Thursday, December 3, 2009

Twelve Weeks

I miss my Roo.

I haven't seen her in three weeks. I know I am a spoiled, spoiled girl because I get to see her so often, often enough that three weeks feels like an eternity for me.

Yesterday was twelve weeks since placement. Roo will be five months old in a few days. How did my teeny-tiny newborn get so big? I was looking through my Roo memory box yesterday, and one of the things in it is a newborn-size diaper. So tiny! It seems like just a few weeks ago that I changed her tiny diapers and fed her two ounces at a time. Now she's wonderfully chubby and I imagine she'll be eating rice cereal soon. She is the most amazing little person. So sweet, so happy, so clever. She's my favorite person in the world, as a matter of fact. Sometimes I get jealous of her parents. They can kiss those soft chubby cheeks any time they want to. I miss that. I miss snuggling with her and holding her while she slept, watching her sweet, beautiful little face in repose.

I miss being a mom. It's all I ever wanted out of life. It's hard to feel like I'm ever going to get the chance again, too. I am 26 and I have never in my life been asked out on a date (I realize that sounds odd because I had a baby, but H never actually asked me on a date. We just hung out). It's hard to be patient.
I wonder when it will finally be my turn to get married and be a mom. It's hard to see people at the mall or the grocery store with babies. I see babies everywhere. There is a constant bombardment of advertisements and TV commercials and magazine articles about babies and parenting. Constant reminders of what I'm missing.

It's frustrating. I know more than a dozen single women who kept their babies, and I think, why them and not me? Why do they get to keep their babies? But I know it's not about me. It's not that I couldn't have kept Roo. It's not that I wasn't good enough for her. It's that she deserves more than good enough. She deserves two parents, a mommy and a daddy who will have her sealed to them in the temple, who will teach her the things she needs to know, take her to church, provide her with everything she could possibly need.

It's funny how I know that, and I know that Roo was always meant to be with her parents, that she was only meant to be mine for a short while, and yet I still miss her terribly. I wouldn't take her back - I have never had the compulsion on a visit to take her back home with me. She belongs with P and M - they are her parents as much as if she had their DNA. God meant her for them. But sometimes I wish I could snap my fingers and summon Roo here, just to hold her for a minute or two and tell her how much I love her. I'd give her back after a minute, I really would.

I'm still trying to figure out - has it gotten easier for me as time has passed? Or have I simply gotten used to the ache? I think it's maybe a combination of the two. It gets just a tiny bit easier as each week passes. And the pain is like anything else - you learn to live with it. I get migraines that often last for two weeks or more. The ache is always there, but by the ninth day or so I don't notice it so much. I get used to the constant pain and pressure until eventually it recedes and then disappears completely.

I don't think this pain will ever disappear completely. I'm not sure I want it to. It's made me a better person, a stronger one. And I love Roo. The day the pain is completely gone is the day I cease to love her - a day that will never come. It helps to know how happy Roo is, how wonderful her parents and sister are, and what a great life she has and will continue to have. Roo is content. I'm going to try to be content, too.

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