Plans are moving ahead with my next open heart surgery.  While I do not have an exact date yet, it will take place at some point over the summer.  I am happy about the time frame for I know it will be easier to recover when the sun is shining in a blue sky, when my begonias are in bloom along my front lawn, and I can take my daily recovery strolls outdoors, hearing the fun of children in my neighborhood as I walk.

Once the date is chosen, there are different things I will need to do to prepare for my surgery.  There will be plenty of paperwork to fill out including consent forms for both the operation and anesthesia.  I will need to visit the hospital for preoperative testing, which will most likely be an EKG, a chest X-ray, and blood work.  I will also have to stop some of my medications and be sure to get a good amount of rest and relaxation in the days leading up to the operation.  In all of these ways, I will prepare myself and my body for this surgery.

Right now, though, I am more interested in another type of pre-op preparation:  getting Rosemarie ready for my absence while I have the surgery and recover in the hospital.

Anthony and I have decided instead of staying in the city near me as he did during my last surgical recovery, he will be the one to stay home with Rosemarie.  While my mother or his or any of our siblings would be willing to stay with her, we both believe it will be the most “normal” for Rosie to be home with Anthony rather than anyone else.

Actually, this will not be the first time Rosemarie is alone with Anthony for a few days.  As a coach of competitive cheerleading, I accompany my team to sleep-away camp over the summer and a competition in Orlando in mid-February, and Rosie has never had a problem spending this time without me.

My concern, though, is that she has become far more attached to me since the last time I went away.  She has always had a preference for me, of course, since I’m her primary caretaker, but in the past few months, the preference has developed into more of an attachment and she has a harder time away from me than she used to.  Now when I leave her with my sisters, my mother, or even Anthony, she will notice my absence, calling my name as she wanders through the house and becoming agitated when she cannot find me.

All of this is normal for her age and is simply part of her development.  But that doesn’t make it any less concerning to me when I’m faced with the task of leaving her for what may be the longest period yet and then returning home in a state that makes me unable to jump right into taking care of her.

And, so, I need to not only prepare myself for surgery, but I need to prepare my daughter as well.  With others’ help, I have come up with some ways I can do this over the next several weeks.

In actuality, these ideas are not exclusive to moms having open heart surgery.  Any mother may want to consider them if she must leave her child for a business trip, a vacation with her husband, or any other reason, especially if she needs to leave during the attachment phase.

Keeping My Distance

My first reaction when I realized I was going to need this surgery sooner rather than later was that I simply wouldn’t leave Rosemarie until the day of the surgery..for any reason.  I would just spend all my time with her until then.  I would miss cheerleading tryouts and a few birthday parties.  Maybe I wouldn’t even need to shower.  Whatever works.

Once my rational mind returned, though, I realized that is the worst thing I can do for her.  The less time she spends away from me before the surgery, the harder it will be for her when I’m in the hospital.

I am not saying I will concoct reasons to go out just for the sake of being away from her, but I am not going to completely avoid leaving her.  I attended four out of five days of cheerleading tryouts.  I spent a night out helping my best friend plan her baby shower.  As the weeks pass, I will continue to part with Rosemarie when I have something I need to do.

I do feel guilty leaving her for anything right now but I honestly believe it is the best thing for me to do.  She needs to be used to my absence so that my time in the hospital is not a complete shock to her.  As much as possible, I want those days to feel to her like any other day in her little world.

Mr. Mom

Anthony is a completely hands-on father, and he has been from day one.  He has always fed her and changed her, dressed her and brushed her hair (which he somehow does better than I).  He really does help whenever he can and lets me rest when necessary.

But he works and I stay home.  And he works a job that sometimes has strange hours.  So it is not often that he gets to sing her a lullaby and put her to bed.  He is not usually home when she falls and needs comfort.  He cannot always give her a bath and then wrap her up in a plush towel, rubbing her sides to keep her warm.

Even though Rosie loves Anthony and smiles each time he enters the room, it will be strange for her to suddenly have him doing all these daily tasks that I normally do with her.  Therefore, instead of jumping right into this change when I enter the hospital, we will work on getting her accustomed to it over the next month or so.  As the surgery approaches, Anthony will be sure to do some of these every day activities more often.  He will put her to bed if he is here to do so and I will let him reach her first if she stubs her toe or takes a tumble.  This way, once I am in the hospital, Rosemarie’s routine will not change entirely and she will be used to her father’s feeding her lunch and getting her pajamas on before bed.

Face 2 Face

Aren’t we lucky to live in such a technologically advanced time?  Not many years ago, I would not have had ability to actually see Rosemarie “face-to-face” while I am away from her.  Today, she will only be a touch screen away.

The plan is to try to video chat with Rosemarie at least twice a day.  I FaceTimed with her once while I was in Florida for cheerleading this year.  She did not understand the concept and reached her arms out to me, scrunching her eyebrows in distress, as if I could pick her up into my arms.  (After this by the way, I was depressed for an hour while she happily went back to eating her lunch once my face disappeared from the screen).

I do not expect my not-even-two-year-old to understand the technology of video chatting, but before I enter the hospital, I would like her to at least grasp the idea of it.  How can I do that? By practicing.

From now until my surgery, whenever I am away from Rosemarie (and she is with Anthony or a babysitter who actually understands the iPhone), I will FaceTime her.  These sessions do not need to be long or even meaningful.  I just want her to get used to the idea that she can see me and “talk” to me, but that that doesn’t mean I am actually there with her physically.  At the same time, I want her to possibly make the connection that after we video chat, I eventually do return to her side and am able to pick her up when she reaches out those little arms.

Bedtime Stories

My morning routine with Rosemarie is pretty varied.  Sometimes she comes in my bed in the morning and we watch an episode of Barney while she drinks some juice.  Other days she wants breakfast as soon as she wakes up, so we start off in the kitchen and she dips her waffle (or sometimes just her fork and, okay, her fingers) in her syrup while I empty the dishwasher.  And still on other days, as soon as she wakes up, I throw her in the bath, dress her, and walk out the door.

Our afternoons are the same in the sense that they are always changing.  The only time that is almost always consistent is bedtime.  Rosemarie drinks her milk while watching Barney (she watches A LOT of Barney) on the living room couch.  After an episode or two, we make our way to her room where she picks out a book.  We sit in her glider and I read to her, turn out the light and sing “Baby Mine” before laying her in the crib.

Since this is our only daily ritual, I plan on incorporating it into our video chats while I am in the hospital.  Kindoma Storytime is an app that allows you to video chat with your child while reading a children’s book.  The screen displays both the pages of the book and a live video of your reading partner.  When I turn the page at the hospital, Rosemarie’s page will flip as well.  And if she points to a ball or bunny on the page, a shadow will appear on that object on my screen.  Even though I can’t be in the room with her, we can still have our bedtime routine.

I am even considering developing another daily ritual before I enter that hospital that we can do together once I’m there.  Maybe we can sing a certain song each day at noon or say a prayer before eating lunch.   I am not sure what will work best but I think being able to do regular daily activities with me while I am away will provide Rosie with some stability at a time when things are going to be confusing to her.

