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You guessed it! More transitions.
I’m not going to do a post summarizing 2011.
Not going to do it.
Why?
Oh, because 2011 SUCKED!
Right up to the end.
And I wouldn’t be able to share very much about why it sucked, so it’s just not worth it.
2012 has started out with slightly less trauma, because we only had to say goodbye to Bright Eyes (Baby E’s new name, cuz’ the whole initial thing was getting too confusing.) But at least she is in a loving, Godly home, where she is with her two sisters, and close enough that we can visit her on a regular basis. That’s why it’s less trauma.
Bitty Babe (Baby A’s new name) is doing extremely well, and now that I only have 1 babe to focus on, things have calmed down considerably. She is a sweet little thing, but is really struggling with her weaning process. She’s so much more rigid and spastic than Bright Eyes ever was. She is in pain the majority of the time, so if she’s awake, it’s rare that she’s not crying. I can’t wait till she is completely done with her wean so we can see what little girl will get to emerge.
Bitty’s case is so up in the air at this point that we have no idea how long she will be with us. There is a lot of family involved, so it’s possible that someone could step up to take custody at any point, but that’s not the impression that I’m getting. Visits so far have not been consistent, so we’ll see how that develops. Hubby and I are a little more guarded with this placement because of the heartbreak that happened with Bright Eyes. We want to make sure we have all the information possible before we commit to any decision. For now, our job is to love Bitty as completely as we can so that we can give her the same opportunity to thrive as we did for Bright Eyes.
Our baby girls have been amazing ambassadors for the need for foster parents. They both have attracted so much attention when we are out and it almost always results in at least one good conversation about the need for foster parents in our community. Unfortunately these conversations usually include the phrase/question that I have come to dread and despise. It comes out something like “Oh, I could never do that. How could you give them back?” Or “Doesn’t it just kill you when you have to give them back?” or, the worst of them all, “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I would just love them too much.”
As if we don’t love them with all of our hearts.
As if it is easy for us to send these babies on to whatever is in store for them.
It’s called SACRIFICE, people!
We love them completely so that we know that we didn’t hold anything back. We give them everything we have to give so that we never have to wonder “Did I do enough?” We give them the gift of a strong bond. The gift of knowing that they were loved and cherished. Not just safety, although that is critical, but nurturing.
I’m not strong enough, but the love is not from me. I just pass it on. How could I knowingly chose to not do that?
Okay. Venting over.
Who knows what this next season will bring, but I definitely hoping for something better.
Blessings!
Hannah
An early Christmas gift
The Stubborn house has a new member.
Thursday afternoon a worker from our agency called and said “I know you and [Hubby] wanted to take a break…”
“But?”
“But there’s a baby girl who needs a home. Would you be willing?”
After a short discussion of the few details she knew, which wasn’t much, I told her the answer would most likely be “yes”, but I had to check with Hubby. So I did. The answer was yes.
Baby A arrived at 2 o’clock Friday afternoon. She’s so tiny! She’s less than 3 weeks old, so much more “newborn” ish than Baby E was. She’s had a rough start as another victim of the ever popular “white r*sh” epidemic. She is so spastic and rigid that I couldn’t even straighten her arm to get her gown on. She’s not on phenob*rb like Baby E was, so I’m going to talk to our pediatrician about that when I take her in ASAP next week.
It’s definitely a challenge with two infants who both need attention, often at the same times. Baby E heard me get up with Baby A at 5:30 this morning and decided that she wanted to join the party, so I sat her on the floor with a toy while I made two bottles (thankfully they use the same formula!), and then I held Baby A on my lap and had Baby E next to me lying on a pillow holding her bottle by herself.
It’s so amazing to see the size and developmental differences between the two girls. Baby E is practically a toddler compared to the itsy bitsy Baby A. She is just so little.
Anywho, my brain is sleep deprived and I am having trouble making sense, so since both babes are sleeping at the moment, I am going to head to bed. I will write more details very soon…maybe even tonight if someone gets rambunctious. 
Blessings!
Hannah
Transition meets denial
It’s really started.
Baby E is starting to transition to her new home.
Her new family.
I can type those things, but the words get stuck in my throat and I avoid them at all cost.
I caught myself avoiding calling Miss C. Mom or Mama. I didn’t want to say it, because saying it would get me a little closer to the reality that I am never going to be that to this precious baby girl.
Now, if you remember when we brought Baby E home we decided to refer to ourselves as Äiti and Isä, the Finnish words for Mom and Dad. This was mainly for Jeremiah’s benefit; later on we thought we were just being trendy and different, but we soon found out that it also was a way that we were attempting to protect our hearts. A disassociation barrier of sorts.
I can still sort of pretend that I am just taking her to a babysitter. I might have to for a while, otherwise I just get too angry.
