Welcome to my blogger page. My professional profile can be found at DeirdreWRussell.wordpress.com and over at LinkedIn.com.
You can also find me at streamofcontinuousness for the fun stuff and fluff....oh and baby pictures.
This blogger page will mostly be devotionals and meditations on scriptures. I'm not promising to be serious here though. I seriously believe that God is Fun.

Enjoy my pages and I hope you come back to visit often.

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Monday, August 17, 2009

  • Missy has asked for people to help her know what to say to an infertile couple.
    This is hard. I was one. I was once one of those walking bundles of pain and anguish who wants to hold a child so badly that it colors everything.
    I have freinds who say that "the infertile woman inside your head never goes away, even once you have children" ... I disagree. I am deleriously happy with my one little girl. She came to us through adoption and I simply don't know if I could love any child more than I love her. We have a wonderful relationship with her birth parents and our whole extended family embraced adoption as a perfectly understandable way of having a child join our home.
    We are lucky. Very lucky. God Healed a lot of things. Not the least of which was my heart.
    But back when I was going through the whole IVF process, after the second try failed, a dear freind pointed me to a post by this woman named Missy. It was a Christmas post about how Mary hadn't expected to give birth in a stable. It was powerful.
    I liked her writting style. So I read more. Then I took a deep breath and contacted her. Even though you would think that someone with four kids under four wouldn't really appeal to a woman who was aching to have a child. But we connected. What did she say that made me feel better? that made her my freind and not the enemy?
    She didn't act like there was anything wrong with me as a person.
    She reminded me CONSTANTLY that God loved me and He had a plan and that it was Good.
    She listened EVERY time I needed to whine or cry.
    She CRIED WITH ME
    she didn't claim to have answers to the physical struggles, but she applied the balm of scripture to my heart. Reminding me that God ALONE was my rock.
    And if we had lived in the same state she would have let me hold her kids. This one is big. Women who are infertile sometimes have a HUGE sense of restraint when it comes to holding children. I can't speak for everyone, but for me I was terrified of holding my arms out to a child. What if they laughed and ran away? I KNOW that toddlers do this all the time. But for a woman who already is feeling like maybe God is saying "you are unfit to be a mother" having a child run away from you can very nearly feel like a physical blow. So mostly I didn'thave the courage to hold my arms out. I would wait for someone to place their child in my arms. It was much safer. Much less chance to rejection.
    So moms of many kids - show confidence in your infertile friends as people. Love them for who they are apart from the issue of childbearing.
    Directors of worship - find ways to celebrate mothers day without making it about biological motherhood. Try celebrating the act of mothering, rather than the miracle of conception.
    oh, and whatever you do, don't earnestly assure them that if they just relax it will happen. Look. That has nothing to do with it. Conception and birth is a miracle that ONLY God controls.
    And do yourself a huge favor. Read this blog post from a friend of mine. It address some theological and cultural hurdles that infertile women face in the church. It may help you see some of the hurt in a different light.
    Thanks Missy for doing this post.
    oh and there is nothing wrong with encouraging folks to consider adoption. We did. And I would not have missed out on my Ginny for all the "biologcally mine" children in the universe.
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1 comment:

Peter and Nancy said...

Hi Dierdre --

I read your comment on Missy's blog, and was curious about breastfeeding adoptive children. I have two bio, one adopted, and another adopted child on the way. My adopted daughters join(ed) our family at about 1 year old, so I assumed it was too late to breastfeed (although my sons nursed until 15 months).

What has your experience been? My e-mail is pleschke@sbcglobal.net.

Thanks!
-- Nancy