I may be over-planning a bit.  And the truth is that I honestly don’t know if any of this will matter to Rosemarie, if she will really need any of these things or just be perfectly happy hanging out with Daddy for a week.

What I do know is that I need them.  I need to feel that I’ve prepared her as best I can for my absence.  I need to leave the house the morning of the surgery feeling confident that she will be smiling and playing and giggling while I’m away.  Because just as I was depressed after our failed FaceTime attempt in Florida while she was completely indifferent, I know our separation will really be harder for me than it is for her.

But I guess the reason doesn’t really matter.  Whether it helps me or helps her, these are my plans and overall they will help our family make it through this summer a little more easily.

And maybe they will do something more.  While this summer will undoubtedly be difficult, maybe all our preparation will help it be beneficial as well.  Perhaps Anthony’s time alone with Rosemarie, doing all the things I normally do, and my time away from her, retaining our daily rituals, will bring us all closer in the end.  Maybe somehow we can turn this obstacle into a blessing and by being well prepared, we can make this surgery something that doesn’t break us down but, instead, strengthens the bonds that hold us together.

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The origins of Mother’s Day lie in the spiritual celebrations of maternal goddesses such as Isis of Ancient Egypt and even the Christian festival of the Virgin Mary. It was not until the 17th century in Europe that the day came to focus on actual mothers and this change came even later in America in 1908 when Anna M. Jarvis campaigned for a holiday in remembrance of her mother who was recently deceased. Our modern Mother’s Day, on which we honor all mothers or mother figures in our lives, grew out of Jarvis’s petition.

Really, Mother’s Day is simply about making mothers happy, yes? It is a day to say thank you to the mothers in our lives and to be thanked by those we mother. I am only on my second Mother’s Day this year but, for me, I just want to relax and smile on Sunday. Having a daughter makes me smile every day, of course, but it’s nice to have a day that simply says “You’re doing a good job, Mom.”

Because deep down, I do know I am a good mother. I know I love my daughter and most of the time, I do well. But there are still the other times. There are the moments of action or even thought that make me doubt myself.

I know I’m a good mother but…

1. I lose my cool: I try very hard not to yell. When Rosie deliberately drops her food on the floor or slowly drags her crayon across the table top just for fun or screams and cries because she cannot have her way, I try to take a deep breath. I focus on making my voice stern but controlled. I concentrate on keeping my emotions in check so that she can learn to do the same when necessary. But, sometimes, I just grab her plate or the crayon from her her hand or yell “No!” Sometimes I even pound my own hand onto the table.

   The times I feel most guilty is when she really isn’t being bad, but I lose it a little anyway. Like at the end of a long day, when I’m finally sitting on the couch trying to check an email on my phone, and she climbs her plump little body onto my lap but won’t stay still. And she just keeps climbing and moving and pressing her elbow into my chest, pulling my hair and knocking my phone out of my hand as she twists and turns. I don’t exactly yell at her at a time like this, but let’s say I’m not as nice as I’d like to be. I am usually guilty after and I kiss her and play a game with her to make up for it. But that doesn’t erase the behavior, does it?

2. I don’t always want to share my food: I know. You think I’m evil. But it isn’t all the time. It isn’t even a common occurrence. Occasionally, though, I don’t feel like sharing my food with her. It’s not even that I don’t want to give her the food. It’s just that I want to eat my darn sandwich in peace. I don’t always feel like letting her take a bite, during which she will inadvertently knock the tomato off the turkey or rip the top half of the bread in two. Don’t crucify me, please. I always do share the food if she asks for it. I just don’t always feel like doing it.
3. I don’t always play with her: I’ve heard about those moms. The ones who spend three or more hours a day sitting on the floor with their children, building Lego castles, sliding wooden puzzle pieces into the appropriate spots, coloring a race care red or Cinderella’s dress light blue. Of course I do these things with my daughter. But I certainly don’t spend hours sitting on the chevron rug of her playroom pulling toy after toy off of the shelves.

   I sit with her; we build a few towers of blocks and feed a bottle to her baby. Maybe we draw some letters on her chalkboard-painted wall or try on some fun-colored wigs.

   
   

   But after a little while, I leave her to play on her own. I go empty the dishwasher, pay the bills, or wrap a gift for a birthday party that weekend. I like playing with her, but sometimes there are other things I need to do.

4. I make mistakes…a lot of them: I already wrote a post about the Cascade incident in which I also alluded to the swallowed hair clip debacle as well Rosie’s first big fall. I’d love to say those are the only mistakes I’ve made, but of course they aren’t. Some mistakes are small such as a night (or maybe a few nights) when I forget to put her nighttime diaper on before bed, causing her pajamas to be soaked with pee by the morning. Or the time I let her spend an entire day in a party dress with the matching panties laying on her thighs, still pinned to the tulle of the skirt.

   Some mistakes are bigger. We had a scary few moments the other day when Rosemarie fell down our basement steps. While playing with her cousins, the door was accidentally left open. As she stood at the top of the stairs, her cousin shut the door, knocking her down the whole flight. Of course, I personally didn’t leave the door open and Anthony was also present (so I’m not taking all the blame, people), but I still should have made sure the door was shut while the kids played in that area of the house.

   Rosemarie screamed for a few minutes. We kept an close eye on her the rest of the day and woke her up every two hours that night. Luckily, her only injury was a rug burn on her left cheek. But in the words of Vivian Ward, “Big mistake. Big. Huge.”

5. I’m happy when she goes to sleep: I love being around Rosie. I love watching her play or dance around the living room to Barney. I love singing songs with her and watching her try to imitate my motions. I love when she cuddles with me, when she full force kisses me on the cheek with a big “Muah” sound followed by a proud little smile.
   

   But I also love her nap time. I love the moment I lay her in the crib and pull the door shut as I leave the room. I love the hour or two I get to sit on my computer or watch Revenge without needing to rewind every five minutes to hear the dialogue.

   I love when she goes to sleep for the night even more. I love taking out the cookies (which I will not have to share) and pouring a glass of milk. I love curling up on the couch and reading a new book or writing my blog or laughing at Friends until 1 am.

   I love my daughter but I love my alone time too.

My hope is that while reading this, my fellow moms, you are not gasping in horror or shaking your heads in disgust but instead nodding along in agreement, understanding my thoughts and noting how you often feel the same way. I hope tomorrow on Mother’s Day, you feel even more confident about how good a mother you really are. Maybe you’ll feel a little less guilty about your own “bad” thoughts and your own mistakes after reading about mine.

So Happy Mother’s Day to all of you who, like me, are only human. You may make mistakes but you deserve tomorrow and many more. Just breathe and remember, “You’re doing a good job.”

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Regretting Freddy

When I was about twenty years old, I wrote a children’s story.  The idea came to me while sitting on the beach of LBI during a family vacation.  My mother probably lay nearby reading a James Patterson or Patricia Cornwall novel.  My siblings most likely sat in bright beach chairs taking the sun, except Katie who I’m sure was playing in the sand with my nieces and nephews.  Surrounded by my own family, I wrote The Perfect Family for Freddy. 

