TL;DR: I need to acknowledge that I'm angry at my children's birth mom for hurting them, and angry at a world where this kind of thing happens.Adoptive parent (from the foster care system) to a 3.5 year old and an 11 month old. I have an event in a couple of hours with my "preschooler" and all the preschool families and I need to not be carrying this around with me quite so much when that happens. I'd call my counselor but it's not really an emergency, and well, here Reddit is, just waiting to be vented at.I just got news a few hours ago that some dear dear friends who will be wonderful parents lost their pregnancy, eight months along. They had just had a baby shower last weekend. The devastation is just incomprehensible to me. My wife and I had lots of challenges but never that, and it is the kind of thing that I can't quite comprehend enduring. We never managed to get pregnant in our infertility journey and never put that much effort into it when we realized what was going on, in part because we both feared that kind of outcome. It's fucking horrible.This comes on the heels of information that's been slowly developing about our youngest kiddo. Both boys came to us through the foster care system, very young-- less than a week old. We never expected second kiddo, we thought we were done, but the same mother and same genetic father gave birth again under the same horrible, sad circumstances. Their birth mother is a completely incapable disaster. Our boys are children nos. 4 and 5 for her. None of them are with her. She is a hardcore, lifelong addict, using multiple substances but primarily meth. The pattern has been pretty much the same with her all along. She gets pregnant, hides from her one or two responsible family members as long as she can so they don't find out, keeps using heavily, and then eventually turns up at a hospital. Gives her real name. Gives birth. Tells everyone everything is great, she's got a plan, she's thrilled to be a mother. They then drug test her and baby and both are positive for multiple substances. They confront her, she breaks down, leaves, and never makes an effort to get the kids back, just refuses to actively agree to give them up. She's done this five times now.Our oldest is, in spite of his circumstances, more than fine-- he's great. And our youngest seems great, too, in the sense that developmentally he's hitting his milestones and he's a sweet kiddo with a very engaging personality. But... well. It's becoming clear on his face. You can see on his face that he has a classic dysmorphia (birth defect, sort of) pattern associated with alcohol exposure in utero. I guess this go around she drank more heavily, or at different times, or who knows, it might just be that she's older and her liver/system has gotten less resilient, it's hard to say. But it seems like at least until puberty there's a real chance people will see right there on my little boy's face the ways she hurt him. We are getting all the appropriate supports and proper, full evaluations (which can't really be completed for awhile yet, until about 15-18 months old). So maybe not. But it's starting to seem clear. There are some (pretty mild) emotional/behavioral developmental things going on which also speak to the real possibility that he's experienced Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.Here's the thing: I know his birth mother's story. I do. And to say that the world has tormented that poor woman from the very earliest days of her life, unrelentingly, is to undersell the situation. She comes out of a profoundly broken family system, with at least five generations of unrelenting trauma, perpetuating itself on down the family line. I have the deepest sorrow for her. I know it sounds like I'm making excuses for her. It's not. The life she leads, the terrible ways she has hurt others, are really not her fault in the way you might imagine. She never had much of a chance. She was exposed to hard core drugs regularly as a pre-teen and start using them to cope immediately thereafter. She's never, ever been clean. Her development has been suspended, in limbo, sort of a perpetual little girl, held hostage by a powerful disease of addiction and the profound traumas it feasts upon.But something about my wonderful friends and their tragedy, and the developing information about our youngest, and being tired of awful things in the news all the fucking time, and... well, everything... I'm just really angry right now.I'm angry.I'm angry at her.I'm angry at a universe where her broken, drug-addled self keeps getting pregnant and giving birth to these children, these innocent kids that she hurts over and over again with her disease. And then my friends-- and so many people I know-- have suffered enormous pain and loss, trying to bear a child in a responsible, love-filled, intentional way, just to have it go so horribly, horribly wrong, so late in the pregnancy. Fuck you, universe. That is just wanton cruelty.I am enraged at my child's birth mom for hurting him. How fucking dare she do this, over and over. We will love our boys with all the strength we are given, we will channel the kindness and joy of our families, of a whole loving community of beautiful people, and we will do right by them. They will be okay. But at the core of it all, they both have suffered a loss in this world, already. We can't do anything but help them be ready to cope with it when the time comes. They have been born to a woman they probably won't ever know. She may never be a safe person for them to be around. Her demons will probably kill her first. Adoption starts with loss and theirs is real. And our youngest... she may have hurt him the worst.She may be pregnant and hurting another little boy or girl right now, for all I know. So, I'm angry at the woman I don't want to be angry at, who on some intellectual level I don't even think deserves my anger, but there it is. I'm pissed. And fuck the universe for working like this sometimes.My counselor always encourages me that good mental health means acknowledging how you're feeling. But in our lives we can't always just stop everything and dump on those closest to us; it doesn't work like that, does it? So thank you, Reddit strangers, for being that space right now as I need it.People, hug the ones you love extra tight today. Hoping that you get love and nourishment in return, too. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2ONnLc8
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