Carol McAdoo Rehme
Pre-Parenthood
The social worker is due in a few hours. We’re basically ready. I mean, we’ve cleaned this house like nobody’s business. And we’ve put rock salt all over the driveway so she won’t slip. I was going to make applesauce so the house would have the warm, welcoming smell of cinnamon. But now I’m thinking I should bake bread instead. Or how about a fire in the fireplace? The smell of a fire definitely says: Home.
But what is the smell of Parent? More specifically, what is the smell of Good Parent Material? The social worker is coming to consider us. She’s coming to our house today to do a “home study,” step one in the adoption procedure.
Alex and I have decided to adopt a baby from China. Well, we haven’t decided decided, but we’re deep into the decision process. The deeper you go, the more your heart starts pounding.
There’s a lot you can do before you commit. Lots of paperwork you can get behind you. So this is what we are doing. This is our way of deciding, of tiptoeing, of cracking open the door to the unknown.
“Do you think we should have the smell of baking bread wafting through the house?” I ask Alex.
“Might be a little contrived,” he says. “We never bake bread.”
“Okay applesauce.”
“We don’t make that either,” he says.
“I made it in seventh grade,” I point out. “It was the first thing we cooked in home ec.”
“All right,” he says. He knows to surrender when I am being driven by stress.
“But will the smell get all the way back to the family room?” I ask. “Should we bring a fan in here or something and aim the aroma toward the back of the house?”
“No,” he says. “No—we should not.” He knows to speak clearly, definitively, when I am losing my marbles.
I’m nervous. I’ve never had a home study before. I’ve never had to put my domestic self out for review. It is not my most developed self. My inner Martha Stewart is not what you’d call a fully actualized identity.
It doesn’t help that it’s raining. That the ice outside is slowly giving way to a yard that looks like soup. “Welcome to the ugliest day on our farm!” I imagine saying to her when she pulls up. But then she might think I mean it’s ugly because she’s here, so no, I’d better not go there.
I’m nervous. I want this to go right. I’m peeling apples. I’m wiping the counters again and again to show off what a good counter wiper I am. I am sprinkling cinnamon on the apples, lots of it to make sure the aroma of my own domesticity, of my promise as a mother, is unmistakable.
I could, of course, be insulted. I mean, maybe that’s the more empowering emotional direction to go in right now. The outrage! A home study? Why should I have to prove my parental potential to a complete stranger? Any wacko with the right plumbing can make himself or herself a parent. No forms to fill out. No history to reveal. No how-do-you-handle-conflict essay questions to answer. Why me? Poor me. It’s not fair. Life isn’t fair. Which, of course is only half the story. Life seems unfair only when it’s throwing curves. But what about when it’s sending out those equally rare perfect pitches, a good job, a good husband, a happy home, a supportive family, a baby who needs a mom. In China, we’re told that would be a girl.
Okay, here comes a car. A white car. Make that a muddy white car. Oh, dear I should have prepared her. She pulls up the driveway, sits there for a few minutes. She’s flipping through papers, writing things down. She’s giving us bad marks for mud. I can just tell. I am biting my nails. I am pacing.
“Just be yourself,” Alex says. He has an umbrella. He is going outside to her.
“Brilliant move!” I say. “Bring her an umbrella! Blind her with chivalry!”
“It’s raining,” he says.
When she gets in the house I begin my apologies. For the rain. For the gray sky. For the ruts on Wilson Road. For the way the kitchen is not yet renovated. For the light bulb that is out on the porch. For the way the cat sleeps in the satellite dish receiver despite the fact that I have provided him with a perfectly good cat bed.
“You seem nervous,” she says, smiling. “Please don’t be. This is not an investigation. This is a . . . warm-and-fuzzy. You know? I’m just here to help you bring your daughter home.”
My . . . what? Excuse me? This is the first time I have ever heard that word used that way. That is one big word. “Daughter.” “My daughter.” “Our daughter.” That has a ring to it all right. Alex looks at me. He is smiling. I am smiling. The social worker is smiling. Three people enjoying the same music. Decisions are like music. New songs you try out. The more beautiful the sound, the more your hearts starts pounding.
Jeanne Marie Laskas
The Labors of Love
Childbirth is difficult, but holding the child makes the pain worthwhile.
Marianne Willamson
I’m not sure, but I’m almost certain, that I’m the first woman to give birth. At least that’s how I felt last September, when Catlyne was born.
Even the word “daughter” fiIls me with the most enormous sense of pride. And though there are hundreds of thousands of daughters out there, I can’t help feeling that I had the first “real” one. The truth of the matter is that an emotional door was opened that I never knew existed. However, you couldn’t have convinced me of this during labor.
How come all the women in my life who had so graciously shared countless stories about titanic weight gain, heartburn, swollen feet, nausea and other charming side effects of pregnancy never got around to telling me about labor? If someone told me how much it was going to hurt, I could’ve backed out of the whole deal while there was still time.
