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Monday, December 1st, 2008
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4:31 pm - I quit my job
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I gave my notice a couple of weeks ago, so my last day at work will be this Thursday, December 4. I'm going to stay home with my girls for a while, hopefully get a job working Friday and Saturday nights, and I might start night courses for either Radiology Technician or Ultrasound Technician. Orlando has the only school in the state for the latter certification, and both are high-paying fields in great demand.
I am thrilled to take my children out of daycare (even though it's an excellent daycare and I would recommend it to any of my friends). My 5-month-old baby has had a cold every single day for the last three months. She can't sleep through the night because she's so congested. My 3-year-old is starved for mommy's attention and acting out in a variety of ways. I need to focus on a more consistent discipline for her as well as lots of teaching and physical activities.
The house will finally get cleaned, I'll finally be able to cook healthy meals and take care of myself and my man.
In the interests of saving money I'm going to go back to breast-feeding full-time (I started the baby on formula one month ago after my pumping supply couldn't keep up with her needs) and I am very interested in trying cloth diapers. Naturally, it will have to be the easiest, most convenient kind of cloth diapers or I won't stick with it. I'm going to try Fuzzibuns, because they are an all-in-one diaper unit (which means I don't have to put plastic pants over the diaper) and they have snaps instead of requiring safety pins. It's a couple hundred dollars for a dozen, but even with the added cost of washing and drying them every day it won't cost nearly as much as disposable diapers. Plus, fewer diapers in the landfill. Go me.
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| Friday, November 14th, 2008
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11:56 am - How I am Doing
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I am doing quite well, thank you!
We moved out of our apartment into a gorgeous 3-bedroom rental home with a lush lawn, fenced in back yard, and great big garage. It's in a wonderful neighborhood and there are lots of little kids for Jane to play with.
The first half of this year was consumed with being pregnant and in June I gave birth to my second daughter, Brista.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stacystrock9/2827929362/
I spent the entire summer on maternity leave. I made friends with the other moms on my block and we spent a lot of afternoons sitting on our front lawns watching our kids run up and down the sidewalk on their bikes and scooters. It was heavenly.
In September I had to go back to my job. I'm an administrative assistant at a structural engineering firm, where I make a buttload of money to answer phones, read novels, and swallow verbal abuse with a smile. I hold the record for keeping this particular job, with this particular boss, the longest without quitting in tears. I long to be a stay-home mom for a few more years, but the idea of being the only breadwinner again is too much pressure for Brian to handle right now, especially with the economy tanking. There's a good chance I will get laid off next year anyway, if things get worse. Brian's job is fairly secure, since he designs hospitals and is in high demand with the major systems in Florida.
So I'm still with Brian (aka Casey) and things are going really well. We are fat and happy together. The older we get the more we have in common, and we very much enjoy our family. He has cut back a lot on the drinking and tries his best to be an equal partner in the parenting. We plan to have at least one more child and will actually get married before that one is born. We are not going to have a wedding, because the very thought of planning one makes me roll my eyes in exasperation, but we might do a small ceremony on the beach in Hawaii or something. My youngest sister is getting married in the spring anyway, so I'll get to see the whole extended family without footing the bill for a party.
Jane is 3 and a half years old now, though she is about the size of a 5-year-old and has made some impressive leaps and bounds in the communication department. When she was about 18 months old she had a febrile seizure (from a high fever) and that led to a bit of a speech delay. She was in speech therapy for 9 months, but it didn't do much for her. Then she had an accident at daycare where she and another little girl ran full-tilt into one another and Jane bounced off and hit her head on the corner of a concrete wall. She spent that night throwing up in the ER and now has a tiny scar above her eyebrow. Anyway, after that she started talking intelligibly. Aren't brains interesting?
Things with my family are good and everyone is getting along right now. My middle sister had a son two weeks before Brista was born.
So I'm pretty happy. The job is kind of stressful, but it only bothers me when I have PMS. I'm very focused on taking care of my family, and it's more fulfilling than I would have ever expected.
How are you?
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
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3:29 pm - Whoa
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I just read through all these old entries on my livejournal. Man. I was a crackhead in my twenties.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, March 9th, 2006
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4:19 pm - Holy Meat Market, Batman...
