Dispatches From The Middle Of The Ocean

If you're in a hurry, come back when you've got a cup of tea and a bit of time to spare, because this is l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng. And honestly? I feel a bit fragile about publishing this, but I think I'm just going to click the button and try not to think too hard about putting it out there.

I'm going to level with you and tell you that right now, I find it hard to read about people's happy family adoption stories. I find myself assuming that life really is like that all the time for everyone else. It's one endless round of creative playtime, where appropriately-developing children are watched over happily by an adoring mamma. This adoring mamma spends the children's naptimes crafting Ethiopia-themed toys for them, rather than sitting around in her dressing gown and wishing she could have a G&T. I read these stories and I know that that nobody is making a hash of things like me. Right now, I even find it hard reading about the bubbling excitement of people who are preparing to travel - forgive me, please - because I know, I just know that all of these people are going to be better, happier parents than me. They won't be feeling like this, fifteen months on. How could they? They're about to be given the greatest gift of all, a child. How could they ever feel anything other than grateful for that gift? Of course, there will be hard days, but they will always feel basically content and appreciative. They won't find their fantasies suddenly shifting from fluffy blankets and babies to how much they would like to find themselves stranded, alone, on a desert island. How could they? Only an awful person would have thoughts like that.

And actually, that awful person never used to be me. When we came home with our babies, we had a tough (tough!) transition into parenthood, like most normal human beings. But after a few weeks, things started to feel normal again, and then they even started to feel good. And I liked that. Finally, I got to be a mother to these two wonderful little human beings, and it was good. Hard, but good.

Mostly, I felt like I was walking along a road that I could manage. When the hard times came, it was like the road led straight into a lake, and I found myself swimming instead of walking. Swimming takes a lot more effort, and there is nowhere to rest. The early sleep deprivation felt like one of those lakes. The hunger strike of 2010 felt like one of those lakes. They were hard, and I was tired, but there was land all around me and I knew that eventually I would get across the lake and be back on dry ground. The lakes were not fun, but they were always finite, and they felt like just a small part of a life that I could mostly manage.

This is pretty much what I thought parenting was going to be like. Then overnight, someone came and took my sweet munchkin babies away and replaced them with toddlers. I've got to say - I'm not entirely sure that it was a good trade.

And now, it feels like the lakes have become bigger and bigger. There's the lake of 'who was I kidding when I thought I could manage working and parenting', which is adjacent to the lake of 'I really wish that my husband could occasionally get home before 9pm' and not far from Lake 'bye bye, morning naps, and therefore bye bye, morning housework' which was definitely not on my map for this part of the journey. But these are small bodies of water compared to the chain of lakes known as 'Toddler Behaviour'. Lake 'I would prefer to sit in this dirty, stinking nappy until my bottom rots off than let you change me' is much bigger than expected, and I've been swimming through that for months and months. Lake 'biting and scratching' is not beautiful, and nor is Lake 'I demand that you give me that sharp knife / burning liquid / electrical cord right now'. We've also been trying to swim our way through Lake 'Surprise! New attachment issues!' which will have its own post. Of all of these, Lake 'Extreme unpredictability' is probably my least favourite. It's alternative name is Lake 'This might be a wonderful day or an awful day and you have no way of knowing' . I do not like it. I do not think that it has a booming tourist trade.

And the thing is - I'm in the middle of all of this and then one day I look around me and I realise that the landscape has changed. The lakes have begun to run into each other until I'm really not in a lake anymore, I'm in an ocean. There are islands in the ocean, like the island of Pink finally learning to say 'duck' and the island of their unbearable, hilarious cuteness. Some of them are big islands - two weeks ago, we had a perfect weekend where they were cherubs throughout. I do get to spend time on dry ground. But now it's the land that feels finite. Even when I'm standing, I look around me and I'm surrounded by ocean. And when I'm back in the water, I don't know when it's going to end.

Maybe that's too metaphorical. And I was prepared that things would be hard. What surprises me is that sometimes, these days are as difficult to endure as the very hardest days of it just being the two of us. Three, if you count the cat. I still, regularly, have times when I cannot stop myself thinking I do not know how I am going to survive this day.

On these days, I find it hard to like my children, and I certainly don't like myself. On these days, it seems always to be nine thirty in the morning, or four thirty in the afternoon. Mostly I feel like I can get through, but one day in a hundred I just want to jump off the top of a very tall building. Okay, one in fifty. At the moment, maybe one in ten. And the worst part - on these days, I see so many sides of myself that I would prefer would stay hidden. Angry sides. Irritable sides. Lazy sides. I see impatient, bored, cranky sides until it seems that I have turned into nothing but a dodecahedron of maternal vices.

