Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the agony of waiting that comes with adoption. What I didn't mention in that post was that I had just sent our family's adoption profile to a prospective birth mother and was anxiously waiting to find out if she would choose us or not. Well, she did!
When Darling and I first agreed to pursue a domestic adoption, we began to pray ceaselessly for our baby, her birth family, and for God's will about the whole thing to be crystal clear to us. I prayed that the birth parents and we would have complete peace about the decisions, and that none of us would have any significant doubt about the match. While it probably sounds rather cliché to say, I knew it was right from the moment I saw the birth mother's name in the subject line of the email from our wonderful adoption consultant. It was a match at first sight on my part. (Darling's too, once he got the scoop.) There were still occasional moments of fear that things wouldn't work out, but I knew all along that this girl was the one who was carrying our baby. Thankfully, that solidified even more when we talked to her on the phone a few days later, and again when we met in person a few days after that. I truly love that woman, and not just because she gave us the sweetest gift in the whole world.
Literally days after our hurried first meeting (which was not supposed to take place until the following week, but the birth mother insisted we meet sooner "just in case"-- thank goodness!), we got word that she was in labor and we did our best to rush to the hospital. By the time we got there, our daughter had arrived! Because our birth mother is so awesome, we hung out with her and the baby for hours and hours those first few days. We all kept saying how perfect and natural the whole situation was, even though adoption isn't really a very natural thing. It's pretty weird to parent a person who just hours before was inside a different woman, but it didn't really feel weird. When I saw the baby for the first time, I knew without a doubt she was my daughter, and I loved her just as much as I did the first time I saw my other kids. I wasn't expecting that part to come so easily or naturally, so it was a welcome relief. I didn't know her at all yet (as opposed to biological kids, whom I'd been able to talk to and feel wiggling around for several months prior), but I loved her completely.
The days that followed were exhausting and stressful and overwhelming. I think some of it was due to all the triggers that took me back to when Osias was in the hospital. There's something about driving away from a hospital without your baby for the first time... It just stinks. In spite of the challenges, everything went pretty smoothly and we ended up with a beautiful and charming little girl!
Because we love our daughter's birth mother and of course our daughter, we have chosen to keep a lot of the details of the adoption private. We just feel like it is not our story to tell, so it will be up to our little girl to decide whether or not she wants to share her birth story when she grows up. And of course her birth mother is free to tell or not tell her side of the story to whomever she'd like. I will say that her birth mother is beautiful and smart, and we are happy to have her in our family now. Any woman who can do what she did is simply amazing, and I will always admire and respect the courage and strength she has shown.
In the meantime, I am loving all the comments from strangers about how great I look for having a newborn. Ha!
Showing posts with label birth mother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birth mother. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Monday, December 1, 2014
{On the Soapbox} About Birthmothers
While things have been pretty quiet on this blog lately, I can assure you that life certainly has not been so calm. As my last post mentioned, we will soon be packing up everything we own (after purging/selling/donating a good portion of it) and making yet another big move. Since we first got word of our next location, our moving date has been bumped up a few months, the last of our home study paperwork has been turned in and is waiting for approval, and our family profile has been completed! I have a stack of them just waiting to be sent out the moment we get our home study approved.
The past few weeks have been pretty intense, as the reality of our current situation seems more and more daunting. Moving is always a rather scary and expensive thing, and coupling that with an upcoming rather scary and expensive adoption makes everything seem even more scary and more expensive. We have a LOT of unknowns ahead of us, especially since we don't even know if we will have our baby before we move. That extra person makes a pretty huge impact on how a lot of our decisions will be made. I've found myself getting caught up in our own circumstances a lot more than I should.
