July 5, 2009

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before but I kept a private blog that I updated every single day of my pregnancy. It was half first-person, half asides to Roo, who I called Peanut because that's what she looked like on my first ultrasound. I was induced on July 5, and this year it's on a Sunday again like it was the year Roo was born. As such I've been thinking a lot about that experience and looking at the clock, dredging up my timestamped memories. I started a long, feelings-laden post earlier today but I abandoned it because I remembered my pregnancy blog.

I'm not going to share everything I wrote the day I was induced because some of it is very, very personal and the only person I can imagine letting read it is Roo in 20 years or so, when she's the same age as I was when I wrote it. But I do want to copy and paste bits and pieces for your reading pleasure.

I was fully committed to single parenting when I wrote this but I had oh so many worries and fears, which I think is normal for anyone about to have their first baby. Reading it now, knowing that I would place Roo for adoption 9 weeks later, is a little bittersweet.

I sure love that girl. Always have, always will. There's not a doubt in my mind that adoption was the best thing in the world for her. I'm lucky to have that kind of conviction. I know too many birth moms who don't.


And now, a blast from the past.




July 5, 2009

Normally I would have done my baby blogging ... oh, you know, like 15 hours ago. But I didn't get on the computer last night. I wanted to get a good night's sleep (my last ever?) and talk to Mom and cry and a million other things.

Why am I so depressed about having a baby? I should be excited, I know that. I should be counting down the hours until I get to hold my sweet little Peanut at last. But all I want to do is cry.

It's not just because the prospect of labor frightens me, although there is that. It's that I don't know if I'm ready to be a mother. I am terrified that I won't be a good mother ... I've been thinking more about adoption in the past few days than I ever did before.

Oh, sweet little Peanut. How sorry I am. You deserve so much more than me, than I can ever hope to be. What if I'm not meant to have you? Will I know somehow? I hope so. I've been through so much, though. How on earth could I put myself through another devastating loss? Oh, Peanut. How I love you. I only want what's best for you. But what if that isn't me?

Shoot. This isn't how I should be thinking right now. I've got to leave for the hospital in two hours. I should be ... I don't know. Eating dinner. Relaxing. Talking to Mom. Breathing. Double-checking my bag. Something else. Anything else.

You will be worth it all, Peanut. I know it.

I love you, little girl. Don't you ever doubt it.

Hopes and Fears*

Last week was an adoption picnic and I went to it, as I go to every adoption event, because I knew Roo was going to be there and I will take any chance I get to admire the fantastic little girl who used to live in my womb.

Roo will be five years old this summer, and frankly I don't know how that happened. I swear she just barely learned to read (before she was three, you guys!) and now she'll be in kindergarten in the fall. Because I don't see her every day, she always seems so much more grown up each time I see her. Taller - although not much; genetics are not on her side as far as height goes - and smarter and more independent.

Gone are the days when Roo was a tiny baby whose decisions were made for her. She has her own mind and she does as she pleases, within the limits set by her parents. Case in point: when Roo's daddy brought her to the picnic - she had been at a birthday party earlier - she didn't want to socialize. She wanted to play on the playground and I could barely get a hello out of her. She was too focused on climbing the jungle gym.

I watched her run off in her princess dress and for a moment I missed the tiny, chubby baby I used to be able to hold captive in my arms. It was easier to feel connected to her then, when I could hold her warm weight and clearly remember her little feet kicking me from the inside.

I missed the darling toddler who would play pretend with me because she was the age when children will play with anyone who sits down with them. I felt less connected then but she was still so small and she was easy to distract in my favor.

I watched Roo climb higher and higher - surprisingly adept at keeping her dress in place as she ascended  - and I realized, maybe for the first time, that openness is not a choice that Roo made for herself. It's a choice that was made for her. She knows who I am because her parents thought it would be best for her and for me. She did not ask to meet me. She did not ask to have me in her life.

And I realized that the time may come when she does not want me in her life. It may not come, of course, and I hope it doesn't, but as I watched her climb I thought, I have to prepare myself for that eventuality. If the time comes that Roo would rather not have a relationship with me, I will have to find a way to be okay with that.

I don't know any adults who grew up with an open adoption because it's such a relatively recent phenomenon. I know adults who have reconnected with their birth families, but none who grew up with a birth mom in their lives. What will my presence do to and for Roo as she grows up? Will I be a benefit to her or a burden?

Such heavy thoughts for a picnic. This is what happens when you use caffeine as a substitute for sleep.

Roo grew tired of the jungle gym and came over and we had an Arizona snowball fight with the rest of the picnic attendees. We made play dough shapes together ("Don't make any more seahorses," she told me. "Make something else") and she made me a valentine card and we watched the ducks swim in the pond.

("I wish that I was a duck," said Roo, "so I could swim all day and people would feed me." She looked pensive and then added, "But Mommy would miss me if I were a duck here.")

For now, Roo is happy to play with me when she's not asserting her independence. My hope is that she will always be happy to see me. That she will be able to feel my love for her. That she'll be a happier, healthier person for having an open adoption that includes her birth mother as a sometimes presence in her life.

But my hope is also that she will make the kind of choices that will result in peace and happiness in her life, whatever those end up being. My hope is also that if the time comes when she feels I am a hindrance rather than a help, that she will be strong enough to let me go. I don't want to be an obligation to her. Openness was chosen for her as a benefit, not a burden. I don't ever want to be a burden.