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I think I'm going to start attending church, in hopes of meeting a nice young man who wants to marry me and makes enough money to support us and our half-dozen children. I like being a mom so much that I want to do it full time and spread the love around to lots more kids. Not that I really want to be pregnant again, but I don't think it would be as bad the second or third time around, when I know what I have to look forward to, and I am also in favor of taking in foster children or adopting older orphans.
I haven't decided which kind of church, though I'm leaning towards Methodist and Catholic because they have the comfort of familiarity. I just want a group that puts the "fun" in front of "fundamentalist," attracts good-looking young men of a wholesome nature, and doesn't mind if I don't actually talk about or believe in Jesus or the other stories in the Bible.
Hopefully there are plenty of single guys who go to church because they are looking for a nice girl to marry. I can impersonate nice really well, and after a few years of pretending it might transition into reality.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, December 2nd, 2005
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10:59 pm - Howdy
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Dear Friends:
Hi! How the hell are ya? I am fine. I am slightly tipsy, and when my babysitter gets here I am going downtown to party a little bit. Woo! I don't get out much.
I moved back to Orlando, and it's better than I remember. Probably because I live in a much better part of it, really close to downtown. And I have this huge apartment with a huge balcony and a view of a retention pond full of turtles AND a giant lake and other people do the landscaping and fix things when they break. I love living in an apartment. I just got a job! The pay is only enough to cover my bills, but it's a foot in the door at a huge company. The people I've met so far are really nice and close to my age.
My baby just learned how to crawl. It keeps me busy. I could write about her for hours! But I won't. I will tell you that I decorated her bedroom 1/2 Winnie The Pooh and 1/2 Disney Princesses! Ohmygod it's socute! The rest of the apartment is barely even unpacked, but her room is perfectly organized and decorated within an inch of my life.
I'm sorry that I wrote this entry. If I were sober I would tell you a good story. Maybe tomorrow!
Love Always,
Me
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, July 29th, 2005
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3:03 pm
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| Thursday, July 14th, 2005
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9:09 pm
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The weather channel promised us a hurricane last weekend so I took the baby as far east as we could go, to visit her paternal grandparents in Jacksonville. Damned if I'm going to subject my daughter (or myself) to life without air conditioning, even for a couple of days. The drive took five hours and the baby was very well behaved.
I got extremely lucky in the baby personality lottery. She is so cool. This baby is smart, easy-to-please (as long as I'm quick about it), healthy, independent, loving, and sleeps like a champion. We're talking 12 hours of sleep every single night since she was a month old. Plus she takes a nap or three every day. She's already able to turn over from her back to her side, and from her stomach to her back. She can hold the bottle up all by herself. She's so interested in everything, each of her million expressions is cuter than the last one, and I can read her face like a book. She makes me feel like a champion every time I figure out that she needs a diaper change, or she's hungry, or she's tired.
Casey's parents are very nice and they adore their grandbaby. All my visits to Jacksonville have been very friendly and relaxing.
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| Thursday, June 30th, 2005
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12:14 am
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Today I spent a few hours scouting for a part-time job. Something, anything, to get me out of my mother's house nights and weekends. Earlier this week I applied at the local Blockbuster, which is scandalously understaffed, by filling out a very thorough online resume followed by a 37-page personality test. Five pages of questions, 32 pages asking those same questions in a different order, or with the wording slightly changed, designed to weed out the lazy, the late, and the light fingered. A visit with the manager this morning revealed that he is so busy running the store all by himself that he doesn't have time to review applications or conduct interviews.
So I combed the newspaper and went to the mall to fill out applications for Merle Norman, FYE, and JC Penney. The first two were old-fashioned paper apps that instruct you to fill it out with an ink pen in your own handwriting, because the first qualification is literacy. I took them to the coffee shop because it takes me a lot of time to write legibly. After all these years of typing my fingers can barely grip a pen correctly. Merle Norman's manager was a snooty little thing who might just be desperate enough to hire me as a last resort. I will be more than happy to work with the bitch just to be near the cosmetics. I was among the approximately 50 mazillion hopefuls to turn in an FYE application to the unimpressed but still polite manager.
I only went in JC Penney to use the restroom, but ended up chit-chatting with a girl all alone at the service desk who giddily confessed that it was only her second day. As I turned to go she said "Hey, you don't know anyone who is looking for a job, do you?" and I turned with a smile to confess that was the purpose of my visit to the mall. She was completely floored by this revelation. At the time, I chose to interpret that as amazement that a fabulous creature such as I would ever seek work in that mall. Now I'm wondering if she didn't strike up that exact conversation with every person she saw today and I was the first one to bite, garnering her a referral bonus of some kind. I miss the naivete of my all-consuming narcissism.
