Bottles Suck

(I wrote this last week, and then the vacation/staycation occurred, and now I'm getting around to publishing this.)

This kind of hurts.

Jaden just had his last bottle. He will be 15 months old soon. He has been drinking out of a sippy cup since he was 11 months old. Still, we (I) kept his bedtime bottle. Feeding Jaden a bottle is one of the greatest privileges I've had as his parent (and I'm not just saying this to be overly saptastic.) It made him happy, still, content and cuddly each time he had one. It made me feel closer to him than any other time of day. When we first met he had a bottle five times a day, with once being at 2 am. Then four, then three...you get the picture. Since he turned a year old it has only been one bottle...just before bed...in the rocking chair...with me (almost exclusively.) Now it is none.

I would have let him keep it for a while longer, but he doesn't want it. He is done and I need to listen. I missed 8 months of bottle-feeding Jaden. That makes me very sad. I really grieve not knowing Jaden as a young infant. I don't know what else to say. There is no way around this with the Korean-American adoption system. The wait from referral time to travel time keeps getting longer, and our next child will likely be nearly a year old when we go to meet him/her. When we went through pre-adoption classes we did some exercises on the grief and loss surrounding adoption (including examples from birthparents, adoptive parents, and adopted children). Our class came up with many examples from our own perspectives. I clearly remember my contribution to the discussion was that I would miss my baby's infancy.

Upon becoming a parent I've become intimately familiar with the term bittersweet. My heart bursts with pride when Jaden meets milestones, but also breaks a little each time too. This one is a little harder than some others. But that is okay. I wouldn't trade it.