As we count down to the day of her arrival (sixty, forty-five, forty, possibly even fewer) infants who look like she no doubt will appear in my field of vision every time I leave the house. Blond-headed, bright-eyed, fat-cheeked and neckless they gurgle and coo over their parents’ shoulders in line at the bank; they wave about their round little arms from grocery carts to point at milk, at apples, at everything. I see them and push back my babies five years when they too waved and gurgled as they accompanied me on our daily rounds — always happy, always compliant, always lovely1 — and some not quite vanishingly small part of me wishes I could repeat the process with N.’s latest offering.
Irrational as it is I know I’m not alone. The mother of the fourth child calls to tell me about her latest visit with N., one which left her wrung-out and near frantic with worry over her health, relationships and living situation. I don’t want to listen; I don’t want to know. In fact I won’t listen to N., but because this woman has known N. just a year and has not yet built up the level of resistance I have in six I let her vent. “I wish there was something I could do,” she worries.
I know, I tell her. I do too.
“We’d take this baby if we could,” she says.
I know, I tell her. I know you would.
“But we just can’t,” and even though I’ve not asked for it she recites again the many reasons that adding to her family would be unwise. She leaves off one reason which I learn later that week on Facebook: that they are going on vacation at exactly the time the new child is set to arrive and as I read it a flash of irrational anger pops in front of my eyes. They would go on a cruise rather than take their baby’s new sibling! I whine, but as quick as that it’s gone. Responsibility for a new child far outlasts (and out-costs) any holiday they could plan and even without this impediment how could I blame them for not wanting to take on another child so soon? Knowing what I know how monstrous would I be to blame them?
But I know the alternative because it has happened before: Lacking an N.-approved placement the new child will be born and go home with N. where for some weeks or perhaps months they will struggle — how hard I am certain we do not want to know — before the state steps in and the child is sucked into the system. I was the safety net when this happened with N.’s second child. I could not be the safety net when this happened with N.’s third child, and that child is now lost despite my gentlest efforts to contact his family through the agency2 and directly after the child’s mother reached out to N. on Facebook3. Both times I received no answer, which is impossible to bear. Impossible. I’m irrationally angry at them too. Or maybe the anger is not so irrational because I cannot see any logical reason for not wanting some contact — any contact! — with your child’s biological family.
Not even one.
I don’t make decisions irrationally4 but to prevent the loss of another sibling my mind ratchets and whirls in an effort to figure out a way that I could mother this new baby. I can’t — I know I can’t. The fee to the agency alone runs upward of ten grand, and three children already subdivide my time and attention far more than is fair to them5. It’s not in the realm of possibility; it’s so far removed from being feasible that even to consider it would be as much of a waste of time as it would be to plan out a beach vacation with my new boyfriend Spike — in other words foolish, misguided and more than a little pathetic.
None of this, however, will stop my mind from whirling.
- Treacherous memory to recall so imperfectly! [↩]
- They have no legal obligation to be in touch with you, they said. I know, I said, but can you pass on my message nonetheless? Probably not, they said, but we will check with the case manager. Will you let me know, I said. No, they said. And that was that. [↩]
- Paragraph One: We love your son so much. Thank you for giving him life. Paragraph Two: Accept Jesus as your personal savior now, because we can see so clearly that you need him. [↩]
- I rarely make decisions irrationally. Really. [↩]
- Or me. [↩]
and I am waiting not so patiently on the adoption list. but alas I am in Canada.
I don’t know where you live, or how far away we are from where you live, but I know a couple who wants desperately to have a child and cannot have any by any biological means. They want a baby, and as we all know, finding a baby “in the system” is next to impossible. Is there any way we can get this couple and N. together and possibly make a family?
The only thing is, I’m absolutely sure they wouldn’t consent to visits with N., not only because they most likely live too far apart to make that feasible.
I appreciate the thought but I cannot interfere with her plans in this way.
Courage!!
How about having her sterilized?
There’s this little thing called reproductive freedom we’re right fond of around these parts, Mike. What that means is that *even if I don’t agree* with a particular reproductive decision, I don’t stand in the way of that decision being made by the person whose body is undergoing the reproduction.
Perhaps you’ve heard of this?
I know how hard it is to watch a train wreck about to happen and to not be able to stop it. *HUGS*
Not to pass judgement on Mike’s comment, but do you doubt at all that there will be another baby to follow this one?
No doubt in my mind at all. Reproductive freedom still stands.
I agree. However just because she has a right doesn’t mean she should exercise it.
My point exactly. She burdens everyone around her, including the eventual child, with at minimum frustration, exasperation, and drama. Is it fair to that child? She clearly is taking advantage of her support system, even if she doesn’t have the maturity to understand that. And you, with all your talk of “reproductive freedom”, are simply enabling her.
And yes, she would probably continue to “pop them out” one after the other if you were not in her life, but why do you support her deluded decision making ability so much?
And your solution would be to somehow “have” her sterilized? How might you suggest I go about accomplishing that?
She is a human being, not a cat. Whether or not you agree with the choices she makes or the repercussions that follow, they are her decisions to make.
You cannot possibly judge the entirety of another person’s life or dictate the proper way for her to live that life as you see fit.
And lest we forget, humans do not reproduce asexually; there is always more than one person, and their associated body autonomy involved in these matters.