Source
r/Fencesitter•
AnonMSme

Went from (lukewarm) CF to Fencesitter to parent and now adoptive parent. AMA

AMA

Background: had a very unhappy childhood and young adulthood. Abuse from parents, bullying plus some trauma from military service left me struggling with depression and anxiety plus some very poor communication skills. I managed to mask most of this and carry on with life as usual. Even got married in my early 30's. However, my spouse saw through my mask and decided she could not help. It was the right decision on her part by the way. The damage was mine to fix.

Anyway, post divorce went through a lot of therapy and soul searching and got on a good path towards a happier future. One of the things that changed was my opinion towards kids. My entire life, despite a very pushy mother, I thought kids were pointless. My family was unhappy and so was my childhood, so what was the point of doing this?

Therapy made me rethink my situation by realizing what I had was not a normal family life. I also got a dog at this point and it made me reevaluate this whole "put in work and time and get love out of the relationship" thing. Long story short, eventually decided to have kids.

Met my wife, married, had a kid.

We were woefully unprepared despite both being highly educated and doing a lot of research, but we got over it. Learned a lot those first few months and adjusted and are now happy parents of an 8 year old daughter.

As she aged, we kept thinking about having another but never quite pulled the trigger. My wife was busy with her job, I was busy with mine and yah, there you go. A few years ago I changed roles and worked on my work life balance to the point where we both thought we were ready. However, we did think we were a bit too old (I'm 48, she's 42 now). So we decided to go the foster to adopt route.

3 years later and we are now the proud parents of two young brothers.

For the record, my wife does not use Reddit (or at least has not shared her account with me). However, she's going to add her answers as well marked with [her].

Also, I've been the moderator of this sub for a few years now. I'm no longer an active mod and I'm happy to have passed on that work to two wonderful new mods. I'm happy to answer questions about the sub and moderating it but please keep in mind that I do no not make policy anymore.

One last note, English is not my first language or even my second. I'll do my best but occasionally my wording is a bit off.

Posted Jan 12, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

3417
loulou_sortablue•

Thanks for doing this! I’m curious if you can elaborate on being “woefully unprepared despite both being highly educated and doing a lot of research”. What else do you wish you would have done to prepare? Was there something else you realistically could have done but didn’t think of?

9
AnonMSmeOP•

I think the first issue was for us was asking for help. Certain portions of western parenting culture have somehow made it seem like it's bad to ask for help. Why would you want your family to babysit? Why would you ask for help from the neighbor? Why would you ask friends for a favor? It's almost shameful to ask, like you've failed as a parent. I can't emphasize enough how stupid this is and I regret not asking for help sooner.

Two, neither one of us had experience with babies. All we had was book knowledge. So we knew in theory what to do but it was very different than in practice. Again, asking for help would have made this better, or maybe getting some real life experience with kids before having our own.

Finally, we massively overcomplicated things. Most babies are pretty simple. Their needs are simple, their signals are simple and the responses are simple. We spent a year reading various parenting theory books when 90% of parenting for the first six months consists of "Is your baby crying? No, then do nothing. Yes? check diaper, try to feed, hold until they sleep or just comfort until they stop". I'm clearly exaggerating a bit here but we just went down all these rabbit holes and caused ourselves a lot of unneeded worry.

15
loulou_sortablue•

That makes a lot of sense. I’ve been reading as many books as I can and constantly reading other people’s experiences on Reddit, but we don’t have the opportunity to really engage with any babies in real life (just our goddaughter occasionally, but she’s going on 4 already and we don’t live close enough so we’ve never even babysat her alone without her parents around!). I guess it is what it is, though.

I was beyond excited to learn that my sibling, who is expecting, plans to move back to the area. Our parents are nearby as well. I’m optimistic we’ll be able to help each other out and trade babysitting favors in the future. Since we’ve kind of loosely set that expectation already and plan to reciprocate, it will feel less like I’m burdening someone, I think. Though by no means is it a requirement to have family nearby, it really helped put my mind at ease (not to mention, generated excitement for the extended family life we could have) and tipped the scales for me.

1
AnonMSmeOP•

[HER] The not asking for help thing was mostly me. He's Israeli and would ask for help from complete strangers if I let him. I grew up internalizing needing help as shameful. I'm still mortified any time I need to ask for help but I get over it.

4
Ok_Pickle_8589•

Don’t you miss free and romantic time with your wife? That’s my biggest scare.

Also is life a lot more chaotic? I enjoy calm and being stress free but can be open to a little more noise due to a kid (but not too much lol)

Thank you for the AMA

8
AnonMSmeOP•

Don’t you miss free and romantic time with your wife? That’s my biggest scare.

In the initial 6 to 9 months after our daughter was born, we had very little free time. That was when most of my "oh crap, what have we done" thoughts were. But then we adjusted to being parents. We also learned to ask for help. Which meant romantic time came back. Gradually, but it did.

These days we go out on dates (when Covid allows) once a week on average. We go out on walks when the kids are in school (something I will miss when Covid forces back to the office). Plus there's plenty of time for just the two of us after they go to bed. I'm not going to pretend our life as a couple now is the same as it was pre kid, it's definitely different, but it's just as nice.

