I am doing better than the other day. I spent yesterday pampering my precious hair (deep treatment+ freshening up the color+ discovering awesome new products =much better outlook on life), working from home, and watching movies that amuse me. The Boy gave me a huge hug when he came home and made sure I was ok before taking the mutts out for a run.
Random tangent about hair: My hair is something that has come to represent my infertility to me. I decided about 6 months into TTC that I wouldn't cut my hair until I got pregnant. It was previously quite short, and is now past my shoulders. For a while I would get a bit sad every time someone commented on how long it was getting. "Don't I know it!" thought I. But now that I know I will not get pregnant, my hair being longer should make me more depressed, right? Actually, it doesn't. I learned how to take better care of it, let it do what it wants to (I am quite curly and would flat iron my hair everyday...now I let it be wild and big), and embrace every centimeter gained. Rather than my hair representing my failure to conceive, it has now come to represent the journey in becoming ok with who I am. I may not like what I've been given, but it makes me who I am. When someone comments that my hair is nice I take it, not as a reminder of my infertility, but as a compliment that being myself, imperfections and all, is what is truly beautiful. I plan on letting it grow until we have our daughter in our arms (we'll see if that happens) and now each millimeter is us getting that much closer to having our family together. I'm oddly sentimental about strange things, I know. (I wore a jade necklace to the adoption orientation so that if I started feeling pressured about adopting through them, I knew I already had a daughter waiting for us. I know. Could I be more cheesy?)
Anyway, enough about my awesome hair. Here is what pisses me off. I knew this would happen, but I hoped to be wrong. My sister has a kid from a previous relationship and her husband has typically been good with him. They insist on the boy calling him "Dad" which I don't like, but it's not for me to decide. I was very worried that once the little girl was born, the boy would be put on the back shelf and treated differently because, after all, this is his child now. I hoped to be wrong, but I'm afraid it currently looks to be going that way.
Exhibit A- I understand my parents watching little boy (now referred to as LB, for convenience sake) while sis is giving birth and dude wants to be there with him. I will even give him one more night at the hospital, but that is where it ceases to be necessary to me. If this were a first child for them both, I would say stay the whole dang time if you must, but it's not. There is a little boy staying with his grandparents, wondering why his dad wants to be with his little sister more than him. When my mom politely asked when Dude was coming to get LB (since no one had even officially asked her to watch him) he said, "Oh, I was just planning on staying at the hospital the whole time."
Exhibit B- Dude continually asking LB if he likes his sister, insisting that LB gush about how beautiful she is and how perfect she is. Never mind what happened at school with LB. Never mind that he misses his parents and wants to know when they are coming home to take care of him.
The whole situation just pisses me off. Either your his dad or not. Either you treat them equally, or you don't get to be his dad, you are just Dude. My sweet nephew is already feeling the inequality of feeling like a placeholder until a person's "real" child is born. This is why I refuse to adopt "in the mean time" while we wait for China. I will not have any child feel less special, less wanted, less chosen, and less loved, and if that means we wait 5 years and only have one child ever, then that's how it will be. But what do I know, I don't have any kids.
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