# Living with their grief and loss.



## sanita (Oct 27, 2005)

Sorry.  Want to apologise before I start for this moan and also to any SWs out there, I know you are not all the same.

Princess has been with us for just over 3 months now.  She can be adorable and gorgeous and very loving.  She can also be a right little madame and veers between being clingy and demanding to rejecting me.  Princess was very, very attached to her foster mum and grieves her loss badly.  I know it is her grief that makes her reject me and that I shouldn't take it personally but sometimes I do.  

3 weeks out of 4 I think I cope pretty well with this demanding and complex little girl, but when I have PMT she gets to me BIG time.  She knows exactly which buttons to press and how to annoy, hurt and frustrate me.  She also seeks negative attention a lot of the time and when I've got PMT I fall into all of her traps and we end up in a downward spiral.

Unfortunately, one of my SW visits coincided with one of these bad weeks last week and I ended up crying all over my SW telling her how hard I was finding coping with Princess.  My SW now thinks I struggle to cope with her becasue I have unresolved issues of grief and loss of my own and that I should seek counselling.     

My friends, family and the few other adoptive mums that I know all comment on how hard it must be living with a child who demands so much of you, but doesn't really want you and wants her foster mum back.  I'm not a saint and I try to keep up the theraputic parenting, but sometimes I get it wrong.  

Anyway what my SW has said has left me feeling like I'm the one that's got the problem, not Princess.  Our HS last year addressed issues of loss and grief and I thought I was as sane as the next person, I 
guess our SW must have thought so to for me to get approved.

Anyone know of any effective measures I can take to help with the PMT and please don't say give up alcohol or chocolate as that really would be the end of me.  

Sanita


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## superal (May 27, 2005)

First of all Sanita - hugs to you  - your only human and we all suffer with PMT at some point in our lives, from a fellow suffer all I can do is suggest some things that have worked for me & some ideas I haven't tried.

Have you tried evening primrose tablets - worked for me for a while & then I felt sick after a while of taking them  

Someone suggested cutting out bread on the run up to the time of the months but I don't eat that much of it anyway?

Another suggestion was acupuncture which I haven't tried as I have a fear of needles! 

Counting to 10 and back again usually works for me with my PMT when DS or DD are getting to me, it calms me down and I don't blow up like a bottle of pop!

Don't be hard yourself & DD, these times are testing times and the fact that 3 out of 4 weeks are great proves it is the dreaded time of the month with symptoms we all get that puts a dampener on things rather than you needing counselling over unresolved issues and grief!

DON'T give up the chocolate and wine it does help and if thats the one thing that makes you feel better then have some.

Love
Andrea
xx


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## Pooh bears mummy (Jul 11, 2004)

Hi Sanita

No real advice except to say you are not alone. Pooh bear really gets to me more on PMT week, and I really hate myself for it as i know i have a much shorter fuse on that week. Someone has surgested the marrina coil (not sure its spelt right) it is a coil with a hormone release which is ment to really helpl.

Big Hugs

PBMx


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## cindyp (Apr 7, 2003)

Sanita

I can so sympathise with you.  It is very hard to stay in therapeutic mode all the time.  We do pretty well most of the time but there are failures, like you say especially one week out of four.  Like you I can rely a bit too much on wine and chocolate.  I haven't got any real remedies for the PMT I'm afraid, I think after pumping all the fertility drugs in my system it put me off taking anything that I didn't rally need to.  I did read a good book from Adoption UK that helped me face up to some of the stresses involved in therapeutic parenting.  The suggestions I can give you from that are:

Don't beat yourself up about your failures, we are only human and it is only natural to take it personal when somebody rejects you even if you know the real reasons behind the rejection.
Try to get as much time to yourself away from the kids, point out to DH that it would be in his best interests to take more on every fourth week rather than having to deal with two demanding children and a pre-menstrual woman.
Obviously, despite whatever everybody says about eating healthily during your period, chocolate and alcohol are good.  In fact after a bad day myself I think I need some   

Best of luck
Cindy


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## Viva (May 16, 2005)

Hi Sanita, 
I don't unfortunetly have any advice to give regarding the PMT (Well nothing that's not already been said any way!) but I just wanted to encourage you, having had 'Charlie' with us for over three weeks, I have experienced to a lesser extent the exhausting combination of being 'clingy' or in Charlies case wanting to 'hug' me constantly me in a very intense way and then testing every boundary and fliching away if I try and give him affection in a way that was very welcome just an hour or so earlier! It is emotionally very draining, I guess in Princesses case it is so encouraging that she was attached to her FM as I'm sure that in tine she will transfer that attachement to you. You probably know this anyway, but I know we were told that as they come to a realissation that that they are very happy were they are and get scared about having to move again (we know it won't happen but they can't believe it!) that they can try and reject you so that you can't reject them.
Hope that this is a good week for you!
Love Viva
XXX


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## keemjay (Jan 19, 2004)

just quickly - i saw this post sanita and thought of you 

http://www.fertilityfriends.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=116941.0

kj x


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