So while I alternate between excited anticipation and overwhelming anxiety, I've begun to get emails of potential "situations" from our adoption consultant. "Situations" are notices of expecting families who are considering potential adoptive parents to place their baby with. The first of these emails I received simply broke my heart (and each one since has continued to do so). Not only was the expectant mother in a really hard place, but getting to see her picture and read a little of her story made this whole thing so much more real. It's not the same as picking out a baby doll from a store or choosing a cute puppy from a breeder. These are real people with real problems who need real love. The joy we will have in welcoming a precious baby into our home (or extended stay hotel room, depending on the timing) cannot happen without the broken sadness of the birth family. Giving us their baby is not the extent of their story. They will continue to exist with the empty space the baby will leave behind. We will not be able to forget them regardless of how open or closed our adoption will be. In fact, there have been one or two of these emailed situations that I have not been able to stop thinking about, even though we never even had a chance at adopting their babies. I dream about them. I cry over them in the shower. I pray for them. And while I will probably never actually meet them, their faces are imprinted on my memory. Knowing we could not be matched with a particular one of them (due to our home study approval seeming to take FOREVER), I still found myself checking with the agency to make sure she had found a family to adopt their little one and was thrilled to find out she did.
I know I'm probably not alone in being quick to judge others for their poor life choices, but this process is making me more aware that these poor life choices are always made by people. Hurting people. Broken people. Confused people. Misinformed people. People just like you and me. Contrary to popular belief, these ladies are not rebellious teenagers who are too lazy or too stupid to care for their own children. A lot of them are well out of their teen years, and some of them are even married to the baby's father. But for one reason or another, they don't have the resources or ability to raise their children the way they want to, so they make the selfless and more difficult choice of adoption. Before we started actively pursuing our interest in adoption, I assumed birth mothers were taking the easy way out and abandoning their children out of selfishness. I was so very wrong. They love their babies enough to give them the best chance at life, and that speaks of more courage than I can even imagine. I'm very sorry that I ever looked down on these brave ladies, and I hope our own adoption story can help change some of the common misconceptions many of us had/have had about such things.
The past few weeks have been pretty intense, as the reality of our current situation seems more and more daunting. Moving is always a rather scary and expensive thing, and coupling that with an upcoming rather scary and expensive adoption makes everything seem even more scary and more expensive. We have a LOT of unknowns ahead of us, especially since we don't even know if we will have our baby before we move. That extra person makes a pretty huge impact on how a lot of our decisions will be made. I've found myself getting caught up in our own circumstances a lot more than I should.
So while I alternate between excited anticipation and overwhelming anxiety, I've begun to get emails of potential "situations" from our adoption consultant. "Situations" are notices of expecting families who are considering potential adoptive parents to place their baby with. The first of these emails I received simply broke my heart (and each one since has continued to do so). Not only was the expectant mother in a really hard place, but getting to see her picture and read a little of her story made this whole thing so much more real. It's not the same as picking out a baby doll from a store or choosing a cute puppy from a breeder. These are real people with real problems who need real love. The joy we will have in welcoming a precious baby into our home (or extended stay hotel room, depending on the timing) cannot happen without the broken sadness of the birth family. Giving us their baby is not the extent of their story. They will continue to exist with the empty space the baby will leave behind. We will not be able to forget them regardless of how open or closed our adoption will be. In fact, there have been one or two of these emailed situations that I have not been able to stop thinking about, even though we never even had a chance at adopting their babies. I dream about them. I cry over them in the shower. I pray for them. And while I will probably never actually meet them, their faces are imprinted on my memory. Knowing we could not be matched with a particular one of them (due to our home study approval seeming to take FOREVER), I still found myself checking with the agency to make sure she had found a family to adopt their little one and was thrilled to find out she did.
I know I'm probably not alone in being quick to judge others for their poor life choices, but this process is making me more aware that these poor life choices are always made by people. Hurting people. Broken people. Confused people. Misinformed people. People just like you and me. Contrary to popular belief, these ladies are not rebellious teenagers who are too lazy or too stupid to care for their own children. A lot of them are well out of their teen years, and some of them are even married to the baby's father. But for one reason or another, they don't have the resources or ability to raise their children the way they want to, so they make the selfless and more difficult choice of adoption. Before we started actively pursuing our interest in adoption, I assumed birth mothers were taking the easy way out and abandoning their children out of selfishness. I was so very wrong. They love their babies enough to give them the best chance at life, and that speaks of more courage than I can even imagine. I'm very sorry that I ever looked down on these brave ladies, and I hope our own adoption story can help change some of the common misconceptions many of us had/have had about such things.
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