Being a working mama means I have to spend a lot of energy making sure my priorities are straight. I'm guessing that moms who stay home with their kiddos have to occasionally (or often) check their priorities too, but working mamas face the challenge of earning a paycheck that at best requests (at worse requires) them directly to deprioritize their family in favor of doing the work that their paid to do.
I won't do that.
Of course, on some level being away from my kids and putting them in childcare at all is, to some degree, choosing work over being with them.
What stirs this thought is that today we were trying to make arrangements with the new caseworker on when to have the new kiddos placed in my home. Usually it's fairly easy to find a time where I could hang out away from work. I could work from home, I could go in late, or I could go home early. There's usually always some sort of option like that. Even if I have one day that's overbooked I could usually find at least one other that has flexibility.
This week it is not the case:
Monday - Jam packed work schedule - baseball game at 5:45-7:20.
Tuesday - Jam packed work schedule but I could have come home early. Until coach scheduled practice. Which was canceled due to weather, but by that time it was too late to arrange for a placement that night.
Wednesday - Jam packed, but the preferred day by the caseworker. Simultaneous team meetings from 8:30-11, simultaneous dentist appointment for little miss, new team meeting from 11:30-12:30, important meeting from 1-2:30, and interview from 3-5, followed by new team meet n greet 5-7. *Sigh*
Thursday - Jam packed work schedule, double booked from 3-4 with new team meeting and dissertation checkup meeting, school at night.
Friday - WIDE OPEN...but no one wants to wait that long.
So I was left trying to figure out which meeting I needed to get out of on Wednesday. The only one that was remotely logical was the meet n greet at night, which isn't a great choice because that is when I'm supposed to meet all my new coworkers (and, we were headed to a fancy schmancy restaurant downtown). But that's what I did and I really didn't blink an eye.
As I was thinking about my choice certain words rang in my head - words I've heard several times in the last month as we've prepared to welcome 4 different kiddos into our home.
"I don't know how you do it. Your life changes on a dime and you just adjust".
Most of the time that comment is from working mamas.
How do I do it? I don't know. A little bit of mie and a BIG dose of God. That's the easy answer. But this question really does confuse me a bit because I think - How could I not do it? This is my family? In my head it's not even a choice. And then it hit me - in some people's heads it's not a choice to miss work. I'm not a person who drops my responsibilities either...
...but I'm a mama who tries very hard to make sure her priorities are in order with God first and family a close second. Only then comes work - and whatever else tries to distract me from the important things in life.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Tuesday Tears - ...and infertility remains
Many, many (though not all) people enter the world of fostering & adoption because of some sort of infertility and therefore orphan care is a 2nd choice - at least it starts out that way. Now, this is not true of everyone, but I'd be lying if I said that wasn't how we started out.
For a summary, or the detailed thought process, behind our decision to become foster parents with the hopes to adopt, check out our choices and our decision. Basically, we have been dealt male factor infertility due to a situation that occured before or shortly after birth that we wern't aware of until 2009. Or at least we weren't aware how it affected fertility.
The folks at RESOLVE.org talk about resolving infertility. It's not always a cure. The purpose of resolution is to get through infertility and its affect on your life and getting through to "the other side" - resolution through being childless (and ok with that), through successful fertility treatments, through adoption or fostering. Resolution - being ok with your situation and moving on with your life.
I don't know if resolution is really a goal. I mean, it is a nice thought and something to strive for I suppose, I just don't know if that's the end...maybe it's a by-product of the process, hopefully, but well...I just don't know.
I mentioned to some people recently about how this year seems to promise it will be hard. My son turns 5 later this year, which means everywhere I turn around is the 5th anniversary of something related to his pregnancy and birth. The 5th anniversary of the day I found out I was pregnant. The 5th anniversary of the day we found out we were having a boy...For some reason the 5th anniversary is offering a lot of memories and with them reminders of how long it has been without being pregnant and having more of our own children.
Furthermore, (who writes that in a blog), the longer it goes without a pregnancy the closer we get to probably not having any more of our own kiddos. That's hard to deal with. I'm still in my 20s, but not for long....I'm not sure (and no one ever is) how long I'll have the chance to get pregnant myself...how long it will be before the chances of IVF-ICSI success are diminished completely...before "can't" actually means physically can't for sure instead of "slim-to-none" chance. The longer it goes the less time we have to save up and try to afford IVF and since we're not moving toward that savings right now we'd be starting from scratch.
And then there's the thought about when we'd want to stop having kids. I always wanted to have kids 15-18 months apart. By the time my son was 5, I'd imagined we'd have 4 kids, thinking soon about #5 (if I could get my husband to think about that!). I figured I'd have a whole slew of biological kiddos by now. But when would I want to stop going through the baby phase? I mean, I want Logie to have a biological sibling, but if they are 10 years apart do they lose some of the benefits of having a biological sibling? I mean 5 or 6 years apart is pretty far - I worry they wouldn't be close.