After being unfairly blamed for an argument with his sister, a young fox named Freddy decides he needs a new family.  The story follows him as he moves from family to family in the forest, searching for the perfect fit.  But the bats fly while he does not; the turtles live in the water, not on the land, and the rabbits don’t eat meat, something Freddy cannot give up.  Feeling extremely discouraged, Freddy is elated when the youngest rabbit tells him about a family that walks, lives on land, dines on meat and lives just around the bend.  Freddy runs enthusiastically toward this amazing family and what does he find? His very own family, the perfect one for him all along.

I do admit that it is a rather cute story.  However, if I stepped into Barnes and Noble tomorrow and pulled A Perfect Family for Freddy off the shelf written by some other author, I would be bothered by its contents.  I was even reluctant to share the details of the story on here and to have other people know that I wrote it, a story that negates almost everything I believe about family today.  A story that, in some ways, contradicts the very foundation of my own family of three.

My intended message in the story was that family is important and we should stay devoted to our families no matter the ups and downs we may experience.  Of course, I still believe in this idea and it is one I want my daughter to learn over time.  Unfortunately, Freddy’s journey through the forest sends another a message as well, a message to which I was not sensitive when writing it as a single, twenty-year-old woman.

As Freddy makes his way from family to family, he decides he cannot possibly live with each of them because they are different, because they are not foxes and do not act like foxes.  Freddy’s return to his biological family at the end of story drives home the point that that is where he belongs.  By all means, for Freddy and many other children (human children of course) that is quite true.

As an adoptive mother, though, I cannot help but see this story as one that argues against the idea of adoption.  The story clearly implies that families should be made up of people who are alike, who are biologically linked, and that families with differing members simply will not work.

At the very heart of adoption is the complete opposite idea.  We adoptive families know that family members need not all be the same; we need not have physical ties.  We are a family because we love one another.  We are a family because despite the distance between us, geographical or genetic, somehow we still found each other.  And our families are every bit as real as those that are biological.

Other Offenders

My story is not the only one I have found that sends such a message.  One other book that I put on the “Do Not Read to Rosemarie List” is Are You My Mother ? by P.D. Eastman.

A small bird is the center of this story.  After his mother leaves the nest to find him some food, his egg hatches and he sets off to find her.  He comes across, among other things, a hen, a cow, an airplane and an excavator (which he calls a “Snort”).  He realizes each of these animals and objects cannot be his mother because they are not like him; they are not birds.  “How can I be your mother?  I am a cow,” the cow states.  To the excavator the bird declares, “Oh, you are not my mother.  You are a Snort.”

When the baby bird finally reunites with his mother at the end of the book, he summarizes his journey and teaches the same idea as Freddy’s experience:

“I know who you are.
You are not a kitten.
You are not a hen.
You are not a dog.
You are not a cow.
You are not a boat,
or a plane, or a Snort!”
You are a bird,
and you are my mother.”

Again, the message sent is that mother and child must be alike in order to be mother and child.  There is something sweet about this story.  And I know the intent was not to bash adoption.  However, it is still not something I will read to my daughter, for I do not want her young, malleable mind to learn that a mother and daughter or father and son or brother and sister must be alike in order to be family.

Some Happy Alternatives

Lucky for me and other adoptive parents, there are plenty of children’s books that promote adoption-friendly concepts of family.  One of my favorites, A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kasza, is pretty much an adoption version of Are You My Mother?.  Choco, a lonely bird without a mother, searches for one throughout the forest.  He repeatedly asks animals who are like him if they are his mother.  The giraffe has yellow skin like him, the walrus has chubby cheeks, etc.  Each of these animals, however, is not his mother.  In the end, Choco sobs over his failed quest, only to meet Mrs. Bear, who is nothing at all like him but holds him, kisses him, and cheers him up as a mother would.  He returns home with her to meet her three other children: an alligator, a pig, and a hippopotamus, joins their family and happily sits on his new mother’s lap on the last page.

The story shows its young readers that family is not about physical similarities; it is only about love.

Perhaps parents of biological children will find such a book unnecessary and that is very understandable, but for our family, this book is one I intend to read for years to come.

In truth, this book and others like it were probably not even intended for adoptive families like ours.  We are not recognizably different because Anthony and I adopted within our race.  The differences between Choco and Mrs. Bear are presumably more meaningful to a transracial adoptee, who may wonder about the way his skin or facial features differ from his parents.  Rosemarie will not experience this.  Regardless, it is still important to me for her to learn the idea expressed in Choco’s story.  Sure, her skin is the same color as mine, her eyes match my mother’s and she can pretty much pass for my nephew’s biological sister, but I want her to know that none of that matters.

I want her to know that she could have any color skin and any color hair, and she would still be ours.  Because we are not connected by the physical, but by the metaphysical instead.  There is an ancient Chinese proverb, which says that “an invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break.”

This proverb is largely embraced by the adoptive community not because we want to believe that it’s true but because we know it is.  We believe we were each meant to be our children’s parents.  This idea may be too otherworldly for some to accept but it is repeatedly proven true to me.  Today, for example, when I went rummaging through my writing from over the years to find Freddy’s story, I discovered that I had named the young rabbit in the story Rosie.  A coincidence? Perhaps.  Something more? Maybe. (I had never considered the name Rosie for my child.  When I first saw her face, I wanted an old-fashioned name; we chose Rosemarie and Rosie followed.)

The Chinese belief about the red thread was also the inspiration for another book on my Read to Rosemarie Repeatedly List:  The Red Thread:  An Adoption Fairytale by Grace Lin. The story tells of a King and Queen who are a inflicted with an inexplicable pain in their chests until magic spectacles reveal a red thread that is wrapped around each of their hearts.  They follow the thread for days crossing an ocean until they reach a small village and find a happily, cooing baby at the end.  A wise villager tells them, “This baby belongs to you.”

That is how we feel about Rosemarie and how we want her to feel as she grows  So we will do our best not to expose her to stories or movies or TV shows that tell her because we are different, we are not a family.  Instead, we will choose those books and films that teach her that despite any physical difference in our blood, our genes, or our appearances, she belongs to us and we to her.

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Universally, the heart is used to represent our emotions.  We use this metaphor in our everyday language.  We watch tragic stories on the news and say they “break our hearts.”  We sometimes say we “don’t have the heart” to deliver bad news, and we proclaim we love our children “from the bottom of our hearts.”

The metaphor is also present in the pop culture that surrounds us.  We hear songs that tell us to ”listen to” and “put a little love in” our hearts.  We read poems and books and watch movies that portray the heart as a symbol of our deepest feelings.  As children, we all watched the Grinch’s heart grow three sizes the moment he learned to love (which, by the way, is the worst case of cardiomegaly I have ever seen.  He needs a to see a doctor right away).

Early references to this metaphor exist in the writings of ancient Greek philosophers.  Aristotle, for example, is quoted as saying “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”  Thus, this metaphor has been around much longer than we have.

I wonder how this metaphor came to be.  Why did whoever the first person was to use it choose to connect our heart and our emotions?  Is it possible he somehow knew this idea went beyond figures of speech?   Because it seems that the link between our cardiac organ and our emotions may be more than figurative.  Some would argue that scientific and experiential evidence prove that there is a literal and physical link between the two.

