The kids were complete horrors and wanted nothing to do with me which I put down to the time of day (it was late afternoon and my kids get crabbier as the day progresses).
They only wanted their daddy and it was very embarrassing for me in front of the photographer because I had a vision of my family being loving and kind and ... they were not.
Anyway, the thing with that photo shoot is that Connor kept saying, "no, only want Daddy" and similar. Up to this point Connor had been more attached to me and Kendra was more attached to her father.
We each had a child that slightly preferred us which worked out nicely.
But then instead of things returning to normal, Connor continued with this behaviour of pushing me away, saying NO to anything to do with me and only wanting Daddy.
It was horrible.
Especially because I was ashamed that he didn't love me anymore.
D is great with this stuff. We agreed that we wouldn't make a big deal of it (well, in front of them) but would also not tolerate disrespect.
Same as I don't allow them to be disrespectful to other adults like V.
So if he screamed at me or pushed me, we'd say, "Connor, say sorry to Mummy" or do the 1, 2, 3 magic. Whichever was appropriate.
But it hurt me so much.
I cried a couple of times.
One day I emailed MandyE and told her, "what was the point of having IVF if my own child hates me?"
Mandy is one of the most encouraging people I know and she was so great then. Even though she hadn't experienced any of this, she was non-judgmental, had a listening ear and Mandy, I can't thank you enough for being there for me. I really, really appreciate it.
Then I read this post on Ask Moxie.
Our situations are very different but I related to that mother and after reading the comments, I realised something else - I am not alone.
Same as with my infertility, I kept quiet because I was ashamed.
But that post set me free and started my healing. You can go read the post and see my comment. It's all there.
It's going to sound strange but Kendra being in the hospital was good for Connor and me because we got to have some one-on-one time and bond again for long, extended periods.
We'd had mother-son dates over the 6 weeks which were fabulous for keeping me going but the minute we arrived back home, he was all into Daddy again and wanted nothing to do with me 95% of the time.
I wrote about some of this in my 2011 review post but just to say it's really hard making yourself vulnerable and admitting something so painful when everyone else's kids are perfect and nothing ever goes wrong. We know intellectually that it can't be so but still, Facebook doesn't help, now does it?
Our holiday was also good in that we had lots of family time together just being with the kids and I realised again that Connor is a quality time child and when he's being horrible to me, the best thing I can do is actually to spend more time with him, quite the opposite of what I want to do.
So that's my story.
There is no movie ending to this post because things are not perfect and we still have our moments but I can say things are 100% better.
One thing I need to remember is when I feel ashamed of something, the best thing for me to do is to share it in a safe environment (like with Mandy) so that I don't feel alone, because that just increases the shame and so it goes on and on.
I just had a prompting to say if someone out there needed to hear this today, please email me (or leave a comment if you're brave).
PS hope this post was worth waiting a week to read :)
