Busy...

I am sorry that I haven't posted in a long time. This is mainly an apology to the many Lisa's that read this blog. I do appreciate their comments. After writing the last blog post my grandmother passed away prompting a flurry of activity. Ravenna and I flew to California for two weeks to be there for her funeral and our foster-baby stayed with another foster family.

Ravenna at "The Old Spaghetti Factory" in California

During that trip a number of things occurred that pushed our family to decide that we could no longer work as foster parents within a system that cared so little about the health and safety of both our family and the foster child in our home. Needless to say, it was very difficult to say goodbye to the little one. On the last day of March I passed the baby who we had raised since birth and had been with us for 10 months to his new foster family. I hope they are stronger than we were. With that parting I think I lost a part of my heart.

This is the only photo I can post since it doesn't show his face.

April was spent in recovery and preparation. The first three weeks of the month I was in shock and I can't recall doing a whole lot (plus I had totally changed my diet so I was in a daze trying to figure out how to eat FOOD again)*. So much of our time had been spent with dealing with foster care drama and suddenly I had only one child and, amazingly, TIME. I got back on the German learning wagon (slowly), worked in our gardens to get them ready and planted, and was inundated with landscape approval requests for the committee I am on in our HOA (Home Owners Association). Andrew was deeply immersed in a translation project for a German textbook company so he was basically absent from the time we returned from California until he finished the project on April 20th.

Ravenna turned four and then May came: the strawberries appeared in an early abundance and the garden harvest started in earnest with lettuce, radishes, chard, green onions, bok choi and the lovely strawberries. One day early in the month I opened the freezer and realized that I had a whole lot of meat to eat before our 1/4 beef arrived in July. Therefore we began to invite people to eat with us in earnest, sometime having three couples per week. We have become fairly adventurous eaters, even making Pennsylvania Scrapple to use up the odd pork bits we had lying about. We have also eaten beef heart, tongue and ox-tail in the last few months. Hurray for offal!

Then I got the genealogy and feverishly started seeking out my ancestors and filling in my family tree. Yesterday I had a birthday and now we are readying ourselves for our BIG trip. And that has been our life for the past few months.

*I quit the GAPS diet on March 12th and I will get to that in a future post.

Photos

I have been trying to get caught up on organizing the photos from the last few years. I finally completed Ravenna's baby book in November and wanted to tackle the photos from 2008-present as my next project. I got 2009 completed and got a great deal on a photo book from Shutterfly. I have to say that going digital saved me a great deal of time. With 2010, though, I am stuck. I cannot fathom why looking at the pictures from the summer of 2010, the summer I was last pregnant, leaves me with so much pain. I find myself looking at myself in those pictures and wondering "Do I look pregnant? What about me was different?" Then I see how much my daughter has grown since that time and I think "I am wasting her childhood...what am I doing?"

With our foster baby leaving in a few weeks I find myself feeling quite hopeless. We had hoped to adopt him; we hoped that he was the answer. My daughter is going through a developmental rough patch and I am plagued by thoughts of "What if...?" It is hard not to blame myself for our misfortunes regarding our family size. I often think that it is my fault my daughter is having such a rough time. If only I had been able to give her a sibling sooner, or if we hadn't chosen this very stressful route of foster care in order to grow our family. "What if I had just kept trying to get/stay pregnant?"

I am in desperate need of some peace; the questions are driving me insane.

Pain and the Atonement

"It will comfort us when we must wait in distress for the Savior's promised relief that He knows, from experience, how to heal and help us...And faith in that power will give us the patience as we pray and work and wait for help. He could have known how to succor us simply by revelation, but He chose to learn by His own personal experience."

-Henry B. Eyring, quoted by Kent F. Richards, Ensign, May 2011, 16

I did find this thought comforting today as I pondered upon the pain of waiting and not knowing. I do feel better that Christ understands the conflicting emotions I feel as I struggle with waiting for more children while my foster daughter joyfully becomes a mother. With my limited perspective, I feel that the lessons I learn as a foster parent will help me when and if Andrew and I are able to have more biological children. When people ask us why we made this choice, to parent other people's children, most of the time I want to say "I have no idea" because I truly do not, but the rightness of this choice is daily confirmed by the whisperings of the Spirit. I am so grateful for that and for the sweetness of new life.

Moments With A Foster Mom: Triage

I cannot describe how heart-wrenching this whole process is for so many reasons. Tonight I felt the need to share some of my experience in Labor and Delivery triage over the last few days.

My empty womb very tangibly ached as I sat waiting, hour after hour, in triage. Soon to be mom's paced the halls hoping that this endless walking would get them to the magical #4 that would allow them to be admitted. Excitement is everywhere but also some disappointment: Being sent home for false labor, an over-booked induction schedule, and then, towards the end, a young woman comes in weeping with a conspicuously flat belly and I instinctively understood. I overheard the nurses:

Nurse A: "What is wrong with her?" 

Nurse B: "She says she is having a miscarriage (shrugs)"

Nurse A: "Well, where should we put her?"

Nurse B: "I honestly don't care where you put her."

At that point the exchange ended and I went on my way. My charge was being admitted due to leaking amniotic fluid and I needed to get back to my family. As I walked away I felt like a coward; I wanted so much to embrace that poor woman because I knew what that look of total anguish was. I flashed back to my own experience and the strongest memory was the sensation of being very cold. I remember being both physically cold but I also feeling a sense of coldness from the medical support staff  (maybe because of the discomfort of death?) when all I really wanted was to be embraced. While the nurse's words were spoken out of this woman's hearing, nobody deserves to be treated like that especially at a time of such great loss. Miscarriage is still birth; even if it also means death.

It is hard to find my place in this confusing world of foster parenting. Who am I anyway? Just some infertile lady who decided to take charge of this pregnant teen two weeks before her due date. Why did God want me to be a part of this when it reminds me so much of the pain of my own loss and empty womb?