For example, a study by the Institute of Heartmath examined the electrocardiograms of subjects while they experienced different emotions.  The researchers found that the when we experience negative emotions like anger and anxiety, our heart rhythm becomes more erratic.  On the other hand, when we are feeling positive emotions such as compassion and love, the heart’s rhythm produces a “smooth pattern…like gently rolling hills.”

There is also a book titled The Heart Speaks by Dr. Mimi Guarneri.  In it, Dr. Guarneri discusses how working as a cardiologist for many years taught her how much more there is to heart health than physical factors like cholesterol and plaque build-up.  She believes and asserts that stress-inducing situations such as the death of a loved one are just as important and that in treatment of the heart, doctors must tend to both the physical and the emotional risk factors.

Most convincing, is the existence of a disease that is actually called broken heart syndrome, AKA stress cardiomyopathy.  In recent years, broken heart syndrome has been recognized by the medical community as a real and dangerous condition.  It occurs when extreme emotional stress causes the heart muscle to rapidly and severely weaken and often happens after a major stress event that causes extreme grief or fear, or even anger and surprise.

Just as these examples prove that negative emotions can have a negative impact on our heart, the reverse is also true.  After open heart surgery, the heart needs to recover from the trauma of the procedure; this physical factor can have an emotional consequence.  That may be why depression is common during recovery from open heart surgery.  Of course, other surgeries can also cause depression, but some experts say that cardiac surgery has one of the strongest correlations with depression.

After my surgery in 1997, all I wanted to do was lay under my covers in my bed and watch TV.  I didn’t feel like going out with my friends or going to cheerleading or doing any of the things that I normally loved.  Eventually, in a very Bette-Midler-in-Beaches fashion, my best friend gave me a stern lecture about moving on with my life and not acting as if I were dying.  She got through to me and that day I pulled back the covers and began to have fun again.

In 2010, my post-surgery depression came in the form of feeling neglected.  Through tears, I told my sister how no one ever came to visit me and the fact that they didn’t meant they didn’t care about me.  In retrospect, I was clearly depressed.  Rationally, I know that people did come to visit and that now that my friends were married with jobs and children, they couldn’t sit around me on my bed as they had after my high school surgery.  They were there whenever they could be, but my depressed emotional state was telling me otherwise.

My personal experience with the connection between my emotions and my heart health does not end there.

My defibrillator (a device that detects cardiac arrhythmia and then treats it with an electric shock) was implanted in December 1997.  Five years passed before I needed any help from my device.  Then, on September 11, 2001, my father was killed in the terrorists attacks at the World Trade Center.  I cannot possibly sum up this experience in this short paragraph, so I will not try.  My father’s first birthday after his death was on March 13, 2002.  As a family, we visited Ground Zero for the first time.  A few hours later, as I walked through a parking lot with my then boyfriend, I felt a strange sensation in my chest as if someone was pulling my heart toward my spine and then BOOM.  My defibrillator had gone off.  For the first time.  On my father’s birthday.  On the day I had seen the place of his death for the first time.  It is hard to argue that there wasn’t an emotional connection between my emotional experience of that day and the behavior of my heart.

The next five years were also emotionally difficult.  It was during this time that I developed issues with anxiety and that panic attacks became a regular part of my life.  And my heart rhythm continued to be problematic.  My defibrillator shocked me 10-11 times in that period.  Again, emotional distress → erratic heart rhythm.

Then in 2005 I met Anthony and my life began to fall into place with him by my side.  Of course, it did not happen instantaneously but eventually, the arrhythmia events ceased and did not occur again for several years.  Hence, emotional happiness → gently rolling hills.

After my 2010 surgery, because of new scar tissue and other results of the surgery, I started to have some rhythm events that still happen now and then.  My defibrillator has not shocked me (knock on wood) because I haven’t had a true arrhythmia.  Instead, my heart sort of becomes stuck in a very rapid heartbeat.  I take extra medicine and lay down until it stops.

Last week, one of these rapid heartbeats occurred on a particularly upsetting day.

Earlier that day, I went for my biannual appointment with my cardiologist.  A little background info: when I had the surgery in 2010, my tricuspid valve was supposed to be repaired.  Unfortunately, the surgeon’s other tasks took up more time than anticipated and he could not get to it.  So the little guy is still leaking.  And he needs to get fixed.  This has been the ongoing question of my cardiac care since the fall of 2010:  when and how we will tackle this problem.

So, two Mondays ago, I sat in my cardiologist’s exam room atop the paper covered table while he explained that he wants me to have a stress test in the next few weeks.  My performance on this test will determine whether or not I will have the surgery now or if we will put it off.  I have never done well on a stress test before, so chances are I will not do well on this one either.

Okay, I am obviously not thrilled.  I didn’t want to need open heart surgery while I have a baby to take care of.  I will not get into the specifics of my feelings about this surgery; they are mixed and complicated.  I will just say that some of these feelings are strongly negative.

That evening, I sat on my couch on the phone with my friend who had called to see how the doctor went.  I told her all about it and just as we were hanging up the phone, I felt the familiar sensation of my heart jumping into a faster rhythm.  I checked my pulse and, sure enough, I was having a rapid heartbeat.  It did not last long.  I took my medicine but my heart returned to a normal rhythm before I could even swallow the pill.

But it made me wonder.  Why did this happen tonight of all nights? Is my heart responding to my emotions? Do our emotions directly affect the health of our heart?

After looking at the scientific evidence and examining my own experiences, I do believe the link exists and that negative emotional experiences can have a negative impact on our cardiac health.  Of course, that does not mean that emotions are always the cause of heart ailments.  Many times in the past, I have had cardiac issues at a time that I was not emotionally distressed.  On the other hand, there are times when I am distressed and my heart does not react in any way.   Sometimes, perfectly happy people have heart attacks, congestive heart failure, or arrhythmias.

But, still, there is plenty of proof that our emotions can affect our heart health.  And if that’s true, than people with heart disease need to not only take care of themselves physically, but emotionally as well.  Just as much as we need to eat right and exercise, we also need to work through our stress, overcome our depression, and learn to control our anxiety.  In many ways, those emotional tasks may prove to be far more challenging than the physical ones.

Sources:

1. Does your heart sense your emotional state? – NBC News
2. FAQs about Broken Heart Syndrome – Johns Hopkins Medicine

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There are so many different kinds of mothers. Before I had a child, I often found myself studying the many mothers around me, taking note of the parenting style of each of them. I noticed some mothers who didn’t blink an eye when their baby fell and hit his head, who shrugged if he accidentally ate a peanut before age two. There were others who jumped when the slightest whimper escaped their baby girl’s lips and kept her far away from any hands other than their own.

Most fell somewhere in the middle.

I’d like to say I’m part of the third group. I don’t find myself to be particularly neurotic. Rosemarie climbs onto every object possible in my house including her activity cube, the back of her plush Pottery Barn chair, and even her toy shopping cart. I encourage her to climb as I believe it is part of her physical development. (I did, of course, draw the line when she climbed onto the bay window.) I let her eat pretty much any that food is around her even if the box says it was “processed in a facility that also processes peanuts,” and I have always let others hold her and play with her.

