after all this time as an adoptive parent, there are still some words or phrases that trip me up or that I just don’t like.\u00a0 For instance:<\/p>\n
“firstborn” — is Gabriel my “firstborn” even if he wasn’t born to me?\u00a0 My “eldest” yes, but my firstborn?<\/p>\n
“offspring” — is Gabriel my “offspring” if he didn’t spring out of me?<\/p>\n
“progeny” \/ “begat” \/ etc.\u00a0 — see above, more or less…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
words that make me uncomfortable:<\/p>\n
“nurse” (not as in the profession, but as in “to breastfeed”)– oddly, “breastfeed” doesn’t bother me, but “nurse” does.\u00a0 not sure if this is adoption\/infertility related or just a me thing.\u00a0 can’t remember how I felt about the word before infertility diagnosis.<\/p>\n
[can’t seem to remember the other “ick” words related here, but I’ll continue to update this list as I think of them.]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
a story for you:<\/p>\n
One day, I was marveling about how my son had just, on his own, come up with the “Old MacDonald” permutation, “Old MacDonald had my mom” which I had also sung as a youngster.\u00a0 I chuckled to myself and thought, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!” and immediately followed that thought with, “oh crap.\u00a0 is that another one of those phrases that will now trip me up?”\u00a0 After more thought, I decided that actually THIS metaphor is pretty close to perfect since modern apple trees rely on grafting to produce fruit.\u00a0 After all, isn’t adoption sort of like grafting onto our family trees?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
after all this time as an adoptive parent, there are still some words or phrases that trip me up or that I just don’t like.\u00a0 For instance: “firstborn” — is Gabriel my “firstborn” even if he wasn’t born to me?\u00a0 My “eldest” yes, but my firstborn? “offspring” — is Gabriel my “offspring” if he didn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":520,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions\/520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}