Hubby will be going with me Wednesday when I go to pick her up. I hope this will help give him some peace. He’s really been struggling with this. The fact that she came home smelling like someone else’s house tonight just drove him nuts. No one is good enough for his little girl, and in his heart these people are taking her away from us. It’s so hard. I guess I feel that way too sometimes, but I can’t let myself go there. I have to fake being okay with this, otherwise I’m going to be more crushed than I already am.
It’s hard because I really like this family. They are wonderful. They’re sweet, and gentle, and super helpful. They’re patient with us and they know how much we are hurting…well, as much as they could know. They love Jesus and will raise her up right. But they are not us. She is not the woman who rocked E for hours when E couldn’t stop screaming from the pain of the m*th withdrawals. He is not the man who stayed up till 3 AM because E decided she was hungry right before he was going to bed. She is not the woman who worked so meticulously on all the exercises the physical therapist prescribed, despite E’s fussing and crying because her legs and hips were just too tight. He is not the man who snuggled with E in his big chair reading books, because that would be “their thing”.
They’re just not us.
And we have to deal with the fact that although we are so blessed to know that we gave her a great start, and that she knows what love and security feels like because of us, she will not remember all those things above. She won’t remember my silly songs or Hubby’s silly voices. Unless we actively stay in her life, she won’t even remember our faces.
That stabs me right in the mama heart.
So this is my sacrifice? This is laying myself down? This is putting her above me?
And I’m not even being asked to slit her throat. (That’s an Isaac reference BTW.)
And now to quote Mother Therese…sort of…
Lord, you told me you won’t give me more than I can handle, but right now I wish you didn’t trust me so much.
Blessings!
Hannah
Transition
I’m sorry I’ve been quiet again.
My heart is hurting and I want so badly to write about it, but I can’t. Everything is just to confidential and sensitive.
Things are changing. Big time changing.
Like…. I don’t know what God is doing, but I hope this season is coming to an end and the next is full of all kinds of joy….kind of changing.
One thing that has my heart in a vice is that Baby E will be moving on after Christmas. We thought we might have the opportunity to make her ours forever, we fought for it, but it just wasn’t meant to be….apparently. The family she will be going to has her older two sisters as well, and they are an amazing family. They love Jesus, and they will raise her up in the right way. If I could pick a family to take care of my precious girl, they would be it….but they just aren’t us.
Hubby is crushed. We both are. It comes in waves. Every time she smiles at us it makes it worse. It feels like our joy is leaving.
Okay, Lord. I know. You want to be our joy. But this still hurts.
Too much mourning in too little time. Too much loss. Too much change.
So what’s next? The challenge for me is going to be to rest and wait and try not to jump into something to try to fill these holes I am feeling. The holes are in my identity. Who am I now? What am I here for? How do I wait effectively? How do I allow myself to be healed? How can Kaleb and I heal together?
Lots of questions. No easy answers.
So there you go.
Be patient with me.
Blessings!
Hannah
And I’m still thankful…on purpose.
It’s been tough.
I failed at the thankfulness countdown.
More trauma.
The babe might be moved soon.
Too soon.
We are appealing the decision, but I have no confidence.
Jeremiah’s situation is so up in the air.
Where will he be? Who can help him? What role are we supposed to play? How much can our hearts handle?
It’s been hard to be thankful because I’ve been so angry. Angry that we are having to go over yet another hurdle, and another. The past two years have been so hard and it’s just not letting up. We are asking a lot of questions that there just are not easy answers to.
It’s hard to breathe.
This weight that’s on my heart feels so overwhelming that it makes every breath a conscious effort. Every smile is a decision.
My friend Eileen said it so well.
“If it looks to you as if I don’t take something seriously enough because you cannot see the blood from my broken heart spilling out all over, ok, that’s good cause that would scare the kids. And maybe what you see is me standing on the rock of my faith – my incredible Father, Who is working things out in our lives. Or, maybe what you are seeing is some therapeutic dancing and singing because we are intentionally choosing not to live in the pain every. moment.
You know they say you cannot judge a book by its cover… along those same lines – you cannot always see the brokenness of a life by looking at someones’ face.
Imma gonna dance on – with you or without you, it’s ok, I have friends who get it.”
But sometimes there are just too many unanswered “what if’s,” and sanity is just not possible.
But I am choosing to be thankful. Choosing very carefully what attitudes I hold onto. The emotions and the feelings and the thoughts come like darts and hit at some very inconvenient and even inappropriate times, piercing me to the deepest parts of my…depths, but I choose what stays.
Somehow, I’m going to have to choose to say “You give and take away, blessed be Your name.”
Somehow.
But be patient with me, and remind me gently, and if I yell at you and tell you to shut up, love me anyways, and then try again later.
And keep praying for us, ‘cuz none of this makes any flippin’ sense.
We need our suddenly.
Blessings!