The Cough

This winter, though, I found myself acting a bit less nonchalant than usual. In the first week of November, after two days with a runny nose, Rosemarie started coughing fairly frequently. She was soon diagnosed with bronchiolitis as she had been at 5 months old. We started the nebulizer three times a day and in a week’s time, we saw improvement. Unfortunately, a day or so later, her congestion and runny nose returned only to be followed soon after by the cough. This cycle repeated itself for the next three months: RUNNY NOSE –> FREQUENT COUGHING —> SPORADIC COUGHING –> RUNNY NOSE –> FREQUENT COUGHING and so on and so forth.

My pediatrician assured me that she was fine and the lingering cough was linked to having bronchiolitis as an infant. I was told by many that this was a just terrible cold and flu season and that plenty of other children were experiencing the same as Rosie. Despite all this, I decided to search for an answer, for a reason that even though she was receiving nebulizer treatments three times a day, she could never truly overcome the cough that began in early November and lasted over 90 days.

So, between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, I took Rosemarie to see her pediatrician, two pulmonologists, an ENT and, most recently, an immunologist. I was being cautious; some may even say neurotic. I had my reasons.

First, when it comes to one’s health, I believe being thorough to be of the utmost importance. When I have met my own doctors and surgeons in the past, I come with a typed list of questions to ask. I write down the answers. I simply believe it is better to be safe than sorry. I believe this even more strongly of my daughter’s health and, I think, even more strongly since she was adopted.

In terms of your child’s health, there is a difference between adopting a child and birthing one. No matter how open an adoption is or how much information the birth mother shared with the adoptive mother, the child does not have your genes. She does not have the same family medical history as you do. You did not carry her within you for nine months, so you were not present for every moment of her gestation. Thus, no matter how much you know, you wonder if there is something of which you are not aware. As an adoptive mother, it is the safest option for me to assume I do not know everything there is to know about Rosemarie’s genetics or medical history. And if I don’t know everything, then I need to make sure there isn’t a medical issue that we are overlooking because I don’t have the missing clue.

The Sweat

One night, somewhere in between the second pulmonologist and the ENT, I sat in the velour glider in Rosemarie’s room while she lay sleeping on my lap. She had just been woken up by an intense bout of coughing. Her blushed cheeks glistened with sweat and tears while her head lay in the crook of my arm. My phone buzzed under my thigh with a text message from a good friend with good intentions: “Hey, Kim. Did the doctors test Rosie for cystic fibrosis?”

“Um, no,” I responded, “but thank you for the nightmares.”

My friend immediately began apologizing and continued to do so for way longer than she had to. But I was scared. I hadn’t even thought CF, which is an inherited disease. Sufferers of it have a defective gene that causes the production of an extremely thick and sticky mucus, which leads to clogged and infected lungs as well as the body’s inability to digest and absorb food. Today, the life expectancy of a person with CF is 35 years.

Both my sister Katie and her son were tested for cystic fibrosis as babies. Their symptoms were much like Rosemarie’s, worse but similar. Their tests were negative, but would hers be too?

I suddenly remembered the skin taste test, which simply requires you to lick your child’s head. It is said that the skin of children with cystic fibrosis tastes salty due to the high levels of sodium chloride in their sweat. I licked Rosie’s forehead at least ten times and convinced myself I tasted salt there. I started Googling the symptoms of cystic fibrosis on my phone and texted two of my sisters in panic. Kristen responded assuring me that Rosie did not have CF; Katie called me and explained why I needn’t worry about it, that Rosemarie’s symptoms were not severe enough and that two pulmonologists had seen her and not suggested CF as a possibility.

Both Anthony and my pediatrician said the same the following day. The latter explained that if Rosemarie did have untreated cystic fibrosis, she would be severely underweight with a history of pneumonia and gastrointestinal issues. Rosie did not have any of these symptoms, so I breathed a sigh of relief and moved on.

On Valentine’s Day we took Rosemarie, clad in her festive ensemble, to see the immunologist.

After I told him the story of Rosie’s health, he said that in addition to a large amount of blood work, Rosemarie would need a sweat test, the test I knew is used to diagnose cystic fibrosis. In a sweat test, chemicals are applied to the patient’s forearm that cause the skin to sweat. The sweat is collected in a gauze, which is then analyzed in a lab.

I felt my chest sink into itself. I learned from my mother that it is my job to always remain calm, cool, and collected in front of my child no matter what is happening to her, so I did just that. But, inside, I was freaking out.

The doctor explained that while Rosie did not have the symptoms of classical CF, it was possible that some of those symptoms had yet to surface or that she had atypical cystic fibrosis, which he defined as a somewhat less severe form of the disease in which only the lungs are affected.

Typical or atypical, we were talking about cystic fibrosis. And, to me, that was Alex, the Life of a Child, the 1986 TV movie starring Craig T. Nelson, which is still the most heartbreaking and horrifying movie I have ever seen. The film is based on a nonfiction book written by Frank Deford about the short but amazing life of his little girl with CF. My memories of the movie are vague but agonizing scenes flashed in my mind of Alex bent over the sink vomiting blood, her brother and she crying side by side in her bed, and her father rushing to the supermarket to get root beer, his dying daughter’s last wish.

These were my thoughts in the first hour or so. Eventually, I got a handle on myself and forced myself to calm down. I forced thoughts of Alex out from my mind and refused to Google a single thing about CF until I had the results of Rosie’s test.

On Tuesday, February 19th, the morning of the sweat test, I woke up two hours earlier than I needed to. I turned and moved in the bed trying to get back to sleep but had a hard time turning off my thoughts. Poor Anthony was soon woken up by my licking his forehead in an attempt to compare the taste of his to the taste of Rosemarie’s. Despite my nerves, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing when he opened his eyes and stared at me. At 10 am, we took Rosemarie to Long Island for the test. Wearing her new sweatsuit and pewter ballet flats, Rosie waddled around the waiting room pointing at pictures of cartoons and climbing onto the maroon faux leather chairs that lined the walls.

A sweat test does not hurt. But Rosemarie screamed as if she were getting her ears pierced all over again. After the chemical sits on the skin for five minutes, the sweat has to collect for 30. We took a walk to the gift shop and Rosemarie pointed out various stuffed animals and crinkled her eyes in excitement. It took great willpower for us to resist buying her the 41 inch Big Bird that she pointed to with her small finger; we chose the foot long instead.

We were told we could have the results by the following day. We didn’t. And we didn’t get them on Thurday. Or Friday. The doctor was wonderful at keeping me informed about whether or not he had received the report. Each time I saw a 516 number on the screen, I steeled myself for the results. I took a breath in and put all my efforts into sounding polite and calm. It wasn’t until Monday that I actually needed this preparation.

“So, I got the results from the sweat test, and–”

In the split second it took for him to say the world and many thoughts raced through my head. Why would he start with that? Is he preparing me for bad news? Is he building up the will to tell me?