I don't know if I'll get any call-backs. The fact that I sold books in that mall for three years may not balance out the past six years as a lofty desk-monkey making triple the hourly wage they are offering. I'll be written off as overqualified, or a flight risk. Then my Mom will call each of the managers who refuse to hire me and demand that they explain in detail exactly why they don't want me so that she can later berate me for those faults.
The most intriguing classified ad read:
HIRING ESCORTS.
$1500+ per week
Classy, fun-loving
girls only. Call #
Naturally, I called. My ex-boyfriend, Big D, had a sister who worked as an escort in Orlando and she said it was mainly going on dates with old guys and the first requirement was big tits. I am currently blessed with large breasts (chock full of nutritious milk!), I am a great date, and I could be happy making $1,500 a week hanging out with old guys instead of my mother. I called my friend Abby Normal first, to see if she had any knowledge of the escort business. She didn't know anyone who had tried it before, but we agreed that it would be a valuable learning experience. She applied for the phone sex job last year when we decided that would be interesting, so I called the escort service.
Some random girl answered the phone. When I told her that I was calling in response to the ad, she asked "Do you have work experience?" and I replied, "No. Well, I have worked before, just not as an escort." She told me to hang on, she would get her boyfriend, because he ran the escort service. When the guy got on the phone he sounded nervous and young. He also asked if I had any "work experience" and I repeated the answer I gave his girlfriend, so he clarified that he wanted to know if I had worked as a dancer, and I said no. "I just saw the ad in the paper," I said, "and I wanted to know more about it. Does it just involve going on dates or do I have to take off my clothes?", which was his signal for going into a long, long spiel about how I would be an independent contractor, I would have to sign an agreement that they were not liable for any of my actions, and if they found out I was doing anything illegal my contract would be terminated immediately. Beyond that, it was up to me. I was not required to do anything that I didn't want to do and would not have to work with clients who made me uncomfortable on the phone or in person. I could work as many days or hours per week as I wished.
I asked what kind of clients I could expect to meet, and he answer that I would mostly be contracted for bachelor parties looking to see some "titty dancing." For real, he said "titty dancing." Had I at least done that? I had to confess that I had not. When he asked if I was available to meet with him today I demurred. "Thanks for the information. I'll think about it and get back to you if I'm still interested."
I'm not showing these bodacious ta-ta's to anyone. The price of my big breasts was big stretch marks and I don't look so good any more without my clothes on. These days I even wear a camisole or corset during sex so I don't feel self-conscious about my belly and boobs while I'm trying to get off. But even with a perfect body the escort thing would probably not work out for me, if only because I know that if my parents, or Casey's parents, or even Casey himself, who has become strangely prudish and possessive about my status as The Mother of His Child, found out that I was stripping in any way, shape, or form they would do all in their power to remove my daughter from my custody, and then I would have to kill them and/or take her to another country.
The only reason it tempts me is that it would give me the excuse, and the money, for all the plastic surgery I long to have. If I could justify the expense I would get the mother of all liposuction jobs, a tummy tuck, a breast lift, and removal of all the unsightly skin hanging from my arms, thighs, and neck. I would also love to have laser hair removal from neck to toes, and hell, why not have permanent eyeliner tattooed while I'm at it? It would be worth a lot of money to me if I could roll out of bed looking good every morning. But it isn't worth depriving my daughter of a decent life, so I'll just have to save that money and fantasize about miracle surgery while I wait for my body to bounce back the slow, torturous way.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, May 26th, 2005
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12:03 am - New journal entry
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| Thursday, May 19th, 2005
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1:51 am - Journal update
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| Tuesday, May 17th, 2005
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10:04 am - Stop me if you've heard this one...
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| Thursday, April 14th, 2005
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10:06 pm
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There is a decent-sized fitness center right around the corner from my mother's house, with aerobics classes and a swimming pool, so I went this morning to sign up for three months. The baby is five weeks old now and I've only lost half the weight that I gained while pregnant.