Hannah
Trauma has given me….
Well, I’ll get to that.
I met my friend Lindsay at the Parenting in SPACE conference back in April, ya’ know, right before everything EXPLODED. We immediately clicked. I think our first conversation was about how our trauma kids smell….like, bad. We are both drama geeks, and we both love to laugh, even when it’s hard…especially when it’s hard.
I trust her. She has become another amazing mommy mentor that I wish I could carry around in my back pocket. I really do trust her, but dangit (‘cuz I’m not good at swearing) do I ever want to smack her sometimes because she is so very good at challenging my heart when I’d rather not go “there”.
She wrote this today. I don’t get it. It is not sinking in. Sure, I’ve learned a lot about myself, and I’ve let God use the trauma to root out and replace some major issues in my heart, so in that I am thankful, but I’m not thankful for the truama itself, I’m thankful for what God has used it to do, but I’d rather that He chose a different way.
AND THEN Diana, who writes over here, dared to write this in the comments of Lindsay’s post:
“THIS is why we keep going. THIS is why our children aren’t our greatest burden. THIS is why hurt kids don’t ruin our lives…but rather bless it with heaven’s richest blessing if we just allow ourselves to get down and get dirty and stop fighting this precious gift, a gift more priceless that rubies, that just happens to be wrapped in a ripped up, peed on, spit on, moldy old package.”
I am not there yet. I still feel like one child in particular is a burden, or rather, not him, but what the trauma has turned him into. I don’t really know how to say that, and to admit it makes me feel so icky. I still feel like this kid came really close to ruining my life, and I don’t feel like I was blessed with heaven’s richest blessing through him. I’m not there yet. Will I ever be? Don’t know. Really, really don’t know. (See, you know I’ m frazzled when my grammar goes out the window.)
But this is why I surround myself with people who “get” what this journey is like, what I am going through, what our family is going through, and what my kids are going through. I can trust them to show me what life CAN be, and that it won’t always be how I see it today. And some days, I hope I can be that for them, although I am definitely feeling like the baby in the group most of the time.
But I’m learning.
Blessings!
Hannah
p.s. Baby E had her 6 month appointment today and rockin’ all the doctor’s expectations. No one would know that this little wonder had such a rough start. Praise Jesus!
I found a button.
One of my buttons, that is.
This whole journey to get to know myself can be so interesting at times. I laugh sometimes when I get those “Ah ha!” moments about MYSELF!
Anywho, I realized today that it pushes a major irratation button when people don’t trust my knowledge about child development or what is appropriate to expect from a child of a certain age, namely Baby E.
One of the challenging things about doing foster care is that you are purposefully putting yourself and your family under a big-ass microscope. Everything you do and every decision you make can be put under scrutiny. You just have to get used to it. Thankfully, I am not typically a defensive person. In fact, Hubby says I am an excellent PR representative for this family, but something got my goat today.
Basically, I felt like one of our workers was questioning my ability to work for Baby E’s best interest. The details aren’t important, but the feelings are, and they were real. I wanted to shout “I’ve got a Bachelor’s degree in this, Damnit!” Yeah, I’ve never sounded convincing when I swear. So we’ll go with “Dangit!” You see, not only do I have a passion for kids, babies especially, but I spent 4 years learning about best practice, how to advocate for children with special needs, and how to work with public agencies to access resources. I was one of the top students in my class, and dangit (see, that’s much more Hannah-ish) I’m good at what I do! I know what I know!
All that to say, now that I know that I have this button, how am I going to respond to it next time it gets pushed? Should I respond? To myself, I know I should. There is an insecurity there that has popped up, and I need to know why, and see what God wants to do with it, and how He wants to fill it.
Is it an infertility thing? Maybe. It could very well be tied to the fact that it is because I have not been able to bare a child of my own, I feel like I have to prove my right to be a mother. That, and, because we are foster parents, all the professional people that I seemingly DO have to prove myself to on a continual basis. I know that I have moments of bitterness where I don’t like the fact that I even have to deal with these things. I ask God a lot of hard questions then. I have no problem being very honest and brutal at times, with Him and myself.
So this is where the reflection and ranting need to turn into healing, and getting to know who God has created me to be a little bit better.Ugh.
Blessings!
Hannah
Who is this Hannah person again?
I’m finally starting to feel like the real me.
It is my theory that when you are living in trauma for a really long time, especially when you are required to have extreme self-awareness and self-control during that extended trauma, you start to lose sight of who you really are, because it all becomes a pretending game (AKA “fake it till you make it”).
When I went to the amazing Parenting in SPACE conference back in April, ya’ know, right before my life as I knew it collapsed, I conferred with a number of trauma mamas who turned out to also have a background in theater. It’s a good skill to have, to be able to smile and speak calmly when most “normal” people would be frothing at the mouth. But that skill comes with a curse of possibly losing sight of how you truly feel, or even HOW to feel.
