WARNING: This particular post is very honest and filled with anger and at times rage and sadness. Please don't take offense as this is a true account of how I am feeling after our most recent homestudy visit.
For those of you who really know my inner workings, you know that what you see is what you get. I wear my heart on my sleeve and say what I mean.
With that, I will have you know that I think our first homestudy visit sucked, really sucked, in fact it sucked so badly that I didn't even want to post a blog about it. I don't want to have to think about it, relive parts of it, or have to openly announce it to my family and closest friends that I thought it was absolutely horrible. If I am really being honest with you, I had a hard time telling my husband just how badly I think it went because I knew he obviously didn't feel the same way.
Mental Snapshot: Our social worker is 56 years old, I believe she is hispanic and has a very thick accent. I want to preface this remainder of this post with the fact that I do think the language barrier is an issue and she sometimes sounds harsher than she maybe means (or that is what I am telling myself to make myself feel better.)
We met our social worker at the agency and its start wasn't terrible. We introduced ourselves and started to answer some of her basic questions concerning how we grew up and how we met (the easy stuff.) From there it went down hill. We had to explain that we didn't grow up with a number of multicultural experiences, while growing up, didn't have loads of friends that belonged to a different race, and weren't quite sure how we would answer questions from strangers in the grocery store asking why our child is black and we aren't. Last time I checked Minnesota wasn't announced the "most diverse place on earth" and I didn't know I had to talk to people at the grocery store about anything, let along the orgins of my child. But honestly, would this hurt my chances of parenting? Do 10 year olds think..."just incase I want to adopt someday, maybe I should try to find more multiculturalism"?
Definitive answers and we didn't have any. I don't know my philosophy on parenting or how I am going to discipline my child...yet. I don't know how to answer the tough questions that are going to come our way because our family is a blend of colors...yet.
Vulnerable. I have cried so many times in the last four days I can't even count. I feel like our social worker rocked me to the core. She told me to go back on the birth control pill...I am still in shock that this actually came out of her mouth. She told me to find a class that could teach us how to change diapers and feed a baby....Yeah, I wasn't 6 years old when my little sister was born, I've never babysat before, and that's right, my girlfriends, they don't trust me feeding their babies (This is sarcasm in case you haven't noticed.) She also mentioned that we were awfully young, like sixteen times in two hours (This is not sarcasm in case you were wondering.) But, to top it off, at one point in the meeting she spouted "I am not going to sign any paperwork today." Ummmm, what the hell does that mean? Can I parent or not and why in the hell are you making this decision for us? Had there been a cliff, I would of jumped.
Poor Chad, he sees me crying and has no idea why I am so upset, he was at the visit too, he just didn't think it was THAT bad. He has been sensitive to my constant sobbing, at least he tries to understand where I am coming from. But lets be honest, telling a man to take a class on feeding and diapering a baby is COMPLETELY different than telling a woman, a woman who would give almost anything to change her baby's smelly, diarrhea filled diaper.
If you are one of the lucky ones that gets to attempt to handle me while I am weeping, please know that unless you have adopted I don't want your advice. I just want to FEEL. Just let me FEEL, let me be pissed off that I have to prove to a social worker that I will be a good parent, and that I will advocate for my child. Let me hate the fact that most new parents rely on instinct to take care of there babies and I have to read fifty required reads just so my social worker can approve me to parent. And until our home visit, I am going to stay pissed at her. When she gets here on Thursday, I am going to smile and nod as if I am hanging on her every word and agree to take any and every parenting course, workshop or birth control pill (For the record, I am never taking birthcontrol again) necessary to get her to sign our homestudy papers.
Mom-sorry I said sucked and pissed so many times, it won't happen again.
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