Old feelings resurfaced having a moment

[Clarabeau78]

Hi Ladies

So myself and husband are due to start our introductions in 2 weeks and our little boy will move in the following week. Yesterday my inlaws announced that my SIL is pregnant and i promptly burst into tears and fled the room!! .
It has brought back feelings and emotions as we had a miscarriage in 2015 then failed ivf in 2016 . She had a miscarriage in December but obviously has fallen almost immediately .
I want to clarify im not unhappy or feel any ill feeling towards my SIL were very close and i know how it feels to ttc then have a miscarriage and they were due to have ivf too but now she pregnant.
I suppose i just want someone to say its ok to feel sad and maybe a bit jealous? That its worked for them but not for us .
I had a nightmare about our boy and my pregnant SIL which i know is silly but its put me out of sorts.
Apologies if this all seems a bit trivial im just feeling odd and not having a big wobble just came at a bad time and also i suppose how he will also feel as a few montgsmonths later a new baby coming in .
Thanks for reading 😀

@Clarabeau78 hi. I am so sorry. This was very insensitive of your in laws to 'announce' and I think should have told your dh to tell you privately.

Can you speak to someone trusted, friend or counsellor, to talk through these feelings.

It is all normal and natural and does not mean anything negative in relation to your own miracle child who you are adopting.

I have a birth daughter (13) and adopted son (7) who joined us at age 3. I love them equally, there is no magic which makes the one who was born to me better or more loved than the one who was not. They are both my children.

Your sister in law and you have found different routes to being parents. Please do not allow this sadness to spoil your new child arriving in your family. Your wider family need to know this is a sensitive, important time and they need to be a lot more thoughtful.

Best of luck. Keep talking if it helps here.

When my girls came home (first grandchildren) my nephew was born 4 months later. They have always loved that they came first, were very involved in preparing for their new cousin and 10 years later couldn't be closer to him.

Yup - totally normal to have the "pleased for them/gutted for myself" dual thing going on. Bit of a head f* though.

You'll be emotional. Give yourself a break. I'd do a quick apology to your sil for being overcome and wish her well. She should get it.

18 months after adoption someone told me they were pregnant and i only had the pleased for them feeling - after 15 years of the dual thing. It was a marvellous moment. It will come for you too.

Look after yourself.

@JustHappy3 yes I too now get the just happy for you feeling. Our last treatment was in 2011 and somewhere between then and now all desire for pregnancy left me.

I'm not sure who was present when the OP got upset, in-laws could be SIL but could also be PILs.

Either way OP I don't think owe anyone an apology, you may want to explain how raw your emotions are. But I think you are entitled to how you feel.

Adoption is not easy nor is it a panacea. It often involves the putting down of some wishes and desires. But it opens a door to a new places and I hope it will be for you the most wonderful journey it has been for me.

Thank you so much 😀 i feel bit better that im not not normal for having these feelings . My inlaws thought we did know in fairness as my hubbys brother had told them he had told us and he hadnt so wasnt really there fault probably shoukd have mentioned that in my post. My BIL did call my hubby and told him as a family they are very poor at commnuication and always think someone has already shared the news not helpful during the processes we have been through but hey ho my hubby is much better at communicating😀 .
Im going to think like you have all said we become parents in different ways and hope that our little boy will be just as important as new baby and that in time will be best buddys.
Thanks love to u all x

Ummm - maybe apology was the wrong word. More on the lines of contacting her and letting her know she knows you were having a moment. Things better out in the open and all that.
But that sounds like what did happen. And your family sound nice with all the "we should have said x"

I might be projecting my issues on to you here, but in a similar situation I felt a bit gutted that the new biological grandchild would take the shine of the arrival of my chcildfor grandparents, that somehow they would feel more for my brother's child than they would for mine. I'm assured by parents that is definitely not the case, but I did worry about it.

Just to put your mind at rest, OP, my parents in law have only two grand kids, our birth dd and our adopted ds.

DD had always been a bit awkward around people (we think she is on the autistic spectrum). I'm not sure she was ever huggy with grandparents.

DS arrived aged 3. (Both my kids are beautiful! Yes I would say that.) And ds was quite small and young looking. He stole all our hearts. Even his grumpy big sister's heart - sort of!

Granddad really took to his new grandson.They shared a love of teck! When we last saw GPs our dd hugged them both! I think some of ds's openness is rubbing off on dd!

Anyway, not sure what all that means. Maybe we worried ds would steal dd's thunder but actually they have both developed their own relationships with both GPS.

I really hope all the GPS in your situation will develop good relationships

The new cousin will probably adore the older one! That really does seem to be how it works sometimes! DD used to go crab fishing with her cousin and loved it, something she did with no one else!

I remember just around the time my two were placed having a new sadness about my infertility. I’d dealt with it all in therapy and genuinely wanted my adoptive children but preparing for them coming was different. I wasn’t going on maternity leave, there were no obvious signs that I was going to be a mum, telling people was a different experience because adoption raises so many questions and feelings in others etc etc. It just brought home to me that my path to parenthood wasn’t what I had hoped for - I can’t imagine how it would have been had a close relative been pregnant at the same time.

I think even after adoption the pain of infertility can still bite us on the arse, just chalk it up to being part of life, give yourself space to grieve all over again and then get ready for the whirlwind that’s about to hit! Congratulations on your adoption, I wish every happiness for your new little family.