Anywho, the continual trauma, at least within this household, has been greatly reduced recently. J will finally be getting the help he needs, which means he is not here, which means both we and he are safer, which means less trauma, hopefully, for all involved. With less trauma here, plus the addition of a darn cute baby girl, of whom I am unfortunately not able to write a whole lot about, I am healing. With that healing comes a rediscovery of who this now 27-year-old Hannah Rae person is. Even my sweet hubby has remarked a number of times that he’s starting to see “me” again.
So here’s what I’ve discovered so far:
- I love being Aiti (Mommy in Finnish) to a precious little girl. Her eyes make mine cry with happiness, and her laugh makes anything worth while. I could breathe her in all day (who knew?). And instead of dreading the morning hours, I look forward to getting to see her again, and miss her when she is sleeping.
- I love to cook and challenge myself to learn new culinary skills. Now, I’ve known for a long time that I am a good cook, but recently I’ve rediscovered the JOY of being good at making quality, tasty food for those I love. It makes me smile when I get hose MMmmm’s and Yums, especially from my hungry FIL.
- I don’t mind doing dishes. This was a HUGE discovery, because for YEARS I’ve loathed nothing more. It doesn’t help that we live in house that was built by tiny Finnish people, which means that Hubby (6’5″) and myself (6’1″) have suffered many a backache scrubbing those daily dishes. Well, whether by excessive back exercise, (my fellow trauma mamas may be able to relate) or by sheer will, I can now gleefully do the dishes while I am entertained by “The Cosby Show” or “M*A*S*H” DVD’s that my sweet hubby has blessed me with. I joked with him the other day that he didn’t know that getting me those series as birthday gifts would make his house cleaner, did he? He replied with “What other series would you like, dear?” Ha! I think he’s just concerned that Juji is learning the theme songs a little too well.
- I love to laugh and be silly. Okay, I knew this about myself already, but I had forgotten HOW. I had forgotten that it is not only okay, but entirely necessary to be ridiculously silly and let down all guards to just laugh. Now, I did a lot of being silly to help my sons heal, especially during stressful times, but it was an act. I did not enjoy it. It was work. Now, my sister and I can laugh about the silliest of things, just because we want to. Sure, I go through more pairs of underwear, but it is so worth it.
- I am a romantic. Again, I knew this already, but it is such a joy to rediscover this part of myself as my beloved and I get to know each other again and draw closer to each other as friends and lovers during this time of stress and healing. Yes, it is possible for those two entities to coexist.
So this journey takes its twist and turns, far more than I expected to have by this point in my life, but I am starting to see how my Heavenly Father uses them to build true character. I definitely do not like the refiner’s fire at times, but as this new anthem of mine says, He makes all things new….and beautiful.
Blessings!
Hannah
p.s. WHOOHOO! Day 2 of successful blogging consistency! And I came up with this one all on my own!
My week of different
This week has been very different.
Jeremiah is in respite with a good friend who has a therapeutic youth ranch. He’s serving, and hopefully healing.
He’s not here. That’s different.
Because Jeremiah is not here, I can actually go into the next room without thinking about where everything is and what is missing when I return. I can actually use the bathroom without fear of having to figure out what Jeremiah wants me to “catch him” at when I get done. I don’t have to hold my breath and pretend to not smell urine and intestinal gas that could peel paint. I don’t have to check and double check door locks and alarms and keep track of my keys.
It’s quiet. That’s different.
I’m hanging out with Baby E, who sleeps a lot and, unless she is hungry, in which case she screams bloody murder, is otherwise content and smiley. Because she sleeps a lot, I get to actually take a nap in the middle of the day if I want to, but I haven’t really needed too because I am getting the time I need for myself, to renew, to do what I WANT to do, and if that’s nothing, well, then I do nothing.
I’m rested. That’s different.
Hubby and I are spending a lot of good time together. We’re watching a parenting DVD series together and having some great discussions. We’re reading through 1 Corinthians together, and hearing God’s word for us TOGETHER. We’re praying for our marriage, for our sons, for our family TOGETHER. We actually went on 2 dates and talked about things other than our boys’ behaviors!
I’m getting time with my best friend. That’s different.
Jeremiah will be in respite for a few more days because Hubby has to go on a business trip for a couple of days, and I do not feel safe bringing J back yet. So, I will have a few days where it’s just me and the babe. She has a lot of appointments, so we won’t be just sitting around at home, but it will still be odd.
I’m hoping for some productive use of the quiet, and that I can tune out the chaos of my thoughts and hear my Father’s voice. We need some major breakthrough in a lot of areas of our family’s life, and I’m hoping to hear some direction. I want to hear my Father’s heart for us.
Breakthrough. That would be different.
Blessings!
Hannah
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