I listened to the terrific radio show This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass from WBEZ in Chicago, last weekend and found myself in tears, pained, and very afraid. The show itself was about unconditional love and featured two stories about parents and their children. One story was about a child who was adopted from a Romanian orphanage at age 7 and came home with severe attachment disorder, among other things; the other was about a family with twin sons, one of whom who has severe autism, and the parents' struggle over that child's institutionalization.

Ok, what got me, though, was the introduction to the show. Here's a portion of the blurb from the show website:

Hard as it is to believe, during the 30's and 40's
a whole school of mental health professionals
decided that unconditional love was a terrible
thing to give a child. The government printed
pamphlets, warning mothers against the dangers
of holding their kids, and even a mothers'
organization endorsed the position that mothers
were dangerous – until psychologist Harry Harlow
did a series of experiments with monkeys that
proved the whole idea was insane.

What Harlow did was to take brand new baby monkeys away from their mothers and put them in cages with substitutes. Some were metal mesh cylinders with bottles of food, some were covered with soft fabric and no food. He was testing the prevailing theory that attachment comes from feeding so if that's all there is to it, the baby monkeys would hang with the food-mommies and not the cozy-mommies. Nope, they'd spend almost all of their time with the cozy-mommies, and leave only to eat or explore. If the cozy-mommies were removed, the baby monkeys were anxious and didn't play; if the cozy-mommies were there, the baby monkeys were confident and soothed. Ok, cozy trumps food. No surprise (anymore) there.

Then he upped the ante. He made the evil-mommies. Mommies that shocked the babies, mommies that were spiked to poke into the babies and make them jump off, mommies that had really scarey faces. And here's the part that stabbed me in the heart: Those little baby monkeys returned over and over again to be shocked or poked or scared over and over again; they cooed, they cajoled, they did everything our precious little human babies do when they're trying to get our attention. They did everything they could think of to try to fix the broken relationship with their mommy-figures.

And what does this have to do with me and my family? We haven't seen BabyGirls's birthmother but twice in the last three years despite repeated plans (she's a no-show), emails, phone calls. She lives only a few miles away.

My fear--my gut-wrenching, reduce me to a quivering mass of mommahood fear--is that my beautiful baby will internalize that broken relationship and do everything she can think of to fix it. Does that mean my baby might be more likely to try to identify with her birthmom by also getting pregnant at 16? Might she be more likely to make spectacularly bad choices when it comes to schooling and men (aside from BabyGirl's birthfather who is a gem amongst men) to be a little more like her birthmom? Can I love BabyGirl unconditionally enough, support her enough, to help her through her teenage-hood and come out the other side reasonably healthy and whole?

Love Thursday

I don't know who started this one but I like it so I'm going with it. Every Thursday, a post or photo that exemplifies love in all its many forms.

Here's BabyGirl and me at our fancy Going to Kindergarten lunch and tea with BestFriend and BabyBestFriend. We all wore dresses and ate salmon crepes, then tea and homemade vegan DingDongs afterwards. Lovely!

The Lunch Lady

Today's my first day as Lunch Lady at BabyGirl's school. I'm generally a pretty quiet person, I generally prefer quiet environments, and I generally prefer to be inside. So, of course, I had to sign up to be the Wednesday Lunch Lady because it made BabyGirl happy.

And what does this entail? Holding down the kid-induced chaos of two lunch periods (11:30-noon, noon-12:30) and outside play time with the entire school! Gee whiz, the things I'll do for that kid. The idea of all those little hooligans swirling around and yelling in the little lunch room, followed by outside time on this, our third rainy day in a row, is a little intimidating. But since I have BabyGirl convinced that I'm a Brave Momma, slayer of monsters and relocator of spiders, I'll go and find the joy in their abandon. Then I'll come home to my empty house and have a cup of tea in the silence.

Post Lunch Lady Update
What in the wide wide world of sports was I thinking? I'm sure I'll work into it but with the rain--that started the minute the little rugrats were supposed to go outside, mind you--it was an "inside recess" day. I was assigned to keep an eye on the kindergarten room into which about a zillion kids ran because the best toys are in there. One boy took off, then lost, his hearing aids (the better to not hear me, my Dears); a girl somehow managed to scrape her thigh and then hiked her pant leg up to her crotch to display the wound; a kindergarten boy wanted desperately to build stuff with the big guys but didn't know how to join them and had a little melt-down (hooray for the big guys who figured out the situation long before I did and invited him in); BabyGirl declared herself "the helper's helper" and didn't leave me. Ok, ok, I secretly dug the last part. It was good to see her in the middle of the day.

I was missing her so much yesterday that I got all teary at the grocery store yesterday when I saw a mom and her child tooling around the aisles while pushing the pint-sized kids' shopping cart. When the kid careened into my shopping cart, the mom apologized and I nearly burst into tears! She thought it was sweet.

Get this one from Dear Abby:

DEAR ABBY: Four years ago, during my freshman year in college, I gave birth
to a beautiful little boy. His father and I made the joint decision to place him
for adoption. Thankfully, his adopted family keeps me involved with his life by
sending me pictures and frequent updates. I have no regrets about my decision.