The Lamaze class we snickered through suddenly became a priceless source of information when labor began. . . . I knew what kind of anesthetics to ask for (or demand in this case), which I did ask (demand) for the minute I arrived on the labor floor. The problem is, however, anesthetics aren’t given until you’ve dilated to five centimeters (for all of you who haven’t experienced this “miracle of life” you don’t get the prize until you’ve hit ten). I was certain that with all the pain I was going through, I must have reached at least eight. I was informed by a nurse with a funny smile that I was at one.
I wanted to hit her. Hard.
So I waited nearly ten hours, and during that time I started to think. They say there’s a reason for everything, even the most painful things in life. I know this is true, and during the pain I had a divine revelation: God is not a woman.
No woman would put another human being through that kind of torture. She would have designed a woman’s body in a more thoughtful way. At least she would have devised an equally agonizing experience for men to live through—to sort of even things out.
You know, the nine months of pregnancy weren’t too bad. I made it through three months of feeling like throwing up, a disappearing waist and completely eliminating sleeping on my back if I wanted to breathe at the same time. I didn’t mind foregoing beer (well, maybe a little), or anything else that’s bad for you but tastes good. I packed away my cute bikini undies in exchange for underwear that went to my chin and bought a “nice” cotton bra forty-seven sizes bigger than my nice lace ones. All this I figured was worth it.
But not labor. That is, until I saw her head.
No one could have prepared me for the overwhelming rush of emotion I felt when I saw this tiny human being. I never loved anyone as much as I loved her. Any inconvenience or discomfort seemed so small and insignificant compared to the miracle I was looking at.
It’s funny. No one in the world could have convinced me that I would feel this wonderful about having a baby. I’m from the thirty-something generation of women determined to have careers and lives different from our mothers. No way was I going to stay home and take care of four children and one man the rest of my life. I refused to learn anything which I felt was remotely domestic. Marriage and children evoked nothing but feelings of entrapment. I like
d being single, working, traveling and taking care of myself.
When I thought of having children, I was prepared for bottles, dirty diapers, crying and a lifetime of responsibility. But I forgot about the human being part. It never occurred to me that a child could bring love to your life and the responsibility to care for her would be a pleasure. It’s nice to care for someone else besides myself for a change.
Catlyne has affected all of us. Father is happier. He’s taking better care of himself so he will be around to teach her how to play softball. My sister has practically moved in with us in hope that if she stays long enough, she’ll get custody of the baby on the basis of homestead rights. We all smile more, laugh more, love each other more. How come nobody told me how great this would be?
So what’s a little pain?
Claire Simon Laisser
“Boy that stork sure can scream.”
Reprinted by permission of Dave Carpenter. ©2000 Dave Carpenter.
Two for One
Early in the autumn of 1983, as the leaves began to change, the air became crisp and my belly began to “show” my fifth child growing inside me, my hopes for birthing this child were dashed during a routine O.B. checkup.
No heartbeat could be detected, and an ultrasound showed I had a blighted ovum. My doctor scheduled a D & C for the following week.
I chose my words carefully, as I tried to explain to my oldest child, seven-year-old Elisa, that this belly of mine, just beginning to show, wasn’t going to grow into a baby as her brothers and sister had.
I felt so inadequate, so empty that winter, but the energies emanating from four young children, plus the bonus of some heavy snowfalls kept me busy making snow forts and of course, “angels in the snow.” Still, I longed to become pregnant again as soon as possible.
Just after the New Year, my doctor confirmed what I had suspected for several weeks: Yes, I was indeed expecting again. I was sent home with a due date of mid-September and ordered to take it easy.
Arriving home from my doctor’s appointment, and anxious to tell the kids the good news, all I could get out of my mouth was “Guess what, guys?”
Before I could say anything else, Elisa interrupted with, “You’re gonna have a baby!” She continued with wide-eyed excitement, “But, you’re gonna have two babies, because God took that last one away to heaven!”
“Whoa,” I said, “Hold on! It doesn’t work that way. Twins don’t run in our family.”
“But, Mom!” she persisted, “I just know that you’re gonna have two babies, and they will be girls with blonde hair and they will look just alike!”
Well, there was no persuading her otherwise, plus she had pretty well convinced her brothers and sister.
I thought what she had said was pretty cute, so I laughed and joked about it to family and friends, and my belly grew and grew.
Soon, these friends that had laughed with me were saying, “Ya know, maybe she is right; you’re really getting big!” But I would always say, “No, no, the doctor says there is only one in there.”
Because of my now “really big belly” my doctor scheduled an ultrasound, thinking maybe I had miscalculated, and perhaps my due date was sooner than originally thought.
July 6, 1984, as I lay on a gurney ready to explode because I had to drink five glasses of water, the technician began to scan my mountainous belly.
“Well, here’s a head, an arm, a leg, and this baby has a good strong heartbeat,” she told me, but she was only on the right side of my stomach. Naïve little me asked, “But what is this over here?” She matter-of-factly said, “We’ll look at that one next.” She must have noticed the shocked look on my face, because she said, “You didn’t know you were carrying twins?”
I about fell off the table! As she continued to scan, pointing out various body parts, and finally saying they were both probably girls and most likely identical, I kept hearing Elisa in my head saying, “See, I told you so!”