While I stood at the desk filling out membership forms, my daughter snoozed in her carrier and every person in and out the door stopped to coo and admire her. She is lovely, and she makes the sweetest faces in her sleep. The last one to peek into the carrier was a well-muscled redhead with a great voice - and he was a boy I knew from high school.
"Mike! Hey, how are you?" I gave him a big grin as I picked up the carrier to rest it on my hip.
It took him about three seconds to remember my name, which isn't bad considering that we've only run into eachother once since graduating, and then he threw his arms around me for a strong hug. Mike was on his way out of the gym, so we walked to the parking lot together and stood next to my car talking for a while. In school we flirted with eachother a hell of a lot, but every time he called me my sisters would act like assholes, teasing us about being "in love" at the top of their lungs so that we couldn't hear eachother enough to actually talk. I ran into him six years ago when I worked at the bookstore, and he was on a very brief leave before the Air Force sent him overseas.
He's out of the service now, but has a job on the base as an independent contractor. He's gotten better at the flirting. So have I.
The baby started to fuss, so I said I had to get her back home to sleep in her crib. Then, impulsively, I invited him to come over so we could finish catching up. I was surprised and delighted when he said yes. I don't wear makeup in Niceville and my hair was tied back in a damp knot, but I had on a cute little outfit and these giant milk-swelled breasts look great.
I didn't get to know much more about his current life. We fucked on the living room floor, on this plush rug in the middle of the room that's just big enough for two people to lay side by side. It wasn't the first time I've had sex since giving birth, but it's the first time I've used a condom in over a year. Three condoms, actually. That guy had some energy, and I don't think he meets a lot of fuckable women in this town. Luckily, the box into which I had dumped the contents of my nightstand was also the box with my tax information, so it was at the house instead of the storage unit. I checked the expiration date on those damn things and we were good to go. I still asked him not to come in me, though, and after meeting my daughter, sweet and lovely as she is, he didn't need to be told two times.
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, March 2nd, 2005
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8:56 am
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I have almost sold my house. I've got a signed contract, the home inspection went reasonably well, and there are only a few minor issues to negotiate between now and closing. It was on the market less than 48 hours, because affordable homes are incredibly scarce around here, especially since the hurricanes. This is the first time in six years that owning a home has felt like an asset instead of a millstone around my neck.
I'm feeling very hopeful about the future.
*****
If the baby hasn't come by March 11, I have an appointment to be induced early that morning. Mom is coming down, of course, though I'm going to ask her to stay at my house while I'm in labor. I'm also asking everyone else to leave me alone while I go through the childbirth process. Mom and Nora (who volunteered to be my birth coach the instant I announced my pregnancy) were with me last weekend when we did the false labor dry run, and having them around made me very uncomfortable. I'd rather just bring a book and do it by myself. When other people are around I feel like I have to entertain them, and that is exhausting. Plus, it's bound to get pretty gross and I'd rather not share that with anyone who isn't a medical professional.
I'm very, very tempted to stay home and have the baby in my bathtub, calling the EMTs when it's all over so they can cut and tie the cord for me. But if anything went wrong because I didn't have access to medical technology I don't think I'd ever get over the guilt.
*****
As soon as I get out of the hospital I'm moving to Niceville to stay at my Mom's for a few months. I have hopes that with the distraction of two newborn babies (Mom is taking care of Alice's daughter while my sister works) she and I will not have time to get on each other's nerves. Mom's recent week long visit to Orlando went amazingly well.
I plan to take a class or two during the summer semester at our local college, and then I'll start going to school full time in the fall. Right now I'm focusing on a degree in the health care industry, because that seems like a stable, guaranteed career. I won't tell you which specialty I'd most like to pursue, because you might laugh at me.
I don't know which school I want to attend, and I don't know which city I want to live in. Those are things to be decided by the end of this year.
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| Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005
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1:51 pm
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I have been in labor since 7:35pm Sunday night. Now, I've had quite a lot of contractions in the past few months, so contractions alone should not be enough to get me all excited. However, contractions that are exactly 5 minutes apart for over two hours... despite myself, I began to get my hopes up. I put together an overnight bag for the hospital, and a smaller bag for the baby. Contractions still 5 minutes apart, like clockwork. I took a shower, did my hair and makeup, labor still seems to be happening to me, for REALS.
