Losing It

Part of our adoption training focused on adoption loss. 

As the adoptive parents, we have lost Ava's early years and many of her firsts. We missed rocking her to sleep, her first smiles and giggles, and her first steps. 

Ava lost her birth family, her orphanage family, her country, her language, and the life she should/would have had. 

Ava's losses are huge. But no matter how big and how seemingly insurmountable Ava's losses are, her birth parents are the ones who lost it all. 

They will never know this smart, silly, and helpful girl. They won't see her grow or learn. They won't be there when she gets married or gives birth/adopts babies of her own. And the saddest, most maddening part (to me) is that I do not know if they care that they are missing Ava's life. 

Adjusting to life with Ava has been mostly easy. But while she is gracefully given the occasional (daily? hourly?) emotional outburst, I'm still learning how to deal with mine. No one wants to hear a 33 year old woman whine or cry about how hard it is to hold two toddlers at one time. I have to be the adult. I have to suck. it. up. But there are too many feels that must be felt. So sucking it up doesn't always go so well. 

Sometimes, but not often, I'm embarrassed. Like, when Jacob tells everyone at the dinner table that he pooted. Or when Ava has a melt down in front of our neighbors because I was not doing our walk 'right.'

Sometimes, I am extremely amused while pretending to be exasperated in order to discourage naughty behaviors. 

Ava climbed onto the coffee table and shot me a sassy look while simultaneously shaking her behind at me. 

"What, mom? You don't want me to dance on the table?"

"Come on. Raise the roof."

And how do you explain the exhausted and powerless feeling when nap time rolls around and your child wants to sleep NEVER and thinks it is a good idea to try to fall on her head?

That. That is when I'm on edge and snap because Todd doesn't take Adam with him on his daily escape attempt, I mean, trip into town. That is when I haul Ava back into the bedroom so she can assault the window shades and batter her head against her bed before passing out on the floor. 

So as I sit on the couch with nerves twitching like a crackhead in rehab and wonder where my sanity has gone, I still pity Ava's birth parents. Maybe they regret leaving her behind. Maybe they don't. I just can't suck 'it' up. I can't stop feeling the feels. Because no matter how hard my days are, no matter how much b.o. I have from not showering as often as I would like, or no matter how frizzy and unkempt my hair becomes, I would not trade one single moment of the life I have gained with my Ava girl. But her bio parents, it is their loss.