Once I was jealous of women who planned their babies around their summer holidays. Now, I'm jealous of women who have any form of domestic help, who have husbands who come home in time to help with bedtime, who have parents close enough to babysit, who have (again, forgive me) only one child, whose two-or-more children don't turn their living room into a scene from Lord of the Flies the moment their back is turned, or, most of all, women who don't have any of that yet somehow manage to retain their sense of humour and perspective.

I knew that the hard road I walked to motherhood would not stop me finding motherhood difficult once I got there. I knew that feeling sad about childlessness would not innoculate me against finding motherhood tough. I knew that. But I suppose that all the grief I felt, all the worry, all the sadness... I thought that would innoculate me against feeling ambivalent about motherhood. I knew it would be hard, but I thought that hard meant difficult. I thought it would mean I would get to the end of the day and think That was incredibly tough. I didn't think that I would get to the end of the day and think I'm not sure that I want to do this anymore.

You'd better believe I have a lot of adoption-related guilt about admitting that I feel ambivalent about mothering right now. My kids are wonderful, adorable, insanely delicious little bundles of humanity - you know I know that, right? I love them with all my heart. And yet so often, at the moment, I wake up in the morning and my first thought is "oh no". So yes. There is lots of guilt. I can't believe that anyone else in my shoes would feel like this.

I think that adoptive parents are often a bit quieter than others about the times when we find parenting really difficult, especially when we are together, whether online or in real life. I always assumed this was because we were more fundamentally grateful for what we'd got. And maybe that's true, but I'm beginning to wonder if it is also because we are just a bit guilty or ashamed of feeling this way about something that we wanted so much. Actually, I'll lose the non-specific plural and speak for myself: I think I don't want to admit just how hard I have been finding things lately because it makes me feel guilty and ashamed.

And even when we bare our souls, and talk about the hard parts, there's some kind of obligation to finish on an up-ending. I do it myself, all the time. Earlier today, I got really cranky at Blue because he was grabbing his bottom when it was covered in poo. Pink was grabbing my knees and shrieking and then Blue tried to wriggle away and nearly fell off the change table and the day's traumas all hit me at once and I thought 'I can't take this anymore!' and then I put my elbows on the change table and my head in my hands and I started to cry. But then he reached out and stroked my hair and made humming noises and I realised that it was all worth it. End of story, right? What I haven't mentioned is that he stroked my hair with the same hand he had used to touch his poopy butt, and within two minutes he was yelling about something else when I still hadn't recovered from the first thing. And although they can go from sunshine to storms and back again in the blink of an eye, I can't keep up. If one of them has a tantrum, they get over it immediately but I'm still reeling from it, heart pounding, ten minutes later. Spending the days with them is like trying to go ten rounds with a pair of weebles. The up-ending is never the end of the story, unless it happens as I'm shutting their door at bedtime. Sometimes the dominant emotion of the day really is ambivalence, and it's best friend, extreme adoptive guilt.

But I don't really like to admit it. In fact, my brain won't even really let me believe that I feel this way. Yesterday, I went to visit a friend. On the way back, we were walking along in the late winter sunshine. I would sing a pattern of notes, then Blue would echo it back, then I would sing another, and he would echo again. Pink was sometimes joining in, and sometimes turning around and grinning at me and I don't think that I've ever been happier in my life. And as we were walking, I was thinking about writing this, and some kind of cranial override function kicked in. Don't be ridiculous, Claudia, my brain told me. Why would you write that silly thing you've been thinking about? You don't feel ambivalent about being a mother! You love being a mother! See how much fun this is? And I argued back But ambivalent doesn't mean it's always bad, it just means I have mixed emotions. And it's not always like this. Yesterday it was awful. I remember. And then my brain said No, you don't! You're imagining it. It wasn't awful at all. Maybe it was difficult, but it wasn't awful. And I replied Hang on, I'm pretty sure it was actually awful, and I was feeling like I was going to scream until something shattered but the override function said Don't be silly, Claudia. You're so grateful to finally be a mother after waiting so long, how could you possibly have felt like that? You're imagining things. It was fine. You were fine. and by the end of the walk home, I pretty much had myself convinced that I was overreacting, that I had imagined how I felt that other time. I guess it's this sort of brain programming that convinces people that yes, they really would like another kid. *

I find myself just so very certain that I can't possibly be feeling anything substantial other than gratitude. Sometimes I act as if God and I had a one-time deal while I was waiting - God, if you can get me through this awful bit of my life then I promise, I promise I'll never bother you again. I'll never find anything else difficult, ever again, I promise. But God doesn't make deals, and if he did, he wouldn't make a deal like that. I need to learn, so many times, and in so many different ways that the God who helped me through childlessness has not changed and abandoned me now that I've got kids. I am allowed to admit - to Him, and to myself - just how much help I still need. He sets the lonely in families, but he also grants rest to the weary and right now I am reminded how much I need that rest because I feel very, very weary**.