Mom happened to be visiting me this weekend, so she drove me to the hospital around 11. Mom was utterly convinced that it was really, really, truly happening, and though I tried to maintain a pessimistic facade, I finally began to believe, and even called Abby to let her know I was on my way in and might have a baby by the next time we spoke.
But no. I checked in at the hospital, updated all my paperwork, signed several forms, got naked in a triage unit and hooked up to a couple of monitors - one to measure the baby's heartbeat, the other to measure contractions, both of which were strong and steady.
Then a nurse with a bad haircut put a lubed hand up in me and could only fit one finger (1cm) through my cervix. Not a good sign. She informed me that they won't be able to keep me at the hospital until I am dilated at least 4cm, or my water breaks, or I begin gushing blood. She calmly informed me that the labor pains could last two more hours or two more weeks without any actual childbirthing going on.
Right now I'm more than a little frustrated and grumpy, because being pregnant is really, really awful, and I was really, really looking forward to having a baby in my arms today instead of an alien in my belly.
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(16 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, February 4th, 2005
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11:34 am
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I think I've finally discovered the fundamental flaw in my lifelong strategy of dating assholes. Besides the obvious (wasting my best years) these relationships are doomed because the guys know they aren't good enough to be dating a paragon like me. It puzzled me to be rejected in favor of girls who are not nearly as pretty, smart, nice and interesting as me (though they might win in the modesty category), but now it seems obvious that it's a survival mechanism for the loser guys I fall for. They realize they don't have what it takes to keep a girl like me in the long run, so they seek out a mate who is closer to their level.
Ah, the world makes sense again.
So, Casey and Miranda had drinks Monday night. It was at my urging, and it was while I was out of town. As I expected, they got super drunk and ended up making out. Hell, I'm only surprised he didn't fuck her.
Now she tells me she thinks they are definitely getting back together. I've informed her we can't be friends any more, due to the conflict of interest.
I might fuck him again a few times, just to mess them up a little.
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| Thursday, January 6th, 2005
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12:03 pm - Inherent
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| Wednesday, December 1st, 2004
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11:21 pm
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My problem with him really isn't about the baby, though that does exacerbate and confuse the issue. I really do believe that it should be his choice whether to be a father or not. After all, it was my choice whether to have an abortion or not.
He said right away that he didn't want anything to do with the baby, and I did my best to accept that. I was willing to be patient and give him a chance to change his mind, or not. Mostly he seemed interested in pickling his brain and ignoring the baby issue, which was okay by me. I just needed his companionship to keep me from going off the deep end.
Sometimes I think I just kept him around because I've been waiting for an opportunity to hurt him. I have a deep-seated need to wreck him, at least once, and how can I do that unless I keep him close? So far the only thing that hurts him is other people finding out that he donated the sperm for my pregnancy and that I'm still sleeping with him. Ironically, that's a weapon I don't intentionally use against him (though I have threatened it with the whole "I'm going to tell your mommy and daddy" thing).
My problem is the same problem I've always had: I can't handle the way he treats me. Our relationship has to be this big secret, which means that he doesn't invite me anywhere, he doesn't tell me anything, he makes me feel like I should be ashamed of myself for existing.
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12:37 pm
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Yesterday I did some real mischief - definitely immoral and quite possibly illegal, so I won't go into detail - just to fuck with him. I don't feel bad about it, either.
The best part was talking to him on the phone after he knew he had been fucked with (I anonymously tipped off his ex-girlfriend, because I knew she would tell him right away) and slowly feeding him hints that it was me who had done it. It took him forever to catch on (he's a really great engineer, or at least he claims to be, but that must be using up all his brain power, because he's borderline retarded when it comes to everything else) and then it was all worth it. He was so mad he actually hung up on me, and that's a first.
The second best part is knowing that if he tries to turn me in to police or the company we both work for, it will backfire on him. Because if he fucks with my ability to make a living, I'll have no choice but to sue him for 18 years of child support, and I'm sure he doesn't want that. He'll have to be more creative if he wants revenge.
He always asks me "why?" when I do something like that, and I never have a really great response, other than "because I could, because I was bored, because it was fun, because I'm mean" etc. I'm not sure why, really, except that I hate him and love him so much at the same time that it forces me to torture him, especially when he fucks up. The most recent fuck-up, no less hurtful for it's complete expectedness, is that he's taking some other girl to the company holiday party. It happens to be the only girl he knows who is even prettier than me. Fucking asshole. I heard about it a couple of weeks ago and I've been wanting to punch him in the face ever since. Some nights, sitting next to him on the couch or laying next to him in bed, it was difficult to resist.
