Sibling Sacrifice

She loves her brothers with the entirety of her heart. She would rather fight with them over Legos than take epic vacations. She would fling herself to the sidewalk for them.

Brigid O’Donnell

This past spring, our oldest brought home a note from her teacher.

The next six weeks are crucial in first-grade land. Please take the time to do flashcards of addition and subtraction facts, talk about story problems, and read read read! Volume really matters at this age!

I didn’t resent this teacher, a parent herself. But I also didn’t make flashcards or pick up more books.

Our daughter is the oldest of four. The youngest is still a baby. He—the youngest— came to us as a complete surprise, the biological brother of our long-term foster son. At the time of the teacher’s note, he had been with us for about four months and no one in our six-person family was sleeping through the night. By bedtime, my husband and I were desperate to be done meeting needs.

Some evenings, we’d read the older kids a book. Just one. A short one. Ideally, a board book from when they were toddlers that we could recite from memory rather than actually read with our brains. 

Other nights, we told the older two to read to each other while we battled the two-year-old into pajamas and warmed formula. Neither could read, so they looked at pictures and inferred stories. It’s literacy in a way. And, more importantly, it was all we could do. 

We were doing our best.

If our daughter were an only child…

If we’d kept it to a tidy two....  

Maybe then our best would be better.

In motherhood, we throw so much aside to keep our babies alive: sleep, comfort, hygiene, appearance, identity, career, friendships, romance. We keep an eye on it all, maintain contact, and hope to God it survives the fall but we let it crash while we hold our children. 

I had known going in that parenthood required sacrifice. What I hadn’t fully appreciated were the sacrifices required of siblinghood.

This is what it looks like to throw your kids to the cement.

When I was a mom of (only) two, I took both babies for a walk downtown. My newborn son nestled against me in a carrier. My daughter, almost two at the time, toddled along in useless baby shoes. Of course, within five minutes she wanted to be held so I—young, strong, and full of the hope of spring—hoisted her into my arms next to the lumpy baby.  

I felt joyous and capable. I loved having two kids. I loved holding them both safe in my arms. I loved this day downtown and—

I stepped on a sycamore seed pod. 

Sycamore trees, if you’re unfamiliar, drop hard, golf ball-sized seed pods. Stepping on one with one’s arms full of children is ill-advised.

My ankle turned. As I began my long fall, I threw one arm up to cradle the newborn’s head and used the other to push my daughter away from him. I tried to guide her, to mitigate the impact, but I let her fall.

Everyone was fine, of course. The toddler skinned an elbow, my ankle throbbed, and the baby probably felt like a half-mashed potato. 

But I cried the entire drive home.

I had dropped my child. I had pushed my firstborn, the daughter I had heretofore sheltered with every ounce of my being, away from safety. There were two now. Of the two, she was the less vulnerable. I had chosen to let her fall.

Foster care and adoption create strange and difficult choices. Do you say yes to a child knowing that it will impact your existing children? What if they have intensive needs? If you say yes, whose needs come first? Should you say yes to a newborn baby when you’re already at capacity? What if it’s your foster child’s brother? 

Do you say no?

We were never going to say no. Our fourth child was ours the moment I answered the phone. We loved him sight unseen. We’d have driven through the night for him, paid his medical bills, scoured the city for him.  

And yet… When the CPS worker informed us that his was likely a straight-to-adoption case plan and asked that we take the baby within two days we…

Counter-offered. 

We asked if they could find a foster family willing to provide respite care for two weeks. Then, we said. Then we’d take him and love him forever.

Ohhh the mom-guilt. Shouldn’t we, the potential parents of this child, be desperate to give him the best possible start? Shouldn’t we make sure he bonds with us as soon as possible? Shouldn’t we ensure he start his life in a safe and loving space?  

But we were on the cusp of a long-anticipated vacation with the kids’ grandparents and aunts and uncles. Swimming in Lake Superior! Staying up late to play board games and drink lemonade and kinda sorta sleep in because our youngest was almost two and grandma might wake up with him. We all desperately needed that vacation.