“it was negative.” he finished.

Negative! Allelujah. Thank you, God. I was elated. I hung up the phone and called Anthony immediately to let him know the wonderful news. I picked up Rosie and kissed her calling her “my healthy girl.”

The Fears

What a rollercoaster ride this parenting thing is. Elizabeth Stone said “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

Was there ever a truer statement? These little people we are raising are our everything. How can we not be neurotic sometimes?

Now that all is said and done, I’m happy to call myself neurotic because I’m lucky that I can. I am lucky I can say I panicked for no reason. There are some parents whose panic is necessary, whose doctors do not call with good news, even some who might wish they had been more cautious. I cannot imagine the fear they feel.

For their sake, I will enjoy my good fortune. And while we continue to work on figuring out the reason for Rosie’s chronic cough, I will proceed with caution, but I will also remember to sigh with relief and thank God that the worst reason is forever off our table.

Sources:

1. http://www.cff.org/AboutCF/Testing/SweatTest/#What_happens_during_a_sweat_test?
2. http://www.cff.org/AboutCF/
3. http://www.disabled-world.com/health/respiratory/cystic-fibrosis/life-expectancy.php

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As many of you know, February 1st was National Wear Red Day.  This day, on which we are asked to wear red clothing, was created by the American Heart Association (AHA) in 2003 in order to spread awareness and raise funds to help fight the #1 killer of women in America:  heart disease.  Taking place on the first Friday of the month, this day is also used as a kick-off to February, American Heart Month.  The goal of this movement is to educate women about their risk for heart disease and help expand scientific research on heart health.

To my knowledge, much of the AHA’s work seems to focus on cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke.  In actuality, even though I have congenital heart disease, I am no more at risk for such an event than any other woman.  But still, this movement is about women with heart disease and, technically, I am one of those women, so I do feel a personal connection to it.

As a woman with heart disease, then, I think during this month when we are asked to focus on our hearts, we should take the time to celebrate them as well, maybe even those that aren’t in the greatest of shape.  Today, I’d like to pay a little tribute to my heart, to my poor, deformed but perseverant heart.  She deserves this post all to herself.

I spoke with a friend the other day, a friend who happens to work in the field of psychology, about the emotional issues I have with my heart and her defectiveness.

“I’d love to see you attack your heart like an enemy,” my friend said.

I sat quietly for a moment, thinking of what he had said, and was surprised to feel a wave of guilt run through of me.

“How could I turn on her?” I thought, “My heart who has hung in there with me through it all.”

I genuinely felt sad at the thought.

Because my heart is not my enemy.

Sure, she is bigger than she is supposed to be and has had more than one hole repaired.  She may be facing the wrong way and sitting too far to the right.  And she is part cow, part human, and part metal.  She is one screwed-up organ, but not my enemy.

You could say she is the root of many of my problems.  She is the reason I had issues with panic and anxiety through most of my twenties.  She is the reason I often feel fatigued and then guilty for my lack of energy to share with my daughter.  She is the reason I have often felt regretful that my husband, mother, sisters, and others have had to spend many hours of their livings taking care of me or visiting me.

She has definitely been a burden in more ways than one, but how could I call her an enemy?

She has sat through several catherizations and ablations and three open heart surgeries while she was poked & prodded, sliced & stitched.  And when those surgeries were complete and she was called back into duty, she pumped as strongly as ever.  When she received her first set of new valves, she kept them working for five years past their expected expiration date.  The many times she was overtaken by an arrhythmia or rapid beating, she fought her way back to a normal rhythm, even sustaining jarring shocks from my defibrillator.

She is certainly not an enemy.  At the least, she is an excellent employee, but I like to think of her as a friend.  Really, she has stuck by me through thick (like the wall of her right ventricle) and thin.

So, I declare today to be Honor My Heart Day.  I am proud of you, heart.  I am proud of you and all your battle wounds: your scar tissue, your patches, even your slightly bionic valve.

Today, I salute you.  Thank you, my friend, for all you’ve done.

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The other day I paid a visit to a very good friend of mine who definitely needed some TLC.  This friend (Let’s call her Sarah for privacy’s sake.) is newly pregnant with her third child.  The very same day she found out she was pregnant, she was also told that she had two herniated disks in her lower spine.  A week later, she was on doctor’s ordered bed rest due to the severe pain caused by the prenatal shifting of her pelvis and the risk of further injury.  So, obviously, she is having a rough time.  Besides the fact that she is in an extreme amount of pain and the fact that she cannot stay out of bed for more than 1-2 minutes, these are not the things she stressed over when I was there.

Her focus was instead on her two children and the fact that she hasn’t been able to get up with them in the morning, build castles made of wooden blocks, or serve them a dinner she had cooked with love.  She cried that she cannot walk her three-year-old to preschool or lay the baby down for her nap.  All of her concerns were about her children and her inability to take care of them as she normally does.

As I listened to her lament, I was reminded of my own “bedridden” experiences and wondered how I would cope with my future ones now that I am a mother.

A Happy Patient

Over the years, I have had several small medical procedures done that were usually needed to determine the condition of a particular valve or ventricle of my heart.  Some of them were outpatient while others required a one or two night stay in the hospital.  I know this is going to sound strange, but I never actually disliked having medical procedures.  Sure, I don’t like the pain, but there’s something comforting about recuperation.  There’s something soothing about laying in your bed, your pillows propped up perfectly, a new book laying by your side or the remote in hand. There is something complimentary about the regular ringing of the telephone with family and friends checking in on the other end.  There is even something nice about recovery rooms in which nurses gently check your incisions and tuck thermal blankets around your body.

Winds of Change

Like everything else in my life, my perception of medical procedures changed once I had a baby.  Before, it was relaxing to just lay alone in my king-sized bed, recovering how I pleased.  But now I think of my baby, her little voice asking for me and my inability to go to her and hold her in my arms.

Last July I had a catherization, a procedure in which a thin tube (a catheter) is inserted in a blood vessel in your groin (The neck or an arm can also be used.) and threaded to your heart.  Usually, the recovery is only a day or two with some residual pain and numbness in your groin.  Unfortunately, this time I developed a hematoma (a collection of blood clots that forms when blood leaks from the vessel into the tissues where it doesn’t belong) in my upper thigh, which caused a much larger amount of pain in my leg than usual and the need to elevate it for several days.

As a result, my mother’s stay in my house was prolonged and she became Rosemarie’s primary caretaker for a week or so.  I am so lucky and grateful to have a mother who can and will move in with me for two weeks and take care of my child.  But at the same time, I wanted to be the one taking care of her.  It may have only been a couple of weeks, but I did notice a difference.  I noticed if my mother and I were in the same room with Rosemarie, she would go to my mother before me.  She would settle more easily in my mother’s arms than she would sitting on my lap.  Luckily, the recovery was over in a couple of weeks, I returned to being the usual hands-on mom that I am, and I quickly became Rosemarie’s go-to girl once more.