I don't know. Sometimes I think I hurt him because I am too weak to stay away from him, so I try to give him reasons to stay away from me. Sometimes I think I do it because it will make him like me more. Some guys enjoy being treated like shit, and there's no denying he has always responded well in the past. The worse I do to him, the more I get from him.
What a fucking pair we are. The real reason I like to date assholes is that it's the only way I can look good in comparison.
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| Monday, November 29th, 2004
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7:20 am
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I don't recommend pregnancy to anyone.
I'm only 25 weeks, I've only gained 20 lbs, and I get up every morning feeling as if I've been beaten with a stick. I am so tired, but I cannot sleep. The last time I managed to keep my eyes closed for more than an hour, it was because I had unconsciously turned onto my back. Unfortunately, in that position my uterus lies heavily on the blood vessels along my back and cuts off circulation to my extremities. Since my brain is one of those extremities, I had really fucked-up dreams before finally waking up dizzy and sick.
My boobs are too big. I never thought I'd say that. They have finally reached a size where gravity matters and I can't wait until they shrink back down to a reasonable, perky B. If that doesn't happen, if I'm left with two tennis balls in saggy bags of flesh, I'm having surgery.
I still look good naked, most days.
It hurts to lift my arms to this keyboard. It hurts to hold my head upright.
It hurts way worse to know that the three hardest months are still ahead of me.
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| Wednesday, November 24th, 2004
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4:40 pm
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It's difficult to find an online resource with a balanced opinion about adoption. The agencies offer the typical schmoopy "What a brave, selfless decision of love" spiel, while the disgruntled birthmothers have a hard time writing anything without resorting to overwrought metaphors involving walls and bloodied fingernails. It’s fairly effective in scaring impressionable young girls like me into distrust of the system. This stuff is a little more reasonable, but still leans heavily in the anti-adoption direction. They seem to think adoption is only meant for drug-addicts, abused housewives, and rape/incest victims. What do I know? Maybe they’re right.
I visited the adoption agency. It was the one I linked above, actually. They were pleasant enough, and the counselor with whom I met gave a very detailed description of the process, which I appreciated, though I didn’t feel like I could ask any questions. The reality version of adoption doesn’t quite mesh with my idealized image of it.
In the Fantasy Where I Give My Daughter Up For Adoption, here’s how it is: I find the perfect couple. They are good-looking, about my age or maybe a little older, and they’ve been married since shortly after graduating college together. They are completely religion-free and share a lot of my views on how to best raise a child. He has a job that pays well but doesn’t require too much overtime or stress. She is a stay-at-home mom already raising the child they adopted three or four years ago. They have a nice house, but not too nice, and they live well, but not luxuriously. They are happy to adopt my dog and cats along with my baby. We hit it off right away and become friends during the last few months of my pregnancy. Not super close bestest friends, but extended-family type friends. They aren’t present for the birth (I don’t want anyone but my doctor to be there, because childbirth is gross), but they come to visit me in the hospital before I’m released. They take the baby home, and from that point on we have a nice extended-family type relationship. They send me pictures, and invite me for dinner once a year. Both kids call me by my first name. When my daughter is a teenager she wants to talk to me about the whole being-her-birthmother thing, so we go shopping and have a long discussion. We’re friends by the time she becomes a grown-up, and we see each other once or twice a year.
Meanwhile, I am enjoying the hell out of the single, childless life. I can sell my house now that the pets and baby are with a good family, and I move to a gorgeous little condo downtown, a couple of blocks from the good clubs to the west and the good shopping on the east side. I diet and exercise until I’m twice as hot as I was before the pregnancy, and I have plenty of money to party all the time and travel wherever I want and buy nice clothes and nice things. Naturally, quality men are all over me (also naturally, I continue to date assholes instead, but I can do that, because I don’t have a child to protect).
Doesn’t that sound nice? It sounds peachy fucking keen to me. But what are the chances it would be like that? What are the chances that Mr. and Ms. Perfect would get divorced and/or sink into poverty and/or the other kid would beat the hell out of their new little sister for years and years and/or the kid and her family would find me strange and distasteful and cut off all contact after a while? What are the chances that I would change my mind in the hospital and refuse to sign the paperwork? What are the chances that I would want to change my mind the day she’s born, but be too afraid to look like a flake and disappoint the other couple, and have to live with regret and self-hatred the rest of my life?
