Mourning the Loss of the Daughter We Never Had

(Written Tuesday, December 11, 2007)

Five or six years ago, after our third boy was born, Sheila declared that the most important thing to her was to be the mother of a daughter. This was a poser, because I was pretty adament that while I too would love to have had a daughter, I did not want to have yet another child, whether through birth or adoption. The first moment she raised the possibility of adoption, I remember saying that this was going to be a knife between us.

For me there were a couple of major factors:

1. We were already stretched financially raising three boys in one of the most expensive parts of the world. The addition of another child would undoubtedly limit our choices for the other children when it came to private schools or other resource-intensive opportunities, putting us deeper into debt and incurring the danger and uncertainty that goes along with it.
2. Any time you bring another child into your family, you take a risk that something will go wrong. We were extremely fortunate to have three healthy children, and taking on a new member of the family with unknown background could bring unexpected risk and uncertainty to our family.
3. We were already having a hard time giving our existing boys all of the attention they deserve, and I hated to think we would be further adding to that stress.

Of course, Sheila had legitimate answers to all of these misgivings, and so we went back and forth for a long time. At one point I declared that I could live with the possibility, and so we began the process of interviewing with a social worker. When the social worker asked whether I had any reservations about the process, I had to be honest, though, and expressed all of the concerns above. I wanted the social worker to help us decide whether these would be showstoppers for us, but I knew I was sabotaging the process. This was almost unbearable for Sheila. It seems awful, but how should I have handled this differently?

It's quite possible that this issue is the main cause driving Sheila to want to leave me. She has never gotten over it, or forgiven me for blocking something that was essential to her happiness, and I don't expect she will. I have never known how to face this issue myself, and face the pain it has caused her. My arguments above seem weak and self-centered, but my gut still tells me it would have been a mistake. God, this could be what our break up is really all about. I didn't want to embrace this adventure with her -- I prevented her from attaining the one thing that mattered most to her in the world. How must I look to her now, after that happened? It's no coincidence that it was around that time that she became despondent with our marriage, and started to really stop loving me. She used to go on walks alone that ended up in tears. She used to cry herself to sleep. I was somewhat aware of this, but hoped it would pass as she got used to the idea. We talked about it periodically, but I really had nothing significant to offer her, except my sympathy. She must have seen us as incompatible people as a result of this, and she stopped caring about our relationship. Anger and despair turned to numbness, which has devolved into the present mess.

Is what we are going through now the result of that decision? Without going along with the adoption, how could I have acted in a way that would have avoided the outcome we are now heading towards? As things turned out, we probably could have made room for another child in our lives. If I had it all over again, and knew what I know now (which is not realistic, of course, but still worth mulling), I believe I made the wrong choice. Sheila is a consummate mother, the best there ever was or will be, and she would have made such a good mother to our daughter. That could have been her greatest gift to this world. We are living a Shakespearean Tragedy.