I've been caught off guard again. Adoption has a way of doing that to me. I'll be sailing along, perfectly content with how things are progressing and life in general and then, BAM! I'm side-swiped by the Mack Truck of adoption. A hit-and-run, I'm left to sit on the berm of my reality and ponder what in the world just happened to me, whether or not the vehicle I am traveling this journey in can get back on the road immediately and nursing my wounds. Most of the time, present experiences included, these moments are brought to me by the wonderful world of milestones.

To a parent, milestones are a good thing. You want to see your child hit certain developmental milestones during those first few years. Crawling, walking and talking mark the big ones. Parents are also concerned with things like a toddler's ability to feed himself, appropriate weight gain for infants and everyone's favorite: potty training! Even for everyday parents, blessed to get peed on daily in the process of potty training, milestones can be met with both excitement and twinges of sadness. You want your child to grow and become independent. But with each step and each phase of life, a parent can sit back at the end of a day in which big boy underwear stayed dry, ALL DAY, and wonder, "Where did my itty-bitty boy go?"

First parents are no different in that regard. However, we have less of the day-to-day joy (and work!) and more of the sudden wonder of where time has gone. The length of time in between visits or update letters can bring an abundance of change in their child's life. Suddenly, their itty-bitty baby is running down the sidewalk, spouting a string of words and they don't always have the connection of memories during those in between times.

Unfortunately for mothers and fathers from the closed adoption era, the closest they come to "witnessing" these milestones comes via pictures and stories. Putting together their child's past through random conversation and glimpses into the faded memories that photography brings, they are keenly aware of the losses that they have experienced. Especially if they have had and raised subsequent or other children, those milestones are well known and heartily missed. Wanting to find a balance between learning about their (placed) child's past and nourishing a current relationship in their reunion, some birth parents from the closed era keep quiet about the sadness that they experience regarding those milestones. It does not mean that it is not felt.

Even for the most involved birth parents in the most open of adoptions, milestones can be difficult. For these particular birth parents, knowledge of current milestones is available. However, they are dealt a different kind of blow when they realize that because of the nature of their role in adoption (or other factors, such as distance or availability), they cannot be present in the actual conception of the newest said milestone.

I'll use myself as an example.

Today my Munchkin goes to school. Quite frankly, I'm a blubbering mess. Like many mothers, the thought that my itty-bitty baby is old enough to carry a little backpack and join a bunch of other kids in a classroom setting is simply mind-boggling. I can see her teeny-tiny little newborn face. Memories are flashing about in my brain and my heart. The kicker, of course, is that even though I know she woke up this morning, got ready and made her way to school, I couldn't be there. Beyond the facts that we're eight hours apart, I'm in the middle of an increasingly complicated pregnancy and insert-issue-here, it's not my place to be there. This is a Mommy and Daddy kind of day. It's not always easy to deal with but it's the fact of my life.

Milestones will continue throughout the placed child's life. In fact, even for those birth parents who struggle the most with milestones, you don't ever want those milestones to stop coming. You want your child to succeed! To grow! To conquer the world! (Or, some other lofty goal!) Dealing with the mix of emotions that milestones bring can be difficult at times. Dependent upon your relationship with the family or whether or not your adoption is open, some of the grieving for those missed milestones might not happen until years after the fact. Even still, those emotions need to be processed. Allowing yourself to grieve for those things that you have missed is healthy. Journaling about those times and what they mean to you, in your reality, is a great way to get the thoughts out of your head.

As a birth parent, what milestone has had the greatest effect on you thus far?

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For more on milestones, read:

1. The Years Didn't Get Easier for Me.

2. Other Views on the Time Debate.

3. Parenting After Placement: Milestones and Mothers.

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