnant (I was a week late). I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep as I considered the prospect. A part of me was excited--I've always wanted four kids. A bigger part of me was stressed out about it, about starting over again with a newborn, about having a child who was four years younger than the next youngest and eight years younger than the oldest (I've always wanted my kids relatively closely spaced). I tried to think through the bedroom configurations--who would share with whom depending on whether it was a boy or a girl. I worried about being able to afford another daycare for another five years, and I wasn't thrilled at the thought of locking us into two drop-offs and pick-ups for another five or six years. And though our car is an eight-passenger, it gets complicated with so many car seats because if they're in the middle seat, you can't lay the seat down to get in the back, and if they're in the back, you can't easily reach them to buckle.
The things keeping me up that night were practical considerations, not that I didn't want another child. I took a pregnancy test the next and saw two lines. My stomach dropped and I was near tears, but before panicking completely, I figured I should read the directions. Turns out it was one of those tests that always shows a second line and you're only pregnant if it shows a plus sign. So not pregnant, and very relieved.
When I was looking at the waiting child list today and saw a little girl who is between Will and Ned in age (one year older than Ned, 18 months younger than Will), it all seemed to fall into place. Perhaps this fourth child wasn't meant to be the baby of the family, adopted at some distant point in the future. Perhaps she was meant to be a middle child, a little sister to Will, and a big sister to Ned and Freddy.
What spoke to me first was the expression on her face. She looks so solemn and like she's looking right at me. When I read about her, she seemed even more perfect for our family. She is active and agile. She does well in school and can spell simple words and do simple addition. She gets along well with other kids. She loves to participate in theatrical productions in the orphanage. And she had a repaired cleft palate and lip, a special need we are already familiar with.
All of the concerns I had with having or adopting a baby do not apply here. My kids would still be close together and span the same time from youngest to oldest, there would just be one more of them. She would be close enough in age to all of my kids to bond with them and be a full-fledged member of the family, not an afterthought (which I think sometimes happens when the other kids are much older). She'd be closest in age to the boys, but even so, she and Freddy are only 2.5 years apart and could easily share a bedroom for now.
And adopting her wouldn't prolong our two-drop off and two-pick up stint, nor would we have the expense of full-time daycare. As a matter of fact, the cost of this little girl and Neddy being in the before and after school program at school is the same cost as Neddy going full-time at the Montessori school, so our daycare expenses wouldn't even go up.
Now, I don't want to get caught up in her dark brown eyes and let my heart lead the way. Or rather, my heart can lead the way (because surely there is no other good reason to do this), but my head needs to be engaged as well. It would add more work and stress to the household, and there could be adjustment problems, attachment problems, behavioral problems, etc. But what little I read about her on-line looks really positive--her ability to form relationship with other kids, her success in school.
I brought up the idea to DH, thinking he would immediately shoot me down. And he did. He said he wants to get our finances in order first. Truth be told, our finances are in better shape than they've ever been. We actually have money in savings, we are saving a healthy sum each month towards retirement and college for the kids, we're nearly done with my student loan and the car has only one year left on it. Granted, we have been talking lately about adding onto the house or moving overseas, but I really think we can do this adoption and the other things, though it might take us a little bit longer (like an extra year or two).
I kept feeding him little tidbits of information about her, showed him her picture on-line, and told him to think about it. I thought he'd reiterate his "no" but instead he said, "I am thinking about it." So...who knows.
I can see some of you out there shaking your heads. Haven't I spent the last year complaining about how overwhelmed I am? And you're right, I have. But I have also been feeling much better the past few months, since last fall, really (with only the occasional relapse). DH hasn't been traveling the past few months and I can't tell you how nice that is. Our life is very manageable, even with the kids and the pets and the house and our jobs, when DH isn't traveling. His travel will likely pick up again at some point, as the global economy picks up, but I am committed to finding a way to keep life manageable when he is out of town.
That might mean I cut back a bit at work so I can pick the kids up after school, or it might mean hiring a neighbor girl or boy to help out in the evenings when he's gone, or it might mean a nanny (which, if we decided was a necessity, we could pay for, though it might mean cutting out college savings), or it might mean an au pair. We actually have a lot of options; we would just have to be willing to explore them. I keep coming back to: should I let our life circumstances dictate the kind of family I have, or should I let the kind of family I want dictate our life circumstances?
Right now, life feels relatively balanced between family and work. Adopting this fourth child would definitely tilt the scale and family would, out of necessity, require more time and energy than work. I would have to accept that my primary role is that of mother, and career would be a distant second. But I'm okay with that.
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 Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 11:52 am
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