Also is life a lot more chaotic? I enjoy calm and being stress free but can be open to a little more noise due to a kid (but not too much lol)

In some ways yes. There's definitely more noise and chaotic play. In other ways the opposite. Being a parent forces you to establish routines. So our kids go to bed at 9pm every day and we go to bed every day at 10:30pm. We plan our meals ahead and do shopping once a week instead of when we realize we're out of toilet paper.

I do feel a lot less stress but that has everything to do with my work / life balance shift at work and very little to do with my kids.

I guess overall it's the same as the previous answer. My life now has the same amount of noise and chaos as it did before but it's different noise and chaos. Some parts of my life are a lot less chaotic and more planned than they were before and some other stuff is noisier and more chaotic.

Please keep in mind that I'm talking about an 8yo, a 5yo and a 3yo. Life was a lot more chaotic with an infant. It gets significantly less chaotic as they age. Although I guess we'll wait and see what teen years are like.

lol, looking back I feel like I didn't answer your question at all. Sorry, not trying to be difficult, it's just a hard question to answer because there are so many aspects to chaos and complexity.

10
Ok_Pickle_8589•

Thanks a lot for your answer!

I also wonder what makes people not want their previous life again. What do child bring that people wouldn’t trade their old life?

The answer is usually “unconditional love” but it’s so abstract. Also children bring responsibility and complexity this seem also to be forgotten for some reasons.

I wonder also if having children means people didn’t have enough love with their wife.

2
AnonMSmeOP•

[HER] We didn't trade in our old life. We still have many parts of it. Just like I didn't trade in my old life when I married him. We added a child because we thought it would make us even happier.

I think you're seeing post kid life as completely different from pre kid life. That's a mistake. Sure, some parts are different but many others are not. Again, think of post marriage vs. pre marriage. Yes, some parts are different and some are not.

And neither one of us didn't have enough love for each other. Not sure why you would think that. I'm struggling to find a good analogy here but if I'm going to continue the marriage one it would be "I wonder if people get married because they didn't have enough love for their parents". These two things are just not related.

6
ILikeBigMoobs•

Do you think having children made you happier?

1
AnonMSmeOP•

I would reiterate everything my wife said. When we had our daughter we didn't somehow trade in our old life for one that was completely different. Some aspects changed and many others stayed the same.

and in no way did my desire to have a kid have anything to do with the amount of love I felt and still feel for my wife.

2
miralynmsl•

I understood most of it. It's the same stress/noise levels as before only you're stressing about other things.

I'm sure just like it was rewarding when you and your partner were alone. Now it's also rewarding to have that time as a family.

Although it be interesting to hear your feedback when they are teens lol. They say the bigger the child the bigger the problem.

1
AnonMSmeOP•

[HER] You got it. Our average stress level hasn't gone up or down, we just stress about different things. But! Sometimes it's worst. Going through the foster to adopt process had some bad moments, taking her to the ER with a broken bone was bad. We also get some really high moments but I think whoever said the highs are higher and the lows are lower was very right.

3
AnonMSmeOP•

[HER] We did lose a lot of spontaneity. He's much more of a planner so he doesn't notice it as much, but we plan our romantic time these days in advance. In some ways it's good and in some ways it's bad, but it's definitely different.

1
babydecisionthrowaw•

Question for both of you, how do you split up work and mental load?

Second question, what do you guys do career wise and how did parenting fit into that?

Third question, did you include your daughter in the decision making process around adoption?

1
AnonMSmeOP•

Question for both of you, how do you split up work and mental load?

We specialize. I do pretty much everything related to food including shopping and prep, mornings, finances and electronics and everything related to pets plus a few more. She does evenings with the kids, everything related to healthcare, clothes shopping and house maintenance and other stuff. It's not that we can't do what the other person is doing by the way, we just like what we do so why not let the other person do what we don't like to do.

Second question, what do you guys do career wise and how did parenting fit into that?

I'm in tech. She's in healthcare. We both worked for small companies when our daughter was born. I have since switched to a large company and that has given us way better work / life balance.

Parenting fit OK'ish into our career. We're both highly educated and work in positions that are in demand. We're also in the bay area, which means liberal work policies and environments. I can't speak for my wife on this one but for me the biggest issue was still running into people who expected my wife to be doing the majority of the work. So in year one post birth, I had folks who were mystified at why I was doing parenting work. Luckily, that was the exception rather than the rule. Again, I think part of that is my luck in being in a liberal area and in a liberal industry.

Third question, did you include your daughter in the decision making process around adoption?

To some degree, yes. We made her aware of our decision. We also made sure she understood some of these kids would not be staying with us, something she handled better than me. Her safety and well being was clearly our priority by the way to the point where we had one foster child we could have adopted but decided not due to potential issues with our daughter.

In general, we believe in including her as much as possible.

3
Television-Short•

How hard was the adoption process? How are the boys adjusting?

1
AnonMSmeOP•

It was a lot of bureaucracy, which I hate. Otherwise, the process itself wasn't horrible. The only part I found personally difficult was returning some of these kids to their parents. And before anyone tells me that's what the system is meant to do, I get it, that is what the system is meant to do. That doesn't make it any less difficult for me to hand back a kid I've taken care of for 5 months to unfit parents.

Boys are adjusting well. They've been with us for a few months now and the official adoption now allows us to make more changes that will make the adjustment even easier. It's hard, because they have some emotional issues from their previous living arrangement, plus they're really far behind in things like basic reading, writing and math for their age. So we're working on that. Mostly they just need to feel safe and cared for, so that's our primary focus.

3