If you're looking for an up-ending, here is the best I can come up with: there is one saving grace about this ocean that I find myself floundering it. This time in my life might be just as hard as childlessness, but it is nowhere near as isolating. Some days, I still feel profoundly miserable, but the difference is: I can say it out loud. I find it hard to admit to other adopters, as I've already said, and I do try to have a filter and not moan to childless people.*** But In my day-to-day life, it's ridiculously easy to find sympathy. I don't have to do that 'hmmm, she's older than me, been married for a while, doesn't have any kids, I wonder if maybe we might have this in common' reconnaissance that used to be necessary before sending out tentative conversational feelers. Instead, random strangers in cafes raise their eyebrows and say 'Twins!' and ask me how my day has been, and if I answer honestly, they say encouraging things in reply. In fact, the rest of the world is much kinder to me about this than I am to myself. While I'm thinking 'how can I be so ungrateful for such a wonderful gift?' other people are saying "oooh, that sounds terrible, you really deserve that coffee!" A few days ago someone asked me how old my kids were, and when I said eighteen months she shuddered and said 'oh, that's a dreadful age' and I nearly kissed her. Sometimes I think that what we want in life is not happiness so much as connection, and some days I think that the only reason I think I'll eventually get to the other side of this ocean is because of the solidarity that other people have offered me on the way.

It's the exact opposite of what I used to experience while we were waiting, when I felt like my suffering was real but the world ignored it. In fact, this parental solidarity was probably the hardest thing I faced, while we were waiting. The reason that I, in my childlessness, felt so isolated was that everyone else seemed to be complicit in the assumption that parenthood was the hardest thing ever, the only trial worth talking about. And now, I appreciate it so much on the other side and I can see why everyone is doing it, why we all feel like we need that validation.

In other words - all those ungrateful, whiny parents who were made me miserable while we were waiting? I get it. I finally, finally, finally get it. I got it intellectually at the time, but now I get it. I'm not saying that I think it was okay to complain like that to a childless person, because it wasn't. It was thoughtless and selfish and unkind. But I think that now I can see how easy it is to be thoughtless, and selfish, and unkind when life feels like nothing but seawater, all around. (I've probably displayed all three of those already today in some direction or other, which must make me eligible for some kind of award).

In fact, I'm going to be honest and tell you - if I hadn't been through what I've been through, right now I would talk about nothing else except for how tough this is. Ever. I would have no filter. I would accost people at parties (if I went to parties). I would bore people at work (oh hang on, I do bore people at work). If I met someone without any kids, I would probably say 'hey, are you SURE you want them? It's harder than you think, HA HA HA'. In fact, it is horribly, terrifyingly, chillingly possible that I would say something to them like if you want a kid, you can take one of mine!

Excuse me while I sit here for a moment in shame.

And I don't, of course, but the part of me that wants to is big enough for the rest of me to reel in horror and think how did I become this unforgiveable hypocrite? I feel like I've betrayed my old self. If I could talk to Claudia-from-the-past, I would beg her understanding and reassure her that I haven't forgotten what life used to feel like. I would also try to gently remind her that life is not the Pain Olympics. That pain was awful. It's over. I couldn't be more thankful. But that doesn't mean that I have to hang onto it forever, or this isn't real, or that there might not be new, different oceans ahead. (And then I would run away, quickly, because I'm really not sure she would agree and I'm pretty sure she could take me in a fight).

And so I continue to swim. I don't think I'll be here forever. A few people have said that two and a half is the magic age where things suddenly get better. Then, or later, or hopefully before, I'm hoping to see the shore again. But in the meantime, here I am. Anybody know where I can buy a boat?





* who knows. Maybe one day. But I think I would need a lot more cranial override action first.

**This is not a discussion of adoption theology. I have opinions on adoption theology (quelle surprise) but this is not the post where I'm writing about them.

***unless you're reading this blog, in which case I apologise. But I kind of wish I'd had some straight talk about this stuff from someone who had been on both sides of the fence before I adopted, so maybe I'm not apologising that much. You can choose.