(no subject)
i have been battleing alot of confusing and unnerving thoughts for a long time and i just have to get them out...
this adoption thing is driving me crazy.
It has gotten to be such a political thing...
Eric and Amber, seto's (or should i say Gabrial's?) new parents, are a bit less than i expedcted... or a bit more than i expected i cant decide. when our lawyer, counsler, adoptees, and us met yesterday for lunch, quite a few things went wrong.
first of all, the meeting wasnt susposed to be much of a meeting... it was susposed to be a simple lunch, a meet and greet if you will. we invited our parents and our siblings and gabrial's new brother and our lawyers wife. it however turned out that we discussed some pretty heavy stuff...
our awesome lawyer, Bart, brought up some issues we had been meaning to talk about privatly, like visitation and our relationship with our baby after he is born.
some backround info: me and cales view of this "relationship" is different than my mom's view, our counsler's view, my friend's view, and deffinitly WAY different than his mom's
and it turns out, way different than Eric and Amber's too... they believe a preliminary letter and preliminary gifts woudl be nice but they dont want much connection between seto, cale, me, katy or my mom at all afterwards. this is because they have another son named max who is also adopted. He doesn't have any family he keeps in touch with. Me and cale always knew that our relationship with seto would be a bit difficult because of max and that fact, but Eric and Amber dont want any visitation between seto and us or our parents...
they say (well rather eric says) that this is to create equality between the children. they dont want max to think he is somehow less loved or important than seto. he actually informed me that they initally wanted a more "open" adoption to occur in max's situation, it just turned out that max's birth mother didnt feel the same way... he thought that the brothers being equal was more important than anything.
Obviously the idea was absurd to me.
if one of your children had a disadvantage growing up, why would you want your other child to suffer the same way? and dont children always have a little complex about their brothers or sisters being "loved more?" i mean cale grew up in that generic 2 sets of grandparents, 1 set of parents family and he still always used to complain that his mom loved nic more or that he got more attention or more priviliges... that is a natural part of growing up... you cant change the way a child thinks...
but aside from my rantings there was something very odd about the way we had this conversation.
when the issue came up, amber took her son max and kinnda left. she used him as a cover. "he was getting too rowdy." but i felt as if she didnt fullly agree with what her husband was about to say...
and make no mistake, cale and i will be making all the decisions about our son's visitation. that is one of the things i need to be sure that i have controll of this process and be comfortable with my decision. i only hope that i make the right one. there is no question in my mind that it would be good for seto to be able to meet his grandparents and parents when he wants to (although my mom want to know baby from the begining and katy wants to visit him monthly for the rest of his life). i think that whether that is at 6 or 26 he is going to at some point want to meet us... arint the 3 most pressing questions of growing up "who am i?" "where did i come from?" and "why am i here?" i assuredly want him to have the option of contacting cale and i before he is 18 if he chooses.
i also want to have annual or even bi-annual meetings with eric and amber in person to see what he has been up to and to be sure that things are ok with my baby.
but i dont know how possible any or all of that is... and that scares me
and that is just one issue.
2. There is also our lawyer and his obvious loyalty to eric and amber rather than us... this sucks because he is techinically "repersenting" me and cale too... though it doesnt feel like it anymore...
3. cale's mom and her inability to handel serious conversation or even the idea that cale and i are not going to let her see the baby more than once a year... even if the adoptive parents were ok with it... she just starts crying whenever we talk about him going with eric and amber at all... she makes it harder on all of us.
4. My mom and her serious belif that Eric has threatened us with the idea of maybe moving if we insist on visitation (he totally didnt... he just mentioned that if they ever did move, visitation contracts could be cumbersome)
5. Our counslers extreem sensitivity to feelings and firm belif that conseling will dispell all of the difficlut and sometimes negitive feelings we could go through later...
and thats just to name a few...
a very long few as it seems... sorry guys : )
i just am having a really hard time telling the difference between an a"nxious fear" of this decision (because i cant tell the future no matter what) and a really instintual fear that some peice of this adoption is really wrong.
i just cant make a mistake... this one is to big to mess up.
this adoption thing is driving me crazy.