I actually know a couple who fits that fantasy description really well, except that they are devout Baptists, they live way the hell up in Georgia, and I don’t know if they are interested in adopting a second child. She is my half-cousin and one of the all-time nicest human beings born on this planet, from one of the nicest (though frighteningly devout) families. They have a 3-year-old daughter and recently suffered their third miscarriage, and I have not given them any clue that I would consider handing my newborn child to them.
I know other couples who fit bits and pieces of that fantasy, including online journalers - who make very tempting adoptive parents, because I know so much about the way they have handled parenting already, and I would get to read the same descriptive narrative about my own daughter and feel far less isolated from her. I also have close friends who have indicated they would love to take her for their own, as weird as that might be. Melody is one of the few who declined the honor of having her name added to the list, because she knows my mother and lives way too close to her.
When one mentions the possibility of a newborn available for adoption, online or in real life, one soon discovers that everyone has a really awesome close friend or family member who would make the perfect adoptive parents and have been desperately waiting for some amount of years. This is good, because the bigger the field, the better the chance of finding someone great. It’s also really sad, and I feel guilty for every second my indecision drags on, like I am tormenting them twice as much as I torment myself. I feel bad when I write about it, because it seems inconsiderate of the feelings of every prospective adoptive parent in my world.
This article did a great job of articulating the feelings and fears I couldn’t find words for. Seeing these things in print gave them authority, and I don’t feel like such a jerk for wanting to keep my own baby.
In the 4th section they point out that “a woman considering adoption is applauded as being admirably unselfish in putting the needs of her child first. But once the mother actually surrenders her child, she is looked down upon. After all, who could give away their own flesh and blood?” I can feel that. I know that’s true. In the 3rd section: “I wish I had known that it wasn’t my responsibility to help the infertile couples of the world… As a pregnant woman in a crisis situation, odds are you desperately want to make things better. You may be under enormous pressure, experiencing disapproval or shame. It’s natural that you will want to ‘fix’ things and earn approval once more, but it shouldn’t be done by trying to make a prospective adoptive couples’ dream come true.” All of the pressure comes from myself, since this is only a crisis situation from the perspective that it throws off my view of the life I thought I was going to have, but it’s pressure nonetheless, and I definitely have felt like I owe it to someone else to give up the baby, as if I must reward them for being better parent material than me.
Their lead-off point is that “adoption is a permanent solution to an often temporary problem,” and I can see where that might apply. My “problem” is that I never really planned to be anyone’s mother, and I’m scared that it might not be any fun, and it might keep me from having any fun for a long, long time. I don’t enjoy living under a tight budget and denying myself the luxuries, and single motherhood is going to involve a lot of that. I don’t look forward to giving up dating so as not to expose my daughter to the assholes I invariably fall for.
I don’t worry about being a good mother. I know that if I decide to do it, I will do it very well.
I wrote up a list the other night, after visiting the adoption agency and the daycare center (daycare = expensive != big surprise), because making lists is fun and relaxing. Daycare and diapers and health insurance and baby stuff and life in general costs a lot of money, but the tight budget is a temporary problem. At the head of the page I wrote “Without Considering Money, Reasons to Keep/Not Keep Baby”.
Don’t Keep the Baby
1) I was never meant to be a mother
2) She would be raised by daycare
3) I might have to move back home
4) My family is so fucked up
5) She might suck as a human being
6) Toilet training and similar horrors - babies are dirty
7) I have terrible taste in men and probably always will
8) My mother will be even further up my ass every single day
Keep the Baby
1) It’s my baby
2) My family will love her, and be devastated to lose her
3) She might be a really cool human being
4) Avoiding the grief of giving her away
5) Living up to my responsibilities
6) I could go home, where my friends and family are
7) Melody and I would be moms together
8) I could do it, if I tried
Then I started writing down creative solutions to the money issues, because I think I’m going to keep the baby, and I think it’s going to be okay. I’ve put a sincere effort into my research and given it a hell of a lot of thought, because I want to do the right thing. Her name is Jane, she’s my daughter, I really love her, and I want to keep her.
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annarain's journal