Earlier today GlitterGirl and I had the “fair” conversation again. And this time she brought up that TwinkleToes had to live in an orphanage longer than she had to. I agreed that yes, she did.

And then there were lots of questions about what she (GlitterGirl) could and could not do when we brought her home. Could she walk, talk, eat green beans, play on the computer?

And then, about two hours later, during dinner, she told me she wishes that she had come out of my tummy.

RK (who sits beside her at the table) gave me a deer in the headlights look.

I told her that sometimes I wish that, too, but that it’s okay that she did not, that I love our family just the way it is.

And then she asked, again, who’s tummy she came out of. So, I again, talked to her about her birthmom in China. And we talked about how we don’t know why her birthfamily couldn’t take care of her, and that it is sad that they could not, and we talked about some possible reasons that maybe they couldn’t take care of her (no money to feed a baby, or the law that says how many babies a family can have, etc). And then she wanted to hear again about what happened between then and when we came to get her (doctor saw her and measured and weighed her, caretakers filled out stuff about what she ate and when she slept and that she was stubborn and loud and outgoing and knew how to laugh, and that got sent to Beijing, where we sent our paperwork, and someone there matched her paperwork with ours and then as soon as they said we could come get her we got on a plane and came to get her). And the conversation slowly moved towards other things, with her steering it, for the most part. It’s all ground we’ve covered before, and will probably cover again, many times.

And then we went to bed, and I got TwinkleToes to sleep and told GlitterGirl she could go to sleep in bed with me and daddy would move her to her bed later on. And the conversation came up again. A mixture of her story and her sister’s story and our dog’s story (hey, he’s not living with his birthmom either – she thought of it, not me, so I went with it).

At one point she brought up that I said it was sad that her birthfamily could not take care of her. She asked why it was sad? I said “because if I had a baby in my tummy that I knew I couldn’t take care of, that would make me very sad. I don’t know how your birth family felt about it, but I know that I’d be sad”. She didn’t say anything, so I kept on, “but I’m very glad you are a part of our family, so I’m really happy about that”. Again, just looking at me, expectantly. So, I kept on “it’s seems weird to be both happy and sad about the same thing, but it’s okay, you don’t have to decide which, you can feel both, if you want”. Still just looking at me. “This is your story, and you get to decide how you feel about it, and it’s okay to be both sad and happy about it, or just sad, or just happy. And it’s even okay to be one thing now and another thing next week. And it’s okay to not even know how you feel about it, too”.

And finally, I got a look that said I’d said what she needed to hear. The conversation stayed in that general area for a bit and then moved towards who else came out of someone’s tummy. So we talked about how I came out of Grandma’s tummy (ewwww). And we talked about a lot of other people we know. And then I got around to RK coming out of Nana’s tummy and she informed me that “boys don’t come out of people’s tummies”. She was adamant that Daddy did NOT come out of Nana’s tummy. No way. Would not even consider the possibility.

Ahem.

Yes, everyone came out of someone’s tummy. I was really hoping she didn’t complicate this with a chicken/egg type discussion, and thankfully she didn’t. (Yet. I’m sure she will, just hasn’t occurred to her yet.)

The conversation got more and more involved about childbirth in general, and finally I told her to go brush her teeth while I looked for something to help show her some things. I went on YouTube and found a few videos of dogs giving birth. Dog birth just seemed safer than human birth, somehow. She came back and I told her we were going to watch some puppies being born. She said “oh COOL!!”. And instead of being grossed out by the birthing process, when the first dog came out (a solid brown dog with goo on him) she said “ohhh, he’s BEAUTIFUL!”. And as the mom gave him a tongue bath she was fine with that, too. It wasn’t until the next puppy, a white one with brown spots, so you could see the goo was a little bloody, that she decided it was gross. She informed me that was NOT a dog, it was a bird or something. As we watched the mom clean him she decided that he, too, was beautiful.

I somehow knew the other day when we were talking about “fair”, that her mind was taking it into the adoption realm.

What really isn’t fair is that kids have to deal with this stuff.

She’s known where she was found since before she knew what that meant. She’s heard her adoption story from the very beginning. And she’s heard the various terms (birthmom, birthfamily, biological family, adopted, orphanage) from the start. She began understanding what it all meant several years ago, but with each new “phase” of questions comes a deeper understanding of all of it.

And now that she’s asleep I can sit here and cry my eyes out.

I cry for her birthfamily who can’t see what a smart, generous, kind, beautiful young lady she is. I cry for her because kids shouldn’t have to deal with these things.

I cry because I don’t know that I answered everything the exact “right” way. Am I sad she didn’t come out of my tummy? No, not like she probably thinks. I wish she had because then things wouldn’t be so complicated, but not because I want her to be genetically related to me. But there wasn’t a place for that explanation, so I answered as best I could on the spur of the moment.

I cry because it’s just not fair and I’m beyond stomping my foot and declaring it’s not fair but if ever a situation called for it, this one does.

And I cry because all I can do is help her deal with it. I can’t fix it. And when you can’t fix something that hurts your kid, it hurts your soul.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 at 9:56 pm and is filed under Adoption Issues, GlitterGirl. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.