Most people don't want to admit that they have or have suffered from depression. But I am not ashamed to admit that on this very important and happy day I had a lot of emotions going around in my head.
I had prayed for over five years about adopting as a single parent. I believe that children need a mom and a dad so this wasn't a decision I could make alone. On Thanksgiving day of 2004 my cousin Jacqui announced that she was having another baby. Three of my cousins (including Jacqui) had just given birth to children earlier that year and another cousin had three young children and it seemed like babies were coming out of the wood work. I jokingly told Jacqui that if the doctor told her she was having a girl that I would look into adopting. The moment I said those words, I knew that God had told me that I wasn't just going to look into it, but that I was actually going to do it. This also was a difficult time in my family's life because the doctors had found cancer in my dad. I had this really bad feeling that this was going to be the last Thanksgiving my dad would be at. On the ride back from Mississippi I told my parents about my decision. They were both supportive of the idea.
In December, my dad had surgery and the doctors were unable to remove the tumor. They did a surgery to bypass the tumor. Even though the tumor wasn't directly located in the pancreas, it was pancreatic cancer. This is pretty much a death sentence. We had a very sad Christmas that year but tried to keep our spirits up by talking about what to name the baby. That Christmas day, we all agreed on Olivia.
Over the next several months every time we had news about my dad, I heard news about the adoption. This held true down to the day my dad didn't wake up on May 27, 2005. On May 28, 2005, I received a letter in the mail that said my paperwork had gone through translation and was on it's way to China. The next day we buried my dad.
So now, on this wonderful adoption day, my anger at God for taking my dad away before he could see his first granddaughter took over. As I played with my daughter that afternoon I wept. I would look at my daughter and think about how wonderful and innocent she is and how happy I am to have her with me and at the same time I am mad that my dad couldn't be there. Why had God taken him away? A friends father was diagnosed the same time my dad was but he was still alive. Why my dad and not her's?
How cruel a person am I to have all of these feelings on what should be such a wonderful and happy day. This day has been tarnished by unresolved feelings. My dad and I were so close. I was "daddy's boy," a true daddy's girl. Having no brothers, I was the one who went every where with my dad. And now, he wasn't here to see me become a mother. He wouldn't be here to see his granddaughter and he would never walk me down the aisle. I felt utterly cheated.
I didn't know at the time that adoptive parents can go through Post Adoption Depression Syndrome (PADS). I felt like I was just a bad person and would be a bad mother becacuse I had never heard of PADS before and I didn't give birth so it couldn't be Post Partum Depression. I wish I had known this could happen.
So, to all of those familes who are going through the adoption process, please be aware that you could go through depression. You can relive all of the pain and agony and difficulties you went through getting to this point. I broke down in tears for over a week when I got back home and I didn't know what was gonig on until I found PADS on the internet. Knowing that I wasn't crazy or just a mean human being made me feel so much better and helped me deal with my feelings and understand what was happening. I was able to take an off-the-shelf pill called St. John's wort that really helped. It made me relax just enough to be happy about being a new mom. After a few months I felt like I could overcome anything.
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