We also wanted to take a few days to—what’s it called?—prepare?  Most people have a few months. Even in foster care, you usually know if you’re waiting on a kid. My husband and I were still in a state of laying down flat on the floor every hour or so murmuring something like “ohmigod a baby.”  We needed to at least get past that. Additionally, shopping for baby supplies, gathering friends’ old second-hand gear, and having important conversations with older children about what to expect are all more easily done before a baby is shrieking into your sleep-deprived, spit-up-drenched shoulder. 

We felt a bit cruel proposing the respite stay but that vacation was beautiful. We lavished attention on our older three. We talked to them about the oncoming change. We processed over ice cream and beach walks.  

It ended up a kinder option for the baby too. The family that fostered him had been waiting for a respite case. They were prepared for his newborn needs.

We chose the older three that time. We pushed our youngest away from our protection, our eyes and a hand on him, the whole way down. We left him in the care of another family for two weeks so we could prepare ourselves, our home, our kids.

We chose to cradle the older three—along with our marriage and our mental health—those first few weeks, knowing that in the months to come, they would likely be falling to the metaphorical sidewalk so we could keep this new little one alive.  

I drag the toddler, sad-eyed and binky-mouthed, from interrupted naps every morning to pick up the preschooler. I reject the preschooler’s eager requests to play tag/trucks/Uno because the baby needs a change/needs to be fed/is sobbing for unknown reasons. I leave the baby sobbing for a moment because the toddler has burned his tongue on oatmeal. The oatmeal is too hot because I was trying to find the first grader’s backpack.

Don’t even get me started on the cats.

More children means less of some things for each child. I would love to approach life through a lens of abundance versus scarcity, but c’mon: there is literally no more room for car seats in our car. Hours don’t magically expand. Money doesn’t go farther.

We see our older kids’ peers excel at soccer, piano, and tai-kwan-do. The kids tell us about their friends’ trips to Disney. Many children their age are fluent readers and swimmers. Ours… are not.

But you know what else we see? 

We see how much our kids love each other. They are learning to fight, share, and negotiate. They will get less of mom or dad, but they’ll grow up in a fount of sibling attention. They won’t globe-trot, but they’ll road trip in hand-me-downs, bickering all the while.

Every now and again my oldest asks if the little two “will stay with us forever.” She understands about foster care better than the preschooler, who simply believes that we’re all blood.  

“I hope they do,” she says, every time. “I’ll be so, so sad if they leave.”

The word she’s looking for is “bereft,” but she doesn’t know that one yet.

If it weren’t for the little two, we could read to her more. We could make math flashcards and take her to gymnastics and tee-ball. We could take her to Disney World.

If the little two left, she would be bereft.

She loves her brothers with the entirety of her heart. She would rather fight with them over Legos than take epic vacations. She would fling herself to the sidewalk for them.

My mom grins evilly. “What will you do,” she says, “When they call you and say the boys have a new sister?” 

“We’ll send a note of congratulations to whoever parents her,” I reply tartly.

And I mean it.

This same woman who believes for some crazy reason that I’d be willing to raise a fifth baby taught me everything I know about gardening, including the ruthless refrain You have to be cruel to be kind. To grow beautiful, healthy flowers, you must prune and deadhead healthy blossoms. You must yank up hardy little seedlings. You give some plants space and attention to thrive by culling others.

We are on the cusp of adopting our little two, of making our long-time family of six a forever family of six. We couldn’t love each of our four children more. But we’ve reached our limit.  Our adoption worker, an adoptive parent herself, told us about the moment she and her own husband had to say no to more children.

“We had to decide,” she said, “If we were going to be a home, or just a place people lived.” 

We want to be a home. Our home is at capacity. We’re dropping each of our kids enough as it is. I don’t think I’ve created a single flash card and we definitely aren’t succeeding at the “1000 books before kindergarten challenge” for any of them. But they are loved, loved, loved—by us and by one another—and I think they know that their sibling sacrifice is well worth it.