Adoptive mother ramblings

For my birthday, I purchased a DVD at Target that was on sale for $10 of the first 2 seasons of the TV show "Jon and Kate Plus 8" that I've heard so much about. Since we don't get that channel, (and soon will have no channels) I hadn't seen it and thought the story of a family with 6-year old twins and 2-year old sextuplets sounded like encouraging entertainment for me when I had 20 minutes to sit and relax.

Well, the time to relax never came, but I discovered that Anju enjoyed watching the busy toddlers on the tv, so I was able to watch one episode every couple days even if she awoke from her nap early. Knowing several large families myself (6, 10 even 12 kids) I was not shocked to see the chaos and hard work managing such a family brought this couple. I was not shocked to see them all helping and caring for each other, either.

Jon and Kate are Christians. They speak at churches in their Pennsylvania area to inspire others. The television show is very sketchy about the faith issue, as it is not a Christian show. So, when I heard that they had a new book out, "Multiple Blessings", I requested it right away from the library.

It was very interesting to read all the background information about the birth of these babies. As a woman and mother, I think we are drawn to this kind of story: the love of a couple growing and the addition of children to form a family. The inspirational content was pleasant enough to read. I could see that through it all, Kate and Jon's faith was a great encouragement and support to them when things were tough. Besides the medically difficult pregnancy, Jon lost his job twice (companies didn't want to pay insurance for his 6 soon to be born preemies) and Jon's father's health was poor and he eventually died soon after the babies were born.

However you may feel about fertility drugs or IVF or any of that (a whole other issue), there were aspects of the book that troubled me. First of all, their motivation for trying for baby #3. They had used fertility treatments to conceive their twins, since Kate does not ovulate. She wanted a third, while Jon was satisfied with 2. Kate worked as a nurse, and through her job found herself in a position where a teenaged mother asked her to adopt her newborn. Jon's family apparently wouldn't have done well with them having this child, (the child's father was black) but the adoption option convinced Jon that they should do more fertility treatments and have child #3.

Now, as a newly adoptive mother, I felt offended. I'm not sure if I should have, but I did. The way it was written in the book came across to me like adoption = raising someone else's child who would never be a full member of your family. Better to inject yourself with hormones that make you feel terrible and be absent from the lives of your existing children for months than take on "someone else's child". Again, probably not what they felt, but it is how it resinated with me.

She describes in page after page her guilt over not being there for each of her babies and her twins. She talks about how she only really initially bonded with the baby she was allowed to hold right away, and how others it took awhile to bond to. She talks about how volunteers and family members knew more about some of her babies than she did, and when Jon and Kate were finally on their own, the volunteers would have to teach her what each baby likes or doesn't like. She expressed her guilt about this several times. Reading this made me so sad. I saw too many children in India who did not have the nurturing of a mother.

Now with the birth of these California octuplets, who as we learn more and more about seem to have been born in less-than-magical circumstances, I wonder about the whole deal. Kate has given the octuplets' family the encouragement that it is all "God's plan". I won't argue if it is or is not, but wonder why multiple births/biological kids are automatically God's plan, but adoption is not immediately recognized to be so- at least by this family.