Sometimes I wonder if pregnancy were an option for me if the decision to add children to our family would not be such a never-ending conversation. Right now at this very moment I want more children. I want Eva to have a sister, because I had five of them and they are the reason for my sanity, and my insanity come to think of it. But I still don’t know what I would do without them, I surely would not be the person I am today.
To give Eva a sister is not the only reason I want more children though. I want another baby to take care of, to smell, to buy tiny clothes for, to teach how to walk, to use the “big girl” potty, and talk politics to.
If it were as easy as getting pregnant I would tell Chris that it’s time and we would start on it right away. With adoption it’s not that easy. The decision whether or not to add children to your family is the easy part. Adoption is hard. It involves researching agency’s, making unnatural decisions about age and sex and race, a hefty savings account, and paperwork. Hours and hours of paperwork. Adoption involves another set of birth-parents and circumstances that will further complicate your child’s life, and your life, and your current children’s lives. I already spend so much time thinking and worrying about what the future holds for Eva and the kind of relationship she will have with the woman who gave her life and I wonder if I have the time to think about and worry about those kinds of things for another child. As pathetic as that sounds.
Then, there are my own ambiguous feelings about adoption. I never had a negative thought about adopting a child until I started the process myself. There are so many decisions to make that just don’t feel natural. So many opinions from people who will never have make those decisions themselves. And then there is the heart wrenching side of adoption. The unfairness of it all. That a woman has to feel like the only way for her precious baby to succeed and be happy is to have another woman raise her. The feeling likeI am the one getting the large end of the stick. I have never felt comfortable being the benefactor of someone elses’ misfortune. I would much rather be the one who is suffering than the one causing the suffering. And I know that by adopting a baby I am not the reason for someone elses’ suffering but it is hard to remember that sometimes.
I have been asking everyone one I know, and even random strangers on the street “How did you know that it was time to add more children to your family?” With Eva, I had a feeling that hit me like a nuclear bomb one day and I KNEW I had to be a mom A.S.A.P. like my life depended on it. But now that I am a mom I don’t have that feeling anymore. So, how did you know that it was time to add more children to your family? Did the feeling come back or is that just a once in a lifetime kind of thing?
