aag

I’m wading in despite your warning. This is horseshit. I recognize it because I do this type of guilt thing to myself.

It’s pure horsehit.

well

i had a nice house and decent clothing and two parents and will inherit a decent amount of money… great education and all sorts of advanced parenting and basically just what you describe in your babies imaginary life

and i got beat up and my mother had pretty heavy mental problems.

so *shrug* you know.

How about a joke then, Ms. Cranky Pants?

A middle-aged couple had two beautiful daughters but always talked about
having a son. They decided to try one last time for the son they always wanted.

The wife got pregnant and delivered a healthy baby boy.

The joyful father rushed to the nursery to see his new son.

He was horrified at the ugliest child he had ever seen.

He told his wife, “There’s no way I can be the father of this baby. Look at
the two beautiful daughters I fathered! Have you been fooling around behind
my back?”

The wife smiled sweetly and replied, “Not this time!”

Well, I worry about my kids as well. How they are doing. What I am doing, or not doing. How other people do it. Then I remember a saying I once heard. “Everyone is normal, until you get to know them.” Then I don’t worry anymore, at least not as much.

I can tell by what little I have read here that your kids are in very good hands!

I would be hard pressed to think of your children as unfortunate. Guaranteed love, dedication, protection, sacrifice, devotion, everything …, until the day you leave this world.

MOST children grow up with so much less. MOST CHILDREN GROW UP WITH MUCH, MUCH LESS.

You have three very fortunate children.

You doubt yourself far too much. But, then again, that’s not an uncommon trait among heroic people.

Guilt tells me that if I hadn’t been so selfish, these perfect babies would have found homes far better than mine.

A good friend of mine was a sweet little blonde-headed white girl. She was adopted by a seemingly together married couple. They took her to live with them in their perfect suburban home.

The father was verbally abusive and physically abusive to the mom. The mother was schizophrenic and often not on meds. My friend tells stories of being in grade school and learning to walk around the glass smashed on the floor so she wouldn’t cut up her feet. She remembers going to friends’ houses and being yelled at and shamed by her friends’ parents for doing or saying inappropriate things, things which she didn’t know were crazy or “wrong,” because all she knew was crazy at home. The father killed himself eventually before she was out of high school; whether deliberately or through drink, I don’t remember. The mother lived on and became increasingly problematic and, due to her mental illness, eventually became completely unable to care for herself, a decline with which my friend had to witness and deal with through her college years and the earliest years of trying to start a career and live a life of her own.

Perhaps if you hadn’t been so selfish, these perfect babies would have found homes far worse than yours.

You have nothing to feel guilty about. Your children has a mother who loves them and cares very deeply about them. In the end that’s all that matters.

And think of how much happier you are due to the changes in your life this year. Believe me, your children notice! Even if they have no inkling why.

“Their noses never run. Mac and cheese never becomes encrusted under their ears. Their hair is always neat.”

Excuse me? What a pile of horse manure. If this were true, they’d be living in some Stepford Wife-spewed dreamworld. And when i say dream, i mean nightmare.

Also, what Badinfluencegirl said, and the ever-wise Miss Syl. Word for word, warning, disclaimers, stories and everything.

Seriously.

I was adopted at the age of 8 days old by two people who were simply not meant to be together. They divorced when I was less than two years old. I didn’t find out until years and years later that my father liked to drink and have affairs with my mother’s best friend. She struggled for a while, eventually re-married, and had three more kids from that marriage.

There were times that my family was so broke my mum had to borrow money from her parents. My step-father, who was an excellent provider, took every crap job he could find so that we could have food on the table. All growing up we had NO clue how bad things were from time to time. My mum never let us see that until we were old enough to understand. I’ve led an amazingly spoiled life, because my mother loved me more than anything, and would have done anything for us.

We didn’t always have new clothes, and I don’t think I owned anything ‘brand name’ until I was in high school. We lived in a crappy double-wide trailer for years. Sometimes it was really hard, and certainly had I been adopted to another family it might not have been.

You know what though, growing up, I had the mother that all my friends wanted. My mother cared about where I was, what I was doing, who I was doing it with. She fed and housed some of my friends who had biological parents that didn’t care about them much, or were too wrapped up in their own problems. She is amazing, and regardless of what other family I might have been raised by, there isn’t enough money in the world to make me wish I had grown up anywhere else.

Biological parents have guilt too. I was young and unmarried when I got pregnant. Sometimes I wonder why *I* ended up with these precious children when I personally know couples who would make much better parents than I (in my guilt-ridden opinion of course) and yet they cannot have children. It hardly seems fair in this world that so many people who don’t want children can have them and so many people who want them cannot.

Sorry for the length of this comment, but your post struck something deep in my heart and I started reflecting on my life since I was in the exact same position your babies are in. I can promise you that they will not wish you away for some other ficticious parents. You’re doing the very best you know how, and years from now maybe they will share the above sentiments with someone else who is going though ‘The Guilt’.

All The Best,
Shasta

Aag - this is coming from a licensed Foster parent. I see children who come from parents who shouldn’t raise pigs. I see children that are drinking Bug Juice at 1 a.m., and are hanging outside of bar waiting for their parents.

My mom was a single mother - I had NOTHING to do with my dad, and it made me become a strong individual who cherishes her own children, and any others that come into her care.

I know this guilt. I don’t know where it comes from, but I know it. My circumstances are a bit different, but the feelings are the same.

In the end, I believe that everything happens for a reason. And those kids have the mother they are supposed to have. And I bet she’s a great one.

I remember your post on Mother’s Day two years ago when you told the story of the babies. It was close to the time I started reading your blog, and I was impressed then, and am still impressed, by how good a mother you are. I couldn’t possibly top the stories already told, but I second their conclusions. Some bad things happened to me in my two parent looked great from the outside home. Oh well. I am here now.