Needless to say, when I broke the “news” to my husband that evening, he wore a pathway on the carpet (just as I thought he would). And just as I knew she would, Elisa was jumping up and down saying, “See, I told you so! I just knew it!”
We spent the next several weeks watching. My belly grew out of control, and the babies exercising and wiggling around, finding a comfortable position in my crowded womb, became the main source of entertainment each evening.
At last, on August 24, 1984, a couple of weeks before their expected due date, identical twin girls, Sarah and Julie arrived.
The first time Elisa saw them, in her quiet voice as she gently stroked their faces and held their little hands, she said, “See Mom, I told you so! God took that other baby to heaven, and I just knew he was gonna give us two baby girls that look just alike and here they are!”
It’s been fifteen years since their birth, and I still tell this story about how the twins came to be. And yes, I guess twins really do run in the family, because Elisa is now also the mother of two-year-old twins! See, Elisa, I told you so!
Elisabeth Sartorius
“No, she wasn’t on fertility drugs. Why?”
Reprinted by permission of Bill Canty. ©2000 Bill Canty.
Our Story
No one has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.
Zelda Fitzgerald
When we first walked into the restaurant, my husband, Mike, asked me which one “she” was? In my always loving, supportive voice, I said, “I imagine that she is the pregnant girl sitting over there.” We were walking into what could be the most important day of our marriage to that point. We were going to meet a prospective birth mother.
Mike and I had been married and “trying” for several years. Friends and acquaintances had given us their pregnancy advice. We had tried and failed with several fertility doctors. We were told to relax, to move this way and that way and—my all-time favorite—to lie in pine! I imagined us relaxed, pine needles thrown everywhere, and a rash, not fertility close at hand. Needless to say, none of these ideas led to pregnancy.
One night, we sat down and discussed what was important to us. Together, we knew that we wanted to be a mom and a dad to someone who we could love unconditionally. It didn’t matter how the child came into the world but what we did after the child was here. Adoption seemed like the perfect option for us, and we thought deciding would be all it took. Boy, were we wrong!
We began our adoption journey with an adoption counselor. The adoption counselor asked us to make a photocopied booklet of our family together and to write a cover letter about our desire to adopt. The letter was to begin, “Dear Birth Mother.”
It was difficult to find the perfect way to word letter. We knew that it took amazing strength and love for any woman to consider adoption. A woman who was considering adoption wanted what was best for her child, not necessarily what was best for herself. We found it impossible to put our overwhelming feelings and desires into a one-page letter. It took us weeks to compile our thoughts and write a letter that we were never fully satisfied with.
After we had completed our initial paperwork, our adoption counselor matched us with a girl who was several months pregnant. She already had a daughter and was living at home with her mother. She said that adoption would be the best for everyone. I was hooked, but Mike was leery. We spent hours talking on the telephone and corresponding by letter. We were the couple for her!
Her daughter was born on April eleventh and on April twelfth, she changed her mind. We were devastated, but we understood.
One Saturday, I went to an infertility meeting. A woman from an adoption agency was there and discussed her nonprofit, Christian-based organization. This representative said that the agency stayed with adoptive couples until a child was placed in the home. When I returned home, Mike and I talked about the agency and decided to give adoption another try.
The new agency had us complete a home study involving bundles of paperwork and several home visits. It was not the nightmaris
h invasion of privacy that we had heard about. We prepared a booklet and a cover letter with this agency too. Our new adoption journey began and led us with a telephone call to the restaurant.
Walking over to the table, I felt my knees buckle. Minutes ago, I had been ravenous, but now I no longer wanted to eat. Mike and I sat across from a young, pretty pregnant girl and her social worker. We exchanged first names, made small talk and ordered lunch.
The young girl asked us about becoming parents. I remember that I was so filled with emotion that at the word parent I began to cry. She stood up, said she would be back in a minute and left. My husband glanced my way as if to say, “Did you have to cry?”
In a few minutes that passed by like hours, she returned. She was holding two sonogram pictures. She told us that she wanted us to be her daughter’s parents. I don’t know how someone feels when they win the lottery and think that their dreams may come true, but I can guess.
On the drive home, I asked Mike what he thought. He told me that it sounded wonderful, but we would have to wait and see. The baby was due in a month. The month passed slowly. We waited by the telephone to hear from the adoption agency. When the agency called, they told us that the baby had turned and that a C-section would be performed on Friday. It was Monday. We would be parents within days!
On Friday, my mother drove with us to the hospital. My stepfather stayed at home with our dog. I remember being in a state of airy disbelief. Reality wasn’t within my realm.
Walking into the hospital room, we saw the baby lying peacefully on the birth mother’s stomach. She immediately asked us if we wanted to hold her.
The baby was the most beautiful creature I had ever laid eyes on. Her head was perfectly round, her body petite and she didn’t cry when I cradled her in my arms. Holding her, I thought the birth mother would certainly change her mind. As if knowing what I was thinking, the birth mother said, “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, please don’t. I won’t change my mind.”
Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother's Soul Page 13