Hi Ladies

Jellycats i agree with you i have dealt with it all through the years but yes it does bite u on the arse 😀 i suppose i was really shocked as I really thought they would have ivf which i was prepared for as i naively presumed there story would reflect ours and again it makes you feel a bit like a failure that your body cant do it.
I did have a long chat with hubby too and he opened up and said he felt the same on certain parts .
I think it will keep coming up and i will just have to deal with it. We are the last ones on my side where on hubbys we're the first so our little boy will always have been the first grandchild 😀
Again thanks for all your advice its lovely on here and much cheaper than therapy 😂

It got easier for me as I bonded more with AD. Have had her 2years and it took me a good year to really fall in love with her. I get caught off guard sometimes though.
For example I was holding my friends new born the other day and suddenly was fighting back tears. Not because I want a biological baby in itself...more it is extremely unlikely I will ever adopt a newborn and it reminded me of what I missed in my daughters life. I also envied the simplicity of my friends new family. They had sex, got pregnant, had a baby. Boom! If I wanted another child, the adoption process puts me off massively (we were really dragged through it first time round). Also I would need to accept that we may not be as lucky withthe next child and they might have massive issues etc. I don’t want to upset the boat! So it gets easier but does still creep up on you

I think it's normal, my sister told us she was pregnant mid introductions. As soon as we left her I was in tears. I was happy for her and feel I've come to terms with our fertility issues but adoption isn't the way many people start out envisaging their way to parenthood so reminders of that can be upsetting.

What a reassuring thread! We were approved to adopt this week, and the very next day I had to manage someone at work telling me she got pregnant while on honeymoon. I held it together for that conversation and I think I conveyed that I was delighted for her and keen to help plan her leave with her. Then afterwards I did have a little cry. Why didn't I have the sense to TTC when I was younger? Sadness that I will never be pregnant. Hard to sympathize with her difficulties like not feeling financially ready. But I am lucky to have other people I can share those feelings with, not at work! Even though I feel really ready to adopt, I still feel sad sometimes that I will never have the experience of a biological child. And that's pretty normal I think.

I have a birth child and adopted children and in my experience when I was pregnant it didn’t really occur to me that I wouldn’t love my child, when we were adopting my daughter I worried about if there would be a difference in how I love them. Now I know I do love them all differently but because they are different people - they are all equally loved but in different ways. Until that love with your child grows I do think it is completely normal to be jealous of a pregnancy. I don’t know when it happened for me but at some point I lost all the jealousy - it wasn’t immediately after our daughter arrived either but somewhere along the line it happened and it no longer mattered that we couldn’t have more kids biologically. We now have 4, 3 of whom are adopted. Our kids have really changed views of adoption in our immediate family too and a few of their uncles have mentioned they are now quite open to adoption for themselves.

Don’t beat yourself up but also don’t expect non adopters to necessarily understand - for many they view matching as a pregnancy and it’s not really because you don’t know your child yet to love them.

Adopting doesn't "cure" infertility loss anymore than remarrying after the death of a husband "cures" your grief of losing your first husband.

Initially I felt both things in tandem and was OK with that. As time has gone on I no longer grieve for the loss of birth children, My DS is wonderful and is 100% enough for me.

My mum had 6 grandchildren (5 by birth one by adoption) and about a couple of months before she died my DS (who's 12) asked her "Do you love me as much as you love the other grandchildren, Nan?"

My mother was startled and quite upset because she has a very close relationship with DS.

"I couldn't love you more if I tried, in fact I probably love you more than the others at this moment"

I think she was right but only because the other grandchildren were adults by then and she had a much closer relationship with him.

There are plenty of stories of relatives who behave differently with adopted children than birth but generally they are arses - normal functioning human beings tend to be just as doting.

@tictoc76 lovely post, I've got two one adopted (7) and one a birth child (13), I so agree. I love them differently but because they are different. Not more or less.

sweetheart @Kewcumber how are you doing without your lovely mum? Bless you because your mum was such a lovely part of your adoption and your son must know he was so very loved by her.

@BeckyNW "What a reassuring thread!" Good to hear.

"I had to manage someone at work telling me she got pregnant while on honeymoon. I held it together for that conversation and I think I conveyed that I was delighted for her and keen to help plan her leave with her. Then afterwards I did have a little cry." That's all totally normal, well done.

"Why didn't I have the sense to TTC when I was younger?" You know it is best not to go there. Not all young people are fertile, you never know what may have happened. You are here at this moment in time. You are on a journey, try not to worry too much about the past, it cannot be changed, but how you view it, and the choices you made, can be altered. I have a birth child and an adopted one. If I had started trying earlier (I was 37) I would most likely have neither of these children, maybe others, but not these. Once your little ones to you, it will make more sense.

"Sadness that I will never be pregnant." That is totally normal. But again, pregnancy can be really hard for some, not at all fun or affirming. Please try no to dwell on it.

"Hard to sympathize with her difficulties like not feeling financially ready." It's not at all your job to sympathise with her. Honestly, keep your time with her short and focused on work. You do not need to tell her why you don't want to listen to her woes, you have your own things to deal with. Keep it professional and just be busy around her if you can, friendly but busy.

how you view it, and how you view the choices you made, can be altered... in that you can see these as positive things that brought you to this moment. Some people never become mums or dads by any means and you are working towards what is a life changing and fabulous thing, adoption is not easy but it can be quite simply amazing, as all parenting can be (and bloody hard work!).

It sounds completely understandable to me.

Congratulations on your little boy.