I hear your pain. I understand your guilt. I wish I could take it away, as I am sure all your readers do.

hugs

E

What everyone else said, and then some.

It’s never easy raising kids - it doesn’t matter if they’re yours by birth or yours by luck. People thought my mom was perfect. Her house was always clean, we ate ridiculously healthy meals interspersed with mac ‘n’ cheese and chili with hot dogs, we were pretty well behaved kids and smart, too. What people didn’t understand is why all three of us girls had a very deep fear of our mother. Not only that, but our mom was NOT someone you could talk to. About anything. Mom is still depressed, but slightly easier to talk to. Her house is still clean (I know - my family lives in it) and the food is still healthy. But no matter what, Mom has such high standards they’re impossible to live up to. The guilt still tells me that I’m a bad mom, even though the kids are healthy and smart and loving. The guilt tells me that I shouldn’t be raising my kids under my mom’s roof because they’ll have the same horrible memories that I do of not doing something right and getting screamed at, of being spanked with a wooden spoon until the spoon broke (even though that won’t happen on my watch), of being slapped silly for missing the school bus and then having to walk several miles to school and being late. The guilt is always there. Maybe not for the same reasons for every mom, but someone once told me that the guilt is a sign of a good mom. Without it, you just don’t care.

Cherish your guilt. Rail against it and debate its logic. Tell it to go back to the pit from whence it came on occasion. But know that your guilt is not necessarily a sign of your shortcomings (or depression in my case) but a sign of your love for your children.

Ramble over. I love you, AAG, and I can’t imagine a better mom for your kids.

Adoptee here.

There were times when my parents could give me anything and times when they couldn’t. There were times I had two parents and times that I didn’t.

You know my fondest memories? When my mom was spending time with us–not money on us.

She walked me down the aisle at my wedding (my step-dad too). There was no way I was going to take that journey without her.

You know you have what you need to give them. Guilt sucks. Don’t let it suck you down.

AAG,
Anything I can do to make it worse ? :)

I’m adopted. It was the home from hell. With lots of money. My “father” introduced me to the man who date-raped and sodomized me when I was 18.

Personally, I would have MUCH rather had you as a Mom. You wouldn’t have stood by while this monster abused me verbally for years until he found someone who would do it physically…

Yo - AAG,

Look at it this way. Your kids are YOURS. That’s what will make them happy and unique and very special. From what I can tell, you’re a pretty kick-ass person and a helluva mom.

Besides - your kids won’t grow up to be snotty, spoiled, naive, or thinking they are better than everyone else.

Tell your guilt to go stick it’s head up a horse’s ass…

PS -

Watch Relative Strangers (2006) w/Danny DeVito if you haven’t already… you’ll feel MUCH, MUCH better.

Hmmm. AAG, you don’t say anything about love. Does your guilt tell you that some other mother would love them more? I didn’t think so.

In the end, the most important thing we give our children is love, and you are wealthy beyond imagining in that area, and you know it. No one could love your children more than you do. No one could love my children more than I do. I feel no guilt at all about being so fortunate.

Stop it now. :-)

I’m not going to say the same things as everyone else, because while the guilt isn’t logical per se, it doesn’t mean that it’s not ok to have it.

People feel guilty for a litany of reasons: people who survive deaths of people close to them feel guilty they survived. people sexually assaulted feel guilty that they may have “brought it on themselves” (been there, done that). I feel guilty I decided to go to grad school rather than move to NM to take care of my grandmother (even though she’s perfectly happy being taken care of by my mother). Guilt happens…logical or not, based in fact or fiction, and it takes a big person to share their guilt with anyone, none the less a whole blog.

So thank you for sharing, and yes, it’s illogical, but it’s real…and to be honest, what mother doesn’t wonder if she’s not the best mother for her kid? Good mothers want the absolute best for their children…which makes you a good mother.

-Em

Hi AAG,

I think that you just got up this morning and ate a bullshit sandwich.

But hey– I still think you’re cute, and wanna give you a titty twister! ;-)

XOXO

Chuck

I grew up in a two-parent household. For the record, my parents love one another desperately. And the therapy that has resulted from my mother’s verbal and emotional abuse has lasted for years.

I can honestly say that I am the most nurturing person that I have ever met. I can honestly say that I am the most loving person I’ve ever met. And yet… I cannot imagine having children. I fear that I will become the same person that my mother became between my years of age 5 and 24.

Good luck. Just realize that having children is such an act of bravery in itself.

Hi there,
Quite frankly, I stumbled upon your blog for the kinky stuff.
But this post is so thoughtfully written and heartfelt it makes me want to hug you forever.
You’re so sensitive, sensible (no guilt - no love)… and funny.
Your children are truly lucky!
(I’ll spare you my own story, won’t add much to the above comments :)
Bises!

“Guilt tells me that if I hadn’t been so selfish, these perfect babies would have found homes far better than mine.”

Hi AAG,

I wonder about that all the time, and at least one of my kids looks exactly like me. Frankly, adoption is a hell of a lot more special than basic reproduction. Any kid can make or carry a baby. It takes an adult to take care of it. You chose these children, and one day they’ll thank you for it, as adults. My stepfather and wife are both adopted, so I sorta know what I’m talking about.

Every parent feels guilt. You make the best home for them you can, you love them, and teach them well. It’ll be OK.

Love,

G.

You know better than that. You know that your children’s happiness isn’t quantified by designer clothes or a spotless all-white leather designer sofa in a living room you daren’t let them enter for gear of getting it messed up, or a room full of expensive playthings.

You know deep down that a child’s happiness stems from the security and assurance of the unqualified love of it’s mother.