We Are Not Alone

My worry is the next open heart surgery that will occur sometime in my future.  When I think about this approaching surgery, all my thoughts focus on Rosemarie.  How old will she be when I have it?  Will it be better if she is younger or older? No matter the age, will she somehow understand why I can’t take care of her like usual? How long will it be until I can pick her up, rise with her, or give her a bath while she splishes and splashes and smiles at me amidst the bubbles? Will she remember that I couldn’t take care of her? Will she remember that Mommy wasn’t there?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions and I won’t know them until the surgery happens.  However, at the risk of sounding completely mean and self-absorbed, I have to say that watching Sarah cry about her fears of neglecting her children made me feel better about my medical future.  For one, it is always nice to know you are the not the only one who feels a certain way.  More importantly, though, now I realize Rosemarie is not the only one.  She is not the only child whose mother will have a medical issue that deters her from caring for her children for a period of time.  And if there are many other women who experience this, than I think it’s safe to say that this alone will not be truly detrimental to Rosie and her development.  I’m sure it won’t be easy for her.  I’m sure she will act out a bit and be confused as to why everything is different.  But I’m also sure she will be okay just as I will be.

Together we’ll recover one day at a time.

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There are certain things that really make me reflect on the blessing of Rosemarie.  Things that make me stop, think, and remember how much we wished for her and how amazing it was to find her.  Christmas is one of those things.

I suppose it’s because the season itself is all about counting your blessings and embracing your family.  Maybe it’s the fact that Christmas is so much about children:  buying their presents, planning their outfits, watching their eyes light up at the sight of Santa Claus with his snow white beard and shiny, velvet suit.  Whatever it is, this Christmas I thought a lot about the Christmases before Rosemarie.  Anthony and I were lucky to have found Rosemarie fairly quickly in adoption terms, but regardless of that, it wasn’t easy waiting for her.  And Christmas was always particularly difficult.

In 2009, there was a Kay Jewelers Christmas commercial that really got my attention.  I know.  Kay commercials are the worst.  Between the super cheesy lines and the extreme overacting, I usually laugh through them as I’m sure most of you do as well.  But this commercial was different.

A young mother sits in what I think is a rocking chair, her newborn baby in her cradle of arms. Her husband soon enters and bends down to light the Christmas tree.  When she chuckles at him commenting that it’s only two o’clock in the morning, he smiles and whispers “It’s our first Christmas as a family.”

Okay, so it’s definitely cheesy.  I’m sure many people would make fun of it as I do many of the others, but in December of 2009, Anthony and I were still working on starting our family; we were attempting to have a baby via surrogacy.  I remember watching the happy family of three and wishing and praying that would be us the following year.  Unfortunately, on Christmas Eve we received the negative results of our implantation; our surrogate was not pregnant.  Since we had no frozen embryos and my next open heart surgery was looming a few months ahead, the future of our family was unknown.

So the commercial just grabbed me.  I would watch it quietly and wish that somehow, some way we would still have our family by Christmas of 2010.

In the spring of 2010, we began our adoption journey.  As I’ve discussed in other posts, we had several ups and downs, maybes and almosts, just as any couple hoping to adopt does.  By Christmas, my two best friends had welcomed baby girls, my sister was seven months pregnant, and Anthony and I were still waiting.  And there was that commercial again.  That happy couple with their brand new bundle, their twinkly Christmas lights, and their happy hearts. I cried every time I saw it.  We made the best of the holidays, of course, because we were still lucky people; we had each other, wonderful families, and a beautiful home.  But secretly my heart sank every time I saw that commercial or a Baby’s First Christmas ornament, or a rocking horse under a tree.

And, of course, there was that song, “All I Want for Christmas.” No, not Mariah Carey’s (although those lyrics fit as well), but the much less popular song by Vince Vance and the Valients released five years before Carey’s:

You are the angel atop my tree
You are my dream come true
Santa can’t bring me what I need
Cause all I want for Christmas is you

That’s the chorus of the song and it became my Christmas anthem.  I would find the video on YouTube, press play, and sing it like a prayer, my eyes shut in concentration, envisioning the baby I would finally call my own.

I’m writing this post because I know there are many other couples who spent this Christmas wishing for their families of three (or more) as well. I know there are so many women who struggle with getting pregnant, women who hold their breath while they wait for the positive or negative sign to appear, women whose bellies are bruised from the daily pricks of needles, whose backs ache as they try to lay perfectly still for 36 hours so as not to disrupt the pregnancy they hope is blooming inside them.

There are couples who have spoken to and gotten to know several women, trying to choose the best one to carry all their hopes and dreams in her womb.  There are those who have plastered their ads and pictures all over the internet and in newspapers throughout the country waiting for the call that will change their lives.  And there are hopeful parents who have sent their dossiers, which took months to complete, to a foreign country, a country in which they know their future child awaits them.

I also know that some of those people will probably not want to read this post.  I know while I waited, I didn’t care much for others’ success stories; for me, they were discouraging rather than encouraging.  But I also know there are others who are comforted by the happy stories of people like them.  So to those readers, I say that your wish will come true.  However it will happen, your baby is coming.

Last year, Anthony and I did have our first Christmas as a family. First, we celebrated in Disney with our extended family.  On Christmas morning, we sat around our tree opening Rosie’s gifts. In her card, we wrote “You are the angel atop our tree.  You are our dream come true.  Santa doesn’t need to bring a thing.  ‘Cause all we need for Christmas is you.”  We have about five First Christmas ornaments hanging on our tree and this year, Rosemarie received a rocking horse as well.

For all those women and men who are still waiting, whose smiles and laughs were just a little bit forced this Christmas, your dream is going to come true as well.  I know I sound as cheesy as a Kay commercial right now, but it’s true.  Hold on and keep faith, your Christmas angel is on her way.

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The massacre that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut last Friday morning was so unbelievably horrifying, so overwhelmingly terrible, that part of me feels I should not write about it, that it is just not my place to speak about this tragedy.  A stronger part of me, though, feels that it would be wrong to write about anything else.

When I think about the women and small, so very small, children who were murdered and the families who were left behind to bear such an insurmountable loss, the same thought keeps entering my mind:  the little things.

My father was killed on 9/11 and while I will not minimize the enormity of the loss of my father and the pain caused by the way he died, I also do not want to imply that I think I understand the grief of parents who are burying their babies a week before Christmas.  When my father died, though, I remember how much the little things that reminded me of him hurt.  I remember how the bottles of Yoo-hoo in a deli refrigerator made my heart ache.  How the theme song to Jeopardy brought me to tears.  How the sight of a man with salt-and-pepper hair turned my stomach to knots.

And since I heard the news on Friday, I keep thinking about the victims’ families and all the little things that must be breaking their hearts.

In a photo of Madeleine F. Hsu, 6, I noticed the sweet crookedness of her smile.  I imagine her parents seeing that smile when they close their eyes, remembering the way her lip dipped down just a bit on the right.

I read about James Mattioli, 6,  and how he loved to spike his hair with gel.  I picture his father opening the medicine cabinet, catching a glimpse of the bottle of gel and breaking down.

Olivia Engel’s, 6, favorite stuffed animal was a lamb.  I wonder if her mother is sleeping with it at night, pressing it to her cheek as her tears wet its wool.