It has gotten to be such a political thing...
Eric and Amber, seto's (or should i say Gabrial's?) new parents, are a bit less than i expedcted... or a bit more than i expected i cant decide. when our lawyer, counsler, adoptees, and us met yesterday for lunch, quite a few things went wrong.
first of all, the meeting wasnt susposed to be much of a meeting... it was susposed to be a simple lunch, a meet and greet if you will. we invited our parents and our siblings and gabrial's new brother and our lawyers wife. it however turned out that we discussed some pretty heavy stuff...
our awesome lawyer, Bart, brought up some issues we had been meaning to talk about privatly, like visitation and our relationship with our baby after he is born.
some backround info: me and cales view of this "relationship" is different than my mom's view, our counsler's view, my friend's view, and deffinitly WAY different than his mom's
and it turns out, way different than Eric and Amber's too... they believe a preliminary letter and preliminary gifts woudl be nice but they dont want much connection between seto, cale, me, katy or my mom at all afterwards. this is because they have another son named max who is also adopted. He doesn't have any family he keeps in touch with. Me and cale always knew that our relationship with seto would be a bit difficult because of max and that fact, but Eric and Amber dont want any visitation between seto and us or our parents...
they say (well rather eric says) that this is to create equality between the children. they dont want max to think he is somehow less loved or important than seto. he actually informed me that they initally wanted a more "open" adoption to occur in max's situation, it just turned out that max's birth mother didnt feel the same way... he thought that the brothers being equal was more important than anything.
Obviously the idea was absurd to me.
if one of your children had a disadvantage growing up, why would you want your other child to suffer the same way? and dont children always have a little complex about their brothers or sisters being "loved more?" i mean cale grew up in that generic 2 sets of grandparents, 1 set of parents family and he still always used to complain that his mom loved nic more or that he got more attention or more priviliges... that is a natural part of growing up... you cant change the way a child thinks...
but aside from my rantings there was something very odd about the way we had this conversation.
when the issue came up, amber took her son max and kinnda left. she used him as a cover. "he was getting too rowdy." but i felt as if she didnt fullly agree with what her husband was about to say...
and make no mistake, cale and i will be making all the decisions about our son's visitation. that is one of the things i need to be sure that i have controll of this process and be comfortable with my decision. i only hope that i make the right one. there is no question in my mind that it would be good for seto to be able to meet his grandparents and parents when he wants to (although my mom want to know baby from the begining and katy wants to visit him monthly for the rest of his life). i think that whether that is at 6 or 26 he is going to at some point want to meet us... arint the 3 most pressing questions of growing up "who am i?" "where did i come from?" and "why am i here?" i assuredly want him to have the option of contacting cale and i before he is 18 if he chooses.
i also want to have annual or even bi-annual meetings with eric and amber in person to see what he has been up to and to be sure that things are ok with my baby.
but i dont know how possible any or all of that is... and that scares me
and that is just one issue.
2. There is also our lawyer and his obvious loyalty to eric and amber rather than us... this sucks because he is techinically "repersenting" me and cale too... though it doesnt feel like it anymore...
3. cale's mom and her inability to handel serious conversation or even the idea that cale and i are not going to let her see the baby more than once a year... even if the adoptive parents were ok with it... she just starts crying whenever we talk about him going with eric and amber at all... she makes it harder on all of us.
4. My mom and her serious belif that Eric has threatened us with the idea of maybe moving if we insist on visitation (he totally didnt... he just mentioned that if they ever did move, visitation contracts could be cumbersome)
5. Our counslers extreem sensitivity to feelings and firm belif that conseling will dispell all of the difficlut and sometimes negitive feelings we could go through later...
and thats just to name a few...
a very long few as it seems... sorry guys : )
i just am having a really hard time telling the difference between an a"nxious fear" of this decision (because i cant tell the future no matter what) and a really instintual fear that some peice of this adoption is really wrong.
i just cant make a mistake... this one is to big to mess up.