Starting again

I decided I'd create a new blog. Got a few others along with Twitter, facebook, googlewave, myspace et al. Can you tell I'm a social network junkie? lol

Anyway - this blog is going to be about adoption through my eyes and my experiences of it.

I'm mother to two children through adoption and it's been an interesting and rewarding journey so far. I'll maybe start from when I got married so you can follow the whole journey. It's long, it's sometimes sad, so be prepared :) The first post about my journey is dated November 21 2009 so go back to here if you want to read from the start.

Please leave a comment even just to say Hi :)

The little things

I'm someone who copes. Life deals me shit, I deal with it. I don't complain a whole lot nor spend time thinking I'm hard done by. Not enough time in my life to waste doing that. That's not to say I don't whinge at times. I do, we all do but it's never been a focus for me. We all cop shitty things in life and you just have to deal with it and get on with finding what was good in amongst the crap.

I have some days that I get through without thinking of my other sons. The ones I can't hug, the ones I love as much as the one I have with me now and as much as I love my daughter. The ones I miss, the ones I wouldn't have back if it meant I would have to give back my now children.

Then there's days when one small thing will make me think of my eldest son and a smile will play across my face, or maybe some tears will fall from my eyes. It happens far less with my other son since I never got to meet him let alone form any lasting memories of time with him. My eldest son though... walking in the rain can bring back memories. Helping my now son to balance. Picking a flower. Seeing a toy that JC played with. Hearing a word he could say. Today it was remembering his laughter.

His tinkling, joyful, effervescent, infectious, amazing laughter.

I wish I could play that sound for you. There are no words that describe it as well as it deserves. It was medicine of the best sort. Guaranteed to cure all ills. Destined to put a smile on your face, a joyful spring in your walk. This time it bought a tear to my eyes and a wistful happiness to my heart that I can still hear him when I close my eyes.

I fear the day I cannot recall his face, his tiny arms wrapped around my neck, his laughter, his joy in living.

When I can no longer remember will he fade to nothingness?

Will he no longer be real?

Mothers Day

Here we are at another Mothers Day. The years fly past so quickly now, this is my 28th since I first became a Mother, the 11th with my daughter, the 5th with my son. It's also my first one without my husband to help the kids organize anything.

The unmentionable...

It's my birthday today. I'm 47. Time, I think, to start counting backwards to be sure I avoid the big Five Ooooohhhhhh.

Many of my birthdays have been average, even sad. My Eighteenth was the day I found out I was pregnant, my twenty first came only two months after my eldest son died. My Thirtieth was a massive joke. Husband was supposed to take me out for dinner but he couldn't leave work (as in he couldn't and still can't relinquish control) and then one of the drivers from the company he worked for managed to "invite" himself to stay the night in our spare room and intended to come to dinner with us. This was a nice enough man but he was not a scintillating conversationalist and he was not who I wanted around on my birthday. In the end my husband sent this driver and another employee over to our place to have dinner with me while he worked. We had pizza... It sucked...

Open your hearts, and everything else for DHS

I wrote a letter. I got a reply. DHS accepted our "expression of interest" and we got to go to a "training session" where they did their best to put us off the idea of adoption. We got to hear from an adoptee who was anything but happy and content with their life. We got to hear from a Birth mother with similar angst. We heard all the bad stuff then we got to hear about the rules and regulations. You have to married for a minimum of two years, you have to be under the age of 26 as at Jan 31st in the year of application and no more than 40 at the same date if applying for a second or subsequent child.

Where do you go from here? (edited)

Twenty years old and more completely out of step with everyone I knew than you could imagine. What few friends we had still had no idea how to deal with the tragedy in our lives. Some simply said nothing, others disappeared. People have little ability to cope with death especially when the death is that of a child. We were left with no formal support - the hospital pretty much just said "Goodbye, we're sorry". There were no services dealing with this type of thing, Bonnie babes was established but dealt with babies (still births, SIDS deaths and the like), there was another group but they were focused on teen and young adult deaths. For the families of young children there was nothing that we could find. DH(my husband) retreated into his pain and

Now for the sad stuff

JC was such a joy to be with. We had our moments where we weren't friends but they were few and far between. Overall he did as he was asked, he was cheeky but not naughty and it was rare I had to reprimand him. We went to playgroups, toy library, visited people we'd met who had children and generally filled our days together. Only on Saturday mornings did I work at my father's business so JC was pretty much my world. His father, my husband worked all week and played sport most weekends. He had a side job gardening on Sundays so it was mostly just JC and I. We were content with that.

Long hospital visits are no fun...

My tiny little boy struggled from one health crisis to another, many of them not as serious as first thought. He was so small that equipment just wasn't available that fit him, monitors didn't work properly because he didn't cause enough pressure to register, echograms didn't work correctly and showed him with serious heart defects that turned out to be nothing, there wasn't even nappies to fit him. The hospital used 000 singlets, folded them in half and used them even though he was still swamped by the enormity of them. The small conducting pads they use for heart monitors etc covered almost his whole chest, just one of them almost covered him. We spent almost all our time at the hospital. I pretty much took the last train or tram home and headed back by about 8am the next morning, every day...

The first step towards Motherhood

I was 17 and going out with a guy I met through a friend. Nice guy, enjoyed his company but not "the one" I was waiting for. He understood that - I was upfront I wouldn't be sleeping with him so all's cool. So one day after a couple of months of dating we went to a party for someone he worked with. He disappeared ! We got to the party and he was gone like a puff of smoke. Unbeknown to me he'd decided that as I wasn't prepared to sleep with him and he felt the "need", he'd do what he could to make me dump him so he could go find what he needed without cheating on me. I can see his roundabout logic but he'd have done better just talking to me... so anyway.