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This year’s birthday party was better than the first birthday party. (I did not attend the second birthday party.) However, even though I didn’t end up hiding outside on the phone with my Mom, I did find some things to be harder than I had expected. After talking with some other birth mothers, I think I am learning that even with advances in understanding and acceptance, some things will always be hard. For me, singing “Happy Birthday” is next to impossible.
Munchkin’s birthday party was at Chuck E. Cheese this year. So it was rather busy, thus giving me other things to concentrate on during the party. When it came time for the cake, I was standing near D to take pictures. I started to sing.
And then I stopped. I couldn’t sing it. I tried. I did. But it hurt.
In the length of time it takes to sing the birthday song, I was slammed with memories of the day of her birth. My water breaking. The ride to the hospital with my Mother. My best friend and labor coach arriving. The nurse that told me how adoption was so wonderful because she, too, was adopted and she never, ever wondered about her biological parents. If I wouldn’t have been in the middle of some hellacious back labor, I might have told her where to stuff it but, you know, I had to concentrate on breathing. J & D arriving. The great nurse who was supportive of my labor without giving her opinions. The brand new resident doctor. Her arrival. The cries from her lungs. Holding her for the first time. Everything. All at once. Hit me in the face. And I became unable to sing the song.
I feel kind of guilty for being unable to sing her the birthday song. It’s her day. Even if I am not her everyday Mom, I am 100% glad that I chose life for her and that I can be a part of that life in the ways we have decided. I should be able to sing the song. I should be able to rejoice in three years of being a really awesome little girl with an amazing personality and intelligence. I feel guilty for even thinking about myself when it should be all about her. But at the same time, the day of her birth is filled with such conflicting emotion that I find it difficult to concentrate on any single thing.
The rest of the party was a success. Okay, minus the fact that in our rush to get out the door, I left her birthday present by the front door at J & D’s house and felt like a heel. But the Munchkin was happy with food, cake and presents. The boys were happy playing with the little kid “rides” and gym toys. The adults had normal conversations and absolutely no one offended me at the party this year with poor adoption language or sympathetic looks.
Maybe some year I’ll make it through the birthday song. Though, I’m not necessarily sure. I got all misty eyed when we sang happy birthday to Nicholas on his first birthday. Perhaps that’s what the birthday song does to Mothers.
I just hope she doesn’t misinterpret my inability to sing the birthday song with anger, dislike or anything but overwhelming love for her. Again, these are the things that make this hard. Simple things, like singing a song. That’s what makes me frustrated. I make leaps and bounds and get side-lined by a song.
A song.
Birthdays are awful for birthmothers. I am the victim of a closed adoption and I spent every birthday wondering if my child was alive and well; wondering if he was loved. I was barely functional on that day every year; I was so depressed…and guilty.
Aw, Jenna. What a time for you.