At this point I'd like to acknowledge that I've never had control over my fertility, obviously, yet crazy as I am I still think somehow that I get a say!
Will I ever be pregnant again? I don't know. I'm not ready to give up on that dream yet. I'm not ready to "resolve" that totally. Some people talk about how they come to the point of wanting to be parents vs. wanting to be pregnant. Clearly I want to be a parent and I LOVE being a foster parent, looking forward to the day(s) we get to adopt our forever kids. But, having experienced it once, I do want to experience it again. I want to have more biological kids. I would like to experience childbirth and nursing and having "my own" again.
I don't think the odds are high. The more and more we head down this path the more and more I feel like God is moving us away from more biological kids. I'm ready to be ok with what God has for us. I'm just not ready to accept that is His plan. Not yet anyway. Does that make sense?
I still think God could do it. Yes, it's possible that when we adopt we'll finally get pregnant again. It's possible we'll get to the point one day where God will take away the desire for more biological kiddos. I don't know. In the meantime I'll just have to trust that God's plan is the best and He'll do something great in our lives in the meantime.
But so far our infertility hasn't been totally resolved.
For a summary, or the detailed thought process, behind our decision to become foster parents with the hopes to adopt, check out our choices and our decision. Basically, we have been dealt male factor infertility due to a situation that occured before or shortly after birth that we wern't aware of until 2009. Or at least we weren't aware how it affected fertility.
The folks at RESOLVE.org talk about resolving infertility. It's not always a cure. The purpose of resolution is to get through infertility and its affect on your life and getting through to "the other side" - resolution through being childless (and ok with that), through successful fertility treatments, through adoption or fostering. Resolution - being ok with your situation and moving on with your life.
I don't know if resolution is really a goal. I mean, it is a nice thought and something to strive for I suppose, I just don't know if that's the end...maybe it's a by-product of the process, hopefully, but well...I just don't know.
I mentioned to some people recently about how this year seems to promise it will be hard. My son turns 5 later this year, which means everywhere I turn around is the 5th anniversary of something related to his pregnancy and birth. The 5th anniversary of the day I found out I was pregnant. The 5th anniversary of the day we found out we were having a boy...For some reason the 5th anniversary is offering a lot of memories and with them reminders of how long it has been without being pregnant and having more of our own children.
Furthermore, (who writes that in a blog), the longer it goes without a pregnancy the closer we get to probably not having any more of our own kiddos. That's hard to deal with. I'm still in my 20s, but not for long....I'm not sure (and no one ever is) how long I'll have the chance to get pregnant myself...how long it will be before the chances of IVF-ICSI success are diminished completely...before "can't" actually means physically can't for sure instead of "slim-to-none" chance. The longer it goes the less time we have to save up and try to afford IVF and since we're not moving toward that savings right now we'd be starting from scratch.
And then there's the thought about when we'd want to stop having kids. I always wanted to have kids 15-18 months apart. By the time my son was 5, I'd imagined we'd have 4 kids, thinking soon about #5 (if I could get my husband to think about that!). I figured I'd have a whole slew of biological kiddos by now. But when would I want to stop going through the baby phase? I mean, I want Logie to have a biological sibling, but if they are 10 years apart do they lose some of the benefits of having a biological sibling? I mean 5 or 6 years apart is pretty far - I worry they wouldn't be close.
At this point I'd like to acknowledge that I've never had control over my fertility, obviously, yet crazy as I am I still think somehow that I get a say!
Will I ever be pregnant again? I don't know. I'm not ready to give up on that dream yet. I'm not ready to "resolve" that totally. Some people talk about how they come to the point of wanting to be parents vs. wanting to be pregnant. Clearly I want to be a parent and I LOVE being a foster parent, looking forward to the day(s) we get to adopt our forever kids. But, having experienced it once, I do want to experience it again. I want to have more biological kids. I would like to experience childbirth and nursing and having "my own" again.
I don't think the odds are high. The more and more we head down this path the more and more I feel like God is moving us away from more biological kids. I'm ready to be ok with what God has for us. I'm just not ready to accept that is His plan. Not yet anyway. Does that make sense?
I still think God could do it. Yes, it's possible that when we adopt we'll finally get pregnant again. It's possible we'll get to the point one day where God will take away the desire for more biological kiddos. I don't know. In the meantime I'll just have to trust that God's plan is the best and He'll do something great in our lives in the meantime.
But so far our infertility hasn't been totally resolved.
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