They said I should write a book
I set up a blog instead
The video I believe I said is create LAST week. Sorry folk! As you can tell, as has slowed a lot down. And as you know, work has increased but at least now I can share – for those who can hear- how my daughter’s sister felt about meeting her for the first time ever.
HERE or just click on the play button.
How to stem the tide? My daughter’s birth mom agrees with me that she probably has ADHD. I’ve seen what undiagnosed ADHD does even to professionals with degrees. There’s a case I know of where the manager of a Black female was pretty sure she has ADHD. But the HR department said it wasn’t anybody’s place to ask her to be assessed . This young lady had already been moved from a job she was not performing well. And now, she was going to be moved yet again to smother lower paying role.
We know more who immediately get fired. Even those who are diagnosed and whose bosses know. How much more my child’s birth mom who’s in the kind of job that accepts people who don’t have degrees. Job security is reduced. Have a worker who can’t pass the written part of a menu exam and it’s a mess. It’s a set up for someone with undiagnosed ADHD to fail. Learning ingredients and being tested. No concessions. No checking if she even needs to know the ingredients or if she can’t call a different waiter to do that part if a customer asks. Or give her time to learn the ingredients as time goes by. But nope, she failed the written part and was only given a part time contract. Not the full time job she’d hoped for. Waitressing. And given the staff share tips, they don’t get to keep their own tips, the waiter who might recite the ingredients on her behalf gets some of her tip anyway. Imagine her being a phenomenal waitress, bubbly, but she gets the same tip as a surly waiter who might have not received any tips. And I know she would get tips. At her previous job, customers went out their way to praise her. I even saw an email sent to her manager about her. She is definitely getting tips on the few days she’s working. Pity she’s sharing them. But that’s how that business works. Just sad that there’s no protection for her. It’s not like she could afford any meds for the ADHD anyway. She has to pay for the baby’s nanny and their food clothing…
Helpless.
We had tried to stop the cycle. Birth mom warned and warned her daughter about premarital intercourse. Offered to go with her to a clinic if she thought she’d want to have sex before she’d studied at university. Then we found out the teen daughter had a baby. And there is – yet again- an absent father. Just like with birth mom’s case except for the middle child, my daughter. He is present. Just unemployable. Sad that those with jobs aren’t taking care of their children. And so, it’s all on her. And now she has a grandchild too. All on a waiter’s part time wages.
I might have typed all this when I first mentioned birth sister had a baby. But at that point I didn’t know the potential dad would be absent. I didn’t know all of this would be on birth mom’s shoulders. Even if she wasn’t already clinically depressed and on anti- depressants, this whole situation would have caused depression.
And so, despite our hopes, the cycle has passed onto the daughter. Unplanned baby. No baby daddy present. No formal post high school education (yet.)
I’m sad. So, so sad. We can’t change anything from the outside no matter how high our hopes are. And I mention this because I realise that I’m relieved I never did become a child psychologist. If the child is depressed because of abuse, I can’t help them. If a child is depressed because the mom favours a different child and mistreats them, I can’t fix that. I can’t change the situation. Teaching resilience and strength isn’t what I wanted. I wanted to change a child’s world for the better. But there are too many forces out including the there that prevent that from happening. Including the child herself.
Helpless.
The trials aren’t in the open adoption itself. Birth mom never asks for anything. Well. She did once ask for money for DSTV but I don’t her we ourselves don’t have it. That was years ago. Then she asked for something this past weekend. In tears. But it’s not how you think.
People, I rejoiced so so much when I heard her daughter had passed Matric (Grade 12), First one to finish high school! Birth mom hadn’t managed to. Side note. I told birth mom that from the way she told me why she couldn’t focus in school and they kept telling her she’s naughty, and other things, I believed she has ADHD. She said she agrees. She said when I first told her my ADHD girl’s diagnosis, that she had googled ADHD and found herself saying, “But..this is ME!”🥹And so we have, an adult with untreated ADHD and clinical depression. The depression is being treated.
So, the news that birth sister was pregnant was disappointing. Extremely disappointing. So much for being happy she would enter university. Instead, the cycle was being perpetuated by her too. None more devastated than birth mom who has been telling her for years, to not do what she did. Telling her how difficult it is to raise a child with no income. (My goodness, it might be possible where there’s a good welfare system, but not here in Africa.) They had been sharing a bedroom and bed in their home. That is how deep the poverty is. (I have an acquaintance who will be trying to find them a bed if they move back home. Right now, they’re trying to share food with relatives housing them.)
Now here’s the thing. Birth mom’s recent partner and boyfriend wanted her to abort. She didn’t. He told her he wished she would die. He told her he hoped her HIV would engulf her body and kill her during her pregnancy, apparently weakened by being pregnant. (He’s evil and stupid.)
So we’d already been trying to kind of be a help. And now THIS. Another baby. No clear picture of what the boy’s parents are going to do about their grandchild except knowing they aren’t about to come any time soon.🥹
The trial is not in the open adoption. It’s in the heartache of seeing disaster befall a birth mom who had tried her hardest to at least stop her daughter from following in her footsteps. In their bed at night, she’d warn her, even telling her to only get a boyfriend after university. She wanted her to escape. But she hasn’t.
When we’d thought they’d be able to stand alone and move out the one small bedroom they’re in in a relative’s home, we’d offered to buy birth mom’s child a cot. But then, they can’t move. At least they can share food and get help with baby care in their relative’s house, though birth mom has to pay a baby when she goes to her part time waitressing job. So they’re stuck.
Last week, we did a video call when birth sister was admitted for an induction due to hypertension. My heart broke as her already stressed mom wept as she asked if it’s possible for us to still send the cot. She said they’d move some furniture out the bedroom, she’d sleep on the bed with the daughter’s baby and then her baby would sleep in the cot.