Oh, the pain these poor people are enduring.

It is the little things that make us happy, but it can also be the little things that devastate us.

I revel in the little things each day I spend with my daughter.  I look at her tiny feet crossed at the ankles while she naps; I watch her while she plays, noticing every detail of her concentrated expression: her eyebrows pressed together, the plumpness of her bottom lip.  I video every favorite little thing she does, the soft “aah” sound she used to make after sneezing, the way she says “Hi” while rotating her chubby hand at the wrist, even the way she chews her food.

How do you go on when these little things are taken away?

I have no answer.  I honestly cannot fathom the anguish of these families.  I only know what I’ve learned so far through my experiences:  no matter how much pain you feel, no matter how much you don’t want life to go on, it does just that.  My heart breaks for these people who must endure as days turn to weeks, then months and years.

As a mother at a time like this, I find myself questioning the purpose of this life.  How can we go on enjoying ourselves and feeling happy when at any moment a monster, flesh and blood or otherwise, can enter our lives and destroy them?

Again, I have no answer.  I can only say, no matter how cliche it sounds, that life isn’t about the future.  It isn’t about what lies ahead.  Because we only know what we have right now, right here, in this moment.  And all we can do is live for that moment and enjoy it while it’s here.  All we can do is relish the little things while we have them, hug our children tight because we can and tell we love them every time we have the chance.

Details on the victims were found here.

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Although it may seem hard to believe, I actually have a friend who has congenital heart disease and is also an adoptive mother. We met online in the adoption circuit while we were still waiting to find our babies. Once we met in person, we saw each others’ sternotomy scars (a long vertical line down the front of our chests) and realized we had more in common than our yearning to be adoptive parents.

Over lunch the other day, we spoke about her daughter and Rosemarie. We talked about the food they eat and their napping schedules and soon the conversation turned to the big question that has been taking a stroll in my brain for a while:  Do I want more children?

Before I actually had Rosie, I always thought I’d adopt at least two children.  My plan was to wait a year or so after the arrival of the first baby and then contact my lawyer, start the certification process, and so on and so forth.  Now that I have her, however, my thoughts on the matter have changed. And yet they’ve stayed the same.  In other words, I no longer know the answer to that question.  And there are several factors I need to consider when making this decision.

Family of Four…or More 

Sister, Sister 

I have three sisters. I always considered myself lucky in this regard. Sibling relationships are like no other. My sisters and I have the same foundation. We came from the same place and share the same memories. We woke up in the same house each day; we played Barbies together and the Sweet Valley High board game. Soon, we borrowed each others’ make up and clothes. We cleaned the kitchen together each night singing “Leader of the Pack” and
“Reproduction” from Grease 2.  Eventually, we stood next to each other on the altar as we each got married and then baptized each others’ children.  Today, we are best friends.

How can I deny my daughter of such a relationship? How can I simply decide that she will not experience this in her lifetime?

I know there are plenty of only children who have perfectly happy and wonderful lives, but I also know how great it is to have a sibling. I wouldn’t choose to not have siblings, so how can I choose that for Rosemarie?

Is One a Lonelier Number for Adoptees?

Rosemarie is not biologically linked to anyone in my family. While I hope with all my heart that it doesn’t, I do not know if this will be an emotional issue for her. And I wonder for adopted children, if having an adopted sibling makes this fact easier to accept? Is it helpful for adoptees to have a sibling who is also not biologically linked to their parents? To have someone else with whom they can share this? Does it make a difference?

Will it bother Rosemarie that her cousins (her peers) each share a blood line with her mother or father while she does not?

Please understand, it makes zero difference to me and I can say that without a shred of doubt. But current adoption research asserts that being a successful adoptive parents means recognizing that your children were adopted and paying attention to the thoughts, doubts, and worries they may have related to their adoption. Thus, I need to consider the fact that she was adopted in this decision as well.

Family of Three…Forever

If I were being entirely selfish, I would not need to adopt another child. Rosemarie has made us happier than we ever imagined and I can absolutely envision living the rest of my life with a little and lovely family of three. But there are more important reasons why I think it may be wise to keep our family as is.

I Do Not Keep Going and Going

As I’ve discussed in a previous post, my condition affects my stamina. Taking care of a baby is tiring for anyone.  There is a lot of lifting, walking, chasing, and pushing (strollers, not children). For me, it is not entirely overwhelming to do these activities with one child.  But I imagine myself lifting two babies into their car seats inside my truck, changing double the amount of diapers per day, cleaning up after two little mess-makers instead of one, and to be perfectly honest, it seems like a daunting task.  I really don’t know if I will have the energy to take care of two, at least not as well as I’d like to. I certainly don’t want to adopt another child and then realize my children are not getting the care and attention they deserve because of my low stamina.

Of course, I could wait until Rosie is out of diapers and can climb into her car seat herself, but I still want to have energy for her.  I don’t want to be too tired to play catch with her or push her on a swing.  I want to have the energy to do silly dances to her favorite songs and teach her how to bake cookies. I want to watch her in the school play without having my eyes close in the darkness.

I know I am not the only woman who needs to consider her stamina when deciding how many children she will have.  I know it is the same for my friend as well as other moms with heart disease, congenital or not. I imagine it is a concern for women with other health conditions that are not cardiac in nature.  I imagine these women ask themselves the same questions as I.

They say it’s quality not quantity and doesn’t that sort of apply here? Isn’t it better to be an energetic, attentive mother to one child than a tired and drained mother to two?

A Dozen Cousins

Even if Rosie does not have a sister or brother, she has plenty of cousins with whom she will grow up. In addition to my nieces and nephews who are all over nine years old, she has five cousins around her age. My sister’s girls are 3 and 1; the younger one and Rosemarie will be in the same grade in school. My brother-in-law has three-year-old twin girls and a son who will turn one this January.

So, it is not as if Rosemarie is the only child in the family. Her holidays, birthdays, and even some vacations are spent with her cousins. Since my sister and I are together at least two or three times a week, she also does every-day activities with her cousins.  Together, they eat meals, take baths, play games, and even go grocery shopping.  Sometimes, they even wear matching outfits as sisters do.

If I do not have more children, I will always make a conscious effort to ensure that she continues to spend a good amount of time with her cousins in the future.

Clearly, I haven’t made a final decision yet in this matter.  Anthony and I have discussed it many times and we are still pondering the answer.  There are moments when Rosemarie walks over to me smiling, her two tiny white teething peeking up from her bottom lip, and I know I could never need anything to be more content than I am right now.  At other times, I will catch her playing by herself, concentrating deeply on the slinky we won her at the boardwalk, and I suddenly feel guilty at the thought of not giving her a daily playmate with whom she can share her childhood.

Someday, I know this decision will be made.  Perhaps we will make it on our own or maybe life will make it for us.  I suppose I am lucky that I am able to contemplate the decision and that my daughter has made us so happy that we’re just not sure if we want anything to change.

What about you? Are you a young mother with a health condition? How did you decide?

Are you an adoptee? Do you have siblings? Do you think you’d be any happier/less happy if you did?

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