Mother's Day

For a few weeks I tried to decide whether or not to send VeeGee's birthmother a Mother's Day card. It could go either way, right, in terms of hurt feelings or insensitivity? And I don't want to gratuitously hurt her feelings. In the end I didn't send anything. It wasn't so much a choice, but really a case of life getting too busy. That, and, well, Hallmark doesn't make a card that says, "Thanks for the baby - still picking up those pieces - Happy Mother's Day!"

I don't know if the events of Mother's Day make me glad or not relative to that decision. The bad me is glad.

When the grandparents arrived an hour late for the Mothers' Day brunch I'd prepared in g-mother and my mother's honor, they announced to K (I was in the kitchen RE-heating brunch), that bmom had called to wish Happy Day, and to inform them that she plans to come to town for the weekend of VeeGee's birthday. News to us. In fact, we haven't heard from bmom (other than an Easter card for VeeGee) in quite some time (and only then an e-mail to me sending Easter pictures).

I'm having a really hard time with this. It feels like this is a forever situation, in that we will always be looking over our shoulder for bmom to -poof- appear at holiday time - as if we're just supposed to drop everything in order to include her. It's not that we want to prevent VeeGee from seeing and having a relationship with her bmom, it's just that we can't always be in this kind of limbo. Are we supposed to assume that she assumes that grandparents will give us the message and that that should be assumed to be enough "notice?" The other thing that bothers me about this is that, by letting (if we actually do allow it) her just show up on whim to see VeeGee, we're signalling that it's okay to behave this way not just to us, but, more importantly, to VeeGee.

We've thought of a number options. One is to have a big birthday party - so big that bmom's presence won't have to be THE focus of everything. It wouldn't be out of character to do this (there were, no exaggeration, 120 people at her party last year). But, finances being what they are, I don't know if that's the smartest option. Another thing we considered is going camping. But it may be too warm by that time (late June), and I don't like the idea of pinning all our hopes on a dry weekend. And then there's the option to just ignore this all. Go about the weekend as we normally would (whatever that might mean) and not count on her showing up (it's happened!). If she does pop into town, particularly if she still hasn't called us directly, we'll just do what we had to do at Christmas and be very narrow in our availability.

Now, if you haven't read here before and are thinking at this point that I'm a bitch, please read some old posts. This isn't a simple case of regular old adoption, not that it's ever simple, and we're kind of making this up as we go along. My hope always is to be a good, non-angry/resentful, mom to VeeGee. And part of that is being generous and kind to her birthmother. I don't forget that. But I'm also not willing to sacrifice our hard earned family to the whims of someone who ceded all of her rights through neglect and passivity.

Not so fast . . .

So, just when I thought we were not going to be putting VeeGee under general anesthesia for a while, her GI had decided that he really needs to do a suction biopsy to rule out Hirchsprung's disease. Of course I'm on it like a fly as soon as we get home and, of course it describes everything about VeeGee (chronic FTT, chronic constipation/diarrhea, weight loss . . . .). He also wants to do a scope of her esophagus to see what kind of damage is/has been done with the chronic vomiting (now just retching, of course, but she's getting more and more ick out as time passes).

I am not going to believe or really entertain this dx until/if it's made. I'm betting (hoping) that the issues are more related to the combination of her being the age she is with the temperament that she has plus low tone. But it's still just sobering to know that there are still these hurdles. It's never over. I so frequently think, "We're getting to the end of this. After this surgery, she'll just be a 'normal' kid." I've actually even felt guilty lately when I read about some of my friends who have kids with for real life threatening issues, like, it's not that bad. The tube's no big deal. She's breathing now. Not eating, but . . .

And then I'm reminded that her issues are systemic, permanent and that we may keep discovering facets of them into adulthood.

This is my little thumbs-up girl,
right after surgery this last time.
She's so AMAZING!!!!