On judgements

I read a lot of foster and adoption blogs.  I read about families struggling with behaviors caused by trauma, mental illness and pre-natal exposure to drugs and/or alcohol.  If Fiona was not in the Great School in the Big City, I suspect that people would look differently at my family.  The reality is that she can not control all her responses to emotional pain, to confusion, to many basic day to day situations.  Sure, my casual friends know that I have an older daughter--but she is a picture in my wallet to them.  They hear me talk about her artistic abilities, her affection and patience with young children, her love of animals. A few of them know of her fairly regular hospitalizations but that is about as far as I go with sharings.  It is too deeply personal.  I am a stoic New Englander in that regard I guess.

But a few weeks ago, I was brought up a bit short.  A friend was speaking of an experience she had during one of her pregnancies.  The pregnancy was difficult and  hospital tests were frequently needed to make sure both mom and baby were doing okay.  In the next bed she told me was another mom, a mom who was  a drug addict.  She wound up requesting a different room because the behaviors of the other woman bothered her, as did the fact that she was an addict.  "And you know those children are born addicted"she went on.

I said quietly, "I know."  I didn't say anything else because I couldn't, just then.  This is not a mean woman. She is a caring, loving person and a great mom to her kids. And she was perceptive enough to see in my silence, and in my face, that something was wrong.

"Oh. . . " she stammered, "did. . . are?"

The truth is both my youngest children were born drug exposed. It isn't something you see, now that their little systems have purged that evil. One was exposed daily during the entire pregnancy, and may have also had alcohol exposure.  One had much less.  But this doesn't define them.  In fact, right now, I can't predict what impact any of this will have on their lives. There are only a kabillion or so things that I worry about.  The "heart incident" that caused my preemie to wait an extra day in the NICU.  The statistics that indicate the higher probabilty of addictions for the children of addicts.  The sudden rages that one exhibits.  I spend time searching the net, trying to determine if the rages are normal developmentally or a marker for something darker that waits for us.  I fret over learning issues--checking to see if a speech or comprehension situation is "normal."  (as if there was a true definition out there of normal.)

I know that there may be things we face and demons we will need to fight as our children grow.  But for now, I have to focus on the joy that they are.  I celebrate their artistic leanings, their curiosity and try and teach that  the hot tempered one that we can take a breath and wait before we respond to a situation.

And I hope and pray that their lives will be interesting, productive, filled with love. And that someday I'm sitting in a rocking chair holding grand babies and thanking the goddess that we beat the odds.