I remember when I found out my daughter was pregnant, I knew immediately that she was not ready for the grueling and demanding job of a parent. No one really IS, all your training is ‘on the job’ experience. What really separates those who ‘are ready’ for parenthood from those who ‘are not’,..is the conscious willingness to imagine that you will no longer be the ‘center of your world’, your child will be. While there is really no way that ANY of us could prepare for exactly what that entails, it means – when faced with the choice of ‘baby’ or ‘me’,..you set ’self’ aside and choose ‘baby’. Many times that is not a ‘natural’ choice, in fact,…it might take more than a minute or two to decide, but ‘baby’ always wins. Parenting doesn’t always feel good,…so there is a level of maturity necessary for being able to navigate beyond “feelings.
I knew my daughter ‘wasn’t there’. At the time it was all she could do to take care of herself. The majority of our life was spent intervening in hers. She was 19 and her life was a mess with drugs and poor decisions. The pregnancy was nothing more than the natural consequence of having sex. She was in no place physically, mentally, spiritually or maturely, to take care of a baby. (Understand, that is not a slight on my daughter, it was the truth for her life THEN. Today, she is a totally different person, and I couldn’t be prouder of her!)
Then, the clincher….I found out she was pregnant with TWINS. Now I was absolutely positive that the best motherly advice I could give her, was to give the babies up for adoption. (Mind you, when I write those words now, after raising the girls, I could never imagine my life without them) I have to be honest and say that although I truly believed that to be the best choice for her, part of my reasoning was because of a ‘fear’ that I was feeling. I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that she wasn’t capable of taking care of 1, not alone 2, babies. I knew if she went through with having them, and decided to keep them, “I” would end up becoming a full-time mom again. I didn’t want that.
I was 41,..it was MY TIME to RE-CLAIM my status as a viable thriving independent human being in pursuit of HER OWN goals and dreams that have been in storage for years. I was just getting MY life back. I survived cancer,..and now my two children, Bekah and Ben, were at an age where I could start looking beyond the daily role of parenting. I was feeling the exhilaration of feeling PERMISSION to think about ME first! And I was loving it! I knew inside that my new-found freedom was going to be snubbed out in lieu of “raising grand-children” if my daughter wouldn’t heed my advice.
Inside I was panicked as I listened to her explain to me how ‘everything would work out IF she just married the idiot that got her pregnant’. And no matter how logical an argument,…how sensible my rationale sounded,..she was hellbent on her idealistic perception of ‘what could be’. As I listened to her, I was screaming inside – No! No! No! You can’t do that to me!.
But she never saw things my way.
She had her own dreams and plans which where separate from mine…she was positive that IF only she got married,…IF only he would get a job,…IF only they found a place to live,…IF only they had a car,…IF only they loved each other,…it would all work out. So I should put my anxiety to rest.
Two weeks after the twins were born, Hannah and Abigail, I became a Full-Time Mom again.