And so, I sent a cot, mattress and sheet which they collected yesterday. But remember, giving birth to my daughter is a secret. The relatives only know of teen daughter and current baby, not about my girl. So I asked her who she told her cousin (who has a car and went to collect the stuff) I was.
Constantia is one of those extremely affluent suburbs.🤣🤣Of course, I’d have just said that we are friends because white lies are still lies in my eyes. But I can’t foist my principles on others so…Constantia!? I wish I could afford a house for all eight of us in CONSTANTIA!😅
You folk! I almost didn’t tell birth mom that our girl wasn’t great. She was trying to get a job- went for an interview the very day she was admitted. She had trial dates thereafter…
And I know how guilty she always feels when our girl has a problem. But I figured I should..just in case. So I told her.
Today, my girl asked if her birth mom knows she’s still not well. Did I feel happy to be able to say YES!? And I told her the truth, not only does she know, she was the first one to ask how we all are today, how things are going with healing and recovery.
I’m so, so happy! Happy that our girl knows she matters to her birth mom, and happy that we found each other despite the social workers lying to each of us!
God made a way. And human ingenuity and care made things happen. All to the betterment of my girl. I told her that I told birth mom that she’d asked if birth mom would have been able to afford therapy if she’d stayed with her. I told her that birth mom not only definitely wouldn’t have, but she herself told me while we were in hospital that she is so grateful for us, because she would have not afforded the medical care we could provide.
It’s sad. Very sad knowing your child would be untreated for many conditions. And subject to our not so great South African medical system. I can’t imagine being birth mom and losing a child she loves so much.
But I also know that I am keeping the promise I made years ago before we even knew who our daughter would be. When I promised I would take care of her just as I would my biological children. Nothing has changed. She’s my baby.
She’s our baby. And we love her to bits.
She even helped me do some scolding! I told my girl many times, even before we left hospital, to remain still. To stop being too boisterous. To keep her knee as immobile as possible and do other activities like watching, reading, colouring in…Anything that won’t need her knees.
Yesterday she was caught crawling around in the garage. Today I caught her kneeling. I told the surgeon that tonight in ER as she examined the still oozing wound that ‘should have’ shut by this Sunday. And she reiterated what I’d said. NO!!! She added that there isn’t much blood flow in that part of the body so things can break down if they’re stopped from healing well. And that while it stays open, other bacteria can enter and do to her what the others did that got us admitted to hospital.
I hope she listens. Even birth mom told me to tell her calm down a bit. But Ammy then sent her a video telling her that the brother “tempts” her, so she’s not sure she can comply. 🤣😫
We’ve come a long way. ❤️ Birth mom doesn’t hide when we walk about our girl. All is well. Now our girl must heal. Surgeon says the wound itself might heal and close up Saturday. Hoping we can try control her. Don’t ask me how unless I forget all other children and just sit with her all day every day.
I’m happy birth mom is sticking around. Proud of her!
Can’t add more to this. 😭😭😭🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹💃💃💃💃💃🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
The birth mother I’m in touch with finally admitted that she gave birth last month. Told me only because her eldest asked her if she had told me. I didn’t want to say anything harsh or condemnatory when she already feels the way she does, but you can guess what I thought.
1. I’ve read how some adoptees wonder why THEY were placed yet younger siblings born into the exact same situation are kept. Why weren’t THEY kept too? Why were THEY not worth being kept?
Do I ever want to reveal this fact? Will my child ever even ask? Unlike my friends’ children at even much younger ages, she hasn’t said anything much about being adopted, especially this year. It’s just a fact that she knows but it’s meaningless to her.
On the other hand, my one friend’s child asks to speak to her birth mother on the phone and calls her Aunty B and speaks to her bio aunts. My other friend’s child asked why they can’t adopt her other (older) siblings so they too can eat the kind of food she eats…. And my other friend’s child prays for her birth mother every day, hoping she is happy and is eating enough.
Mine says.. nothing. Even birthdays don’t trigger it. I know it’s part of her “challenges” as she calls her disorders and disabilities. She knows she didn’t come from my tummy and has known someone else gave birth to her, but last year when I asked her what a birthday is-referring to her upcoming one-she said it’s the day when she came out my tummy.
Maybe she will never be curious about other siblings. I especially hope not about the younger one because –
2. This third child has been born exactly into the same situation the other two were born in. The eldest child was raised and mothered by an aunt till Covid came along in 2020. The second child is mine. Both fathers were not fathers though my child’s father is there emotionally, but is not employed and finds food in nefarious ways that have seen him doing some punishments where the courts of law house him – if you get my drift…We even communicated while he was ‘away’ last year.
This third child is in trouble. The birth father didn’t want the little one to be born so he has disappeared. So she’s raising the child alone and has been unemployed since 2022. She’s asked me for old baby clothes already.
3. I wish we could learn from our past mistakes so we don’t repeat them. Stress in the womb, stress outside the womb, no real food. The cycle is continuing and I don’t know what the eldest will learn.
What I do hope is that if the eldest ever gets a man, she will get a real man who will acknowledge that he made a child possible and must therefore help with that possibility if it becomes real, instead of wanting the easy way out. Easy for him and other females who choose it, but not for those who are tormented by guilt thereafter.
She makes beautiful babies. I just wish the relationships they came from were just as beautiful so there’d be peace, not turmoil. When someone tells you they’ve “dug a hole” for themselves and are “trapped,” you know that all the feelings boiling inside you are justified.
She’s looking forward to the child grant from the government. (Social benefits for indigent mothers). A friend said that’s R510 a month. Not enough for even two weeks of diapers. I am sad. Troubled. Disheartened. And worried for both dejected mother and little one. What kind of a life will either of them have?
They said I should write a book 