Monday, May 22, 2006

I wish there were something I regretted doing.

This was my wish a few nights ago.
I was wracking my brain, trying to find one thing I regret having done in regard to fostering/adopting/etc.

There isn't anything.

  • Deciding to adopt as a first choice
  • Deciding to do fostercare instead of private adoption
  • Deciding to take temporary foster babies
  • Deciding to take "possible adopt" foster babies
  • Deciding to treat Niblet as "our own"
  • Deciding to start calling her by the name we'd give her if we adopted her
  • Asking our family and friends to treat her as permanent, with the knowledge that she could be temporary
  • Deciding to have kids at all
  • All the other things that have happened that I didn't have control over, but could wish that they didn't happen all the same.
I can't even pretend to want to take any of these things back.

I'm a big proponent of "things happen for a reason". I'm not all that religious, but I am spiritual. I feel the bigger picture. If nothing else, the past 2 years have taught me more about "things happen for a reason" than I ever knew.

What this amounts to is that, as much as I want Niblet to stay with us forever and ever, it might not happen. And it will be okay if that happens. She will be okay. She will be safe. We will grieve and cry and curse and eat french fries and milkshakes for dinner for weeks, but we will recover. We will go on to the next step, we will move on with our lives, we will eventually have the family we are meant to have.
I don't think there's a "master plan", really, but I do think there are many paths that our lives can take and that all of them end up with us having children and being happy. I really do believe that.

I just wish I could find the branch of the current path that leads to Miss Cuteness sleeping through the night.

4 comments:

No Longer In Crisis said...

I couldn't agree more - or say it any better. Even through the children who had to return to family - we'd do it all again and would change nothing. We wouldn't even do it sooner - it works now because we were ready.

Julie said...

I agree- it is just hard to see them go- and kinda hard for them to stay knowing they are leaving- it is all hard- dang it! I wish it were easy.

Lionmom said...

I went a little crazy when our first set of twins went to a family placement (paternal cousin). I knew better than to attach so intensely, but we had these precious little girls for 7 months and they so much felt like ours.

But along the vein of things happening for a reason - the first twins created the circumstances that led to us getting our twins. Our beautiful, wonderful forever babies. We still see the first twins 1-2 times per year, and it is so clear that everyone is with the right family.

FosterMommy said...

Yep, lionmom, that's the other part of it. Everything that's happened - positive or negative - has had an effect in what happened next. For instance, over July 4th weekend, we were moving apartments and got a call for newborn twin girls. We said yes (because we're stupid suckers) and waited a few days for them. During that same time, Nugget came out of the NICU and into care. We didn't get called because we were on hold for the twins. They ended up going to their dad and we were baby-less.

However, it was a really bad time for us to have a kid. We'd just moved into a teeny, tiny apartment, didn't have enough room to unpack, were looking to buy a house ASAP, etc. If we hadn't been on call for the twins, we would have gotten Nugget - who would have been a LOT of work as she was less than 5 pounds at that point - and we probably would have messed up our house-hunt...or any number of other problems would have arisen.

As it was, we got her the day before our housewarming. Relatively perfect timing.

Also, I can't imagine what we'd be going thru if we'd had her from last July and just now be starting to deal with the idea of losing her.

Everything happens for a reason. :)