Hard weekend

This was a particularly hard weekend for me. My mom and grandmother were in town to visit. The first night of their visit, my mom randomly starts telling the birth stories of my nieces and nephews. It didn't make any sense since my sister wasn't there to participate. My mom just wanted to brag about how she was able to make it to the births of all her grandchildren. I couldn't take it and got up to do the dishes during this conversation (usually my least favorite chore-so you know I just wanted to escape).

The next day we were in a larger group and the men sat down to watch TV and the women were in the other room. And then the conversation turned to baby food. I'm not sure how it happened, but it did. Every other woman around the table shared what they fed their baby and how much or little they relied on actual baby food. This was a conversation I could not participate in. I feel like there are so many conversations that I am completely left out of. Unfortunately I was seated in the far corner and couldn't escape. I went back to my old habit of emotional eating and finished off the rest of the cookies while they compared motherhood notes.

The third day I started in a bad mood. Going to church and out to breakfast with DH helped improve my mood, but it quickly turned sour again while trying to cook with mom. The day got progressively worse until dinner when we all sat around the table and started talking about who each of my nieces and nephews look like. Again, I don't remember how we got on this topic. But we had to compare noses and face shapes and mouths. I wanted to be somewhere else.

See, it's moments like these where I never know if telling my mom about our IF was the right thing to do or not. She is oblivious to how painful this is for me. Or at least when she thinks about our IF she might acknowledge is it painful for us, but in the 90% of the rest of the time, she is oblivious. This conversation also got me wondering how my mom would deal with an adopted grandchild if we get to that road. Now that we have a failed IUI behind us, I am thinking of that road more and more. I can see us doing that. I can also see my ILs being happy with adoption. I can't see my mom making this adjustment. She has a lot of faith in instantaneous and biological connections. She had to be present at each birth. She relishes "seeing" herself or her kids in her grandkids.

My older sister has 4 kids. The three older kids love anyone they are around and my mom has a strong bond with them. I really do think that is valuable. I myself have a deep bond with my grandmother. But my mom has had trouble bonding with the youngest nephew. I'm not sure why, but he just has a personality that requires you to work harder at establishing that bond. And my mom has not put in that effort. She wants it to be effortless. Expects it to be effortless, because she is, after all, his grandmother. She shouldn't have to work at it. So I have trouble seeing my mom want to put in that effort for an adopted grandchild. Well, not that she wouldn't want to put in the effort, but she wouldn't expect to need to and so wouldn't do it. She would expect the bond to be natural, not something that requires effort.