Nov
Diversity and National Adoption Month
Posted in Funny Things, Life as Mom, Marriage, family, job | 1 Comment »Sometimes the infertility monster comes out and still hurts…sometimes I wonder if Donald and I were able to have a biological child what that child would have looked like. Sometimes I think back to when we were first married and we would talk about the kids we would have some day, wondering if the children would look more than me or Donald.
These feelings of sadness are shortlived and fleeting. I am so glad the time period between 04 – 07 is over; that waiting and being depressed and feeling guilty about infertility was terrible. I am also glad, though, that our social worker warned us that even after we adopted the infertility monster would come back and haunt us. It’s more the fact that we’re different, than the fact we can’t have biological children. I threw down our American Baby magazine in disgust because there was a huge article on “Which one of you will your baby look like?” and how to pick which genes might be carried down. Yes, that is the way most people have babies, is by getting pregnant. But I hate when it’s always assumed that’s how you have your family. I guess it’s good that not everyone is infertile, I just wish there was more sensitivity.
It’s National Adoption Awareness Month, so our Diversity Club put up a bulletin board in our largest breakroom about me, Donald and Joshua. I am very tickled by it – there are some photos of Joshua’s birthday, his “Gotcha” day, and a write up I did on our adoption story.
It struck me, though, thinking about the Diversity Club doing a bulletin board on adoption. The purpose of the Diversity Club is to educate and promote differences in the work place. I guess it just hit me that we are a different and a diverse family. It started hitting me as I looked back on Josh’s birthday photos. I wasn’t in a hospital gown, tired after just giving birth, like every other new mom photo.
Our new parent photos are Donald and I in chairs in the NICU unit, I am wearing a bright orange shirt and makeup so Josh could see me more clearly. The first time we saw Josh was after he was all cleaned up and in a diaper. We don’t have any sonograms (or 3-D sonograms!!) like some moms have in their scrapbooks. Josh has brown eyes, Donald and I both have blue. Josh was born with olivey skin and dark slightly curly hair, Donald and I were both very, very blonde when we were little. I didn’t buy maternity clothes, or have that panicked “Oh my gosh the pregnancy test is positive!” call to my husband.
What do we have?
On April 4, 2008, we got an email from our social worker that said simply, “Call me! I have good news!” Donald called her, spoke to her for about 45 minutes, then called me at work to tell me we’d be chosen to adopt a baby boy set to be induced April 16, 08. I got off the phone and hollared around at work to ANYONE around me that we were getting a baby! In 12 days, we converted our guest room to a nursery, bought clothes and bottles, figured out how FMLA worked, and had a family shower and a work shower. On April 18, 2008, when we were leaving the hospital, Donald was in the backseat with Josh, and I was driving. Donald burst into tears and said, “I just can’t believe it, I just love him so much.” That’s the way it’s been, since that first night we took turns staying up all night with him, we knew he was ours because there was no one else. The nurses & our family gave us advice, but he was our responsibility, our child, our Joshua, and we loved him from the moment we saw him. Whenever I look at photos of him, or when I play with him or dance with him, I love him more.
This is so silly. Donald talks about the Three Amigos movie a lot (plus Donald is a huge Steve Martin fan). Well, the movie came on Friday night, and during the song “My little buttercup” Joshua was SQUEAKING and LAUGHING and JUMPING UP AND DOWN! It was hilarious! All I could say to Donald was, “He’s your kid!” It’s just funny little things like that, even though he doesn’t look like us, sometimes he’ll do things that I know God is telling us he’s our baby.