I am soon to be married to the most wonderful man on Earth. Recently,
during our premarital counseling, the question came up concerning how we would
tell our children about the son I had. After discussing this issue further, my
fiance and I agreed that we would like our children to know about their
half-brother from their earliest memory. Our problem is, we don't know how to
tell them in a way that will not upset them, confuse them or scare them. Any
suggestions? -- JESSICA IN SOUTH CAROLINA

DEAR JESSICA: I do not agree that your children should be told "from
their earliest memory" that they have a half-brother who was adopted by another
family. It will be easier for them to understand when they are older, and you
are talking with them about the facts of life and the consequences of
unprotected sex. They need to be able to engage in a dialogue with you about it
at a time when they can fully comprehend your honest answers. Please consider
what I have said.

Whaaaa? Did she just tell this woman that her son, her firstborn child, is a consequence??? Like a time out or getting grounded? Losing use of the car or no TV? I mean, here is a woman who made an adoption plan with the support of the baby's first father, who is in contact with her son, and stated right out that she has no regrets, looking for a little direction on how to maintain her integrity with her future children and ABBY TELLS HER THAT HER PRECIOUS CHILD IS A CONSEQUENCE? Is anyone else as annoyed as hell at this one? And that condescending "Please consider what I have said" at the end? Sheesh!

Boy, is this Abby woman out of touch. Should these future children never be told of relatives who live far away and may never meet them? Out of sight, out of mind?

A simple, "You're my second baby, but the first one to whom I'm the mommy" is a good opener followed by "I wanted to be able to give Junior all the things your daddy and I can give to you, but I was too young then and couldn't care for Junior as well as I wanted him cared for. Madge and Julio were ready to be parents so they adopted him and became his mommy and daddy. I'm ready to be a mommy now and nothing is going to change for you and me and Daddy." That's pretty much what we told our daughter and she's understood her story from her earliest memory without emotional scars or undue stress.

And shouldn't a child be taught the basics of "the facts of life" from their earliest memory, too? But it's equating her first child with a consequence that really pisses me off.


Here's my letter to Dear Abby:
Your response to Jessica in South Carolina, a birth mother who was looking for guidance on how to tell her future children about her first baby, was way off base, and, frankly, insulting.

To equate her child with a consequence akin to getting grounded, a time out, losing use of the family car--or, worse, as a cautionary tale--is downright wrong. Every child is a miracle, no matter how they arrived on the earth.

Understanding that their mother had a previous child for whom she made an adoption plan will never be "easier to understand" when they're older because the information will be sprung on them. The only way for it to become a simple fact of life is to know it from their earliest memory.

In normal conversation Jessica can say something like "You're my second baby, but the first one to whom I'm the mommy" is a good opener followed by "I wanted to be able to give Junior all the things your daddy and I can give to you, but I was too young then and couldn't care for Junior as well as I wanted him cared for. Madge and Julio were ready to be parents so they adopted him and became his mommy and daddy. I'm ready to be a mommy now and nothing is going to change for you and me and Daddy."

That's pretty much what we told our daughter whom we adopted and she's understood her story from her earliest memory without emotional scars or stress.

When a child knows something from his or her earliest memory, it's just normal; when a big piece of news is laid on them as a warning against sex (and you assumed that Jessica and the baby's father didn't use contraception when they could have become pregnant from contraception failure), it becomes a scandal.

As a mom-by-adoption in a very open adoption and after many years of studying and researching contemporary adoption related issues, I can say with some authority that you're just plain wrong on this one. Please consider what I said.

Write to her and let her know how you feel: http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/dearabby_form.html

I didn't even THINK of this

Oh dear, with the onset of kindergarten in just a few short days, I have to begin packing a lunch for BabyGirl. Holy tomato! While I love to cook, I seem to have a hard time just getting dinner on the table for us, how am I going to get dinner on the table AND keep BabyGirl fed at school? Thankfully, a google search on "school lunches" and "brown bag lunch" gave me some ideas. Nonetheless, I'm hoping her brand-spankin' new pink and flowery insulated lunch bag with coordinated flowery Thermoses (Thermosi?) will be enough to keep her interested in eating. Fortunately, this is a short week and Thursdays are bagel day (with cream cheese and chicken noodle soup), so I have to come up with something for only three days.

This is not a child who eats quickly. No, she's practically forming her own branch of the Slow Food movement. There are days when both Mr.B and I have been finished with our dinner for upwards of a half hour and she's still poking away at it. We're at the point now what we just announce the end of dinner (after a count-down) and we get up from the table. Dessert is reserved only for Friday nights--to enhance the sweetness of Shabbat and to un-link the "how much do I have to eat to get dessert" issue.

Last week, Best Friend and I took our daughters to a tea and dessert to celebrate their kindergarten-hood. Best Friend had to get home by a particular time to relieve the babysitter, and she couldn't just leave since we'd all driven together. There was BabyGirl taking her own sweet time with her dessert (homemade vegan DingDongs). I finally said, with a wink, to just put large pieces in her mouth and swallow them whole to which she replied, also with a wink once her mouth was empty, "Hey, do you want to have a trip to the emergency room?" Best Friend and I just about fell out on that one. I'm going to miss that girl when she's at school for 6-hours a day.