I don't want to not be a part of her life. The thought that someday Roo might not need or want me around scares me. And I don't want it to happen, and I don't anticipate that happening, I really don't. But I want the choice to be hers, when she's old enough to make it.




*Dear Keane: please forgive me for stealing your album title for my blog post. Hopes and Fears is my favorite of your albums, and "This is the Last Time" got me through a rough patch. I love you guys, even though I hated the heck out of your collaboration with K'naan.

Anniversary

I'm usually pretty good at remembering important dates. I'm pretty good at remembering unimportant dates as well. For instance, I remember that my high school graduation was on May 24th, 2001 (it was Bob Dylan's birthday). I remember that my mom's due date for me was October 6th (sorry, Mom). I finished beauty school on October 17th. I know my therapist's birthday.

I certainly prided myself on remembering every Roo-related date. I think I've blogged about most of them, likely extensively because after four years of blogging, I think I've covered almost everything extensively.

But when I woke up this morning I noticed the date on my phone and I thought, today was important once. The letters and numbers glowing on the screen didn't tell me why I ought to remember August 22nd. I stared at them for a minute and then the screen dimmed and just as they disappeared, I remembered that in 2009, August 22nd was a Saturday. It was the day I decided I needed to place Roo for adoption.

Despite my unnecessary thoroughness on many other Roo- and adoption-related topics, I don't think I've said much about the circumstances that led me to decide once and for all that adoption was right for Roo. And I'm still not going to. I'll probably get there eventually, but today is not the day.

Today I'm just going to remember. I went to bed on August 21st, 2009, as someone's mother and I had no reason to believe I wouldn't always be her mother. When I went to bed on August 22nd, I knew my time as Roo's mother had an expiration date. It was devastating and terrifying for me, and absolutely the right choice for Roo.

But I don't want to dwell on the sad. That's not what I want to remember today. What I want to remember is how I changed as a mother that day, once the decision had been made. I can't say with any objectivity whether I was a good mother to Roo. I know I certainly loved her more than I had ever loved another human being before. I know that I would have done anything in the world for her. I still would.

But I had never taken care of a baby before. I'm the baby of my family so I didn't have any younger siblings to practice on. And I was raising Roo alone. It was stressful and lonely and I worried constantly. It seemed like there were a million things to do, and no time to do any of them. I did what I could while Roo napped, but I was so tired, and so lonely.

Then came the 22nd. I had not yet found P and M. I didn't know how much longer I'd be Roo's mother. I just knew it wasn't going to be long. I knew I had to maximize my time with this tiny person I loved so much. So I stopped trying to get things done. I stopped getting anything done at all, and I started holding Roo while she napped. I spent dozens of hours sitting on the couch with a sleeping baby in my arms. I hardly ever put her down. I thought of Albus Dumbledore telling Harry Potter that Harry's mother's love for him was in his very skin. I hoped that Roo would somehow absorb my love by osmosis.

I stopped stressing out about the future - mine and Roo's - and started enjoying the moment. Every second I had with Roo became precious. She would be tiny for only so long, and she would be my daughter for an even shorter time. Deciding to place Roo for adoption made me a better mother to her. The last two weeks I had her were the happiest sad weeks of my life, and I miss them terribly.

Today, on this almost-forgotten anniversary, I'm going to take a lesson from the Jill of 2009 and slow down. I have become so impatient lately, and I feel like I am always in a rush, always stressed, always worried. It is too easy to forget that my life isn't always going to be like this. I'm not always going to have this job, this apartment, this social circle. Things will change. Things are changing already. I'm going to be 30 soon. I need to stop rushing to the next thing and enjoy the moment. It will be gone before I know it.

I'm going to start by enjoying some ice cream.

***

Oh, and speaking of anniversaries, this blog is almost four years old. There are a handful of you readers who have been around pretty much from the beginning, and I thank you for it. It hasn't always been pretty - my blog or my life - but it's been one heck of a ride, and I am so blessed that I haven't had to go it alone. All of y'all, seriously - thanks for reading.

Three

Today is an important day.

It's marked on every calendar I have, and I've been thinking about it for months now, trying to figure out what I want to do to celebrate, trying to anticipate how I might feel. It's been a source of some anxiety and wonder and excitement.

Three years ago, I fell in love.

I was in love before. For nine months, actually. I had thought my heart couldn't possibly grow any more. I was nervous. I wasn't sure what it was that I was supposed to be thinking or feeling, and I had no idea how much longer my c-section might take. It seemed to be taking a long time.

Then there was an intake of breath from my doctor, and everything was quiet for a moment, and I heard a nurse say, "Oh, she's beautiful!"

I waited to feel something different. I didn't feel anything. Just tired. And then ... and then I turned my head to the left and there she was, this tiny bundle of new baby, and I knew I'd loved her before but that love had been nothing compared to what I felt that moment, meeting my baby girl.

I became a different person entirely.




* * *

Roo is three today! I am so proud of her. She is the cleverest, sweetest, happiest, cutest three-year-old I know. She is my favorite thing ever.  I am so blessed to be her birth mom!

Happiest of happy birthdays, Roo! I love you.

Guest Post

Today I have a guest post up over at Portrait of an Adoption. If you haven't read this blog before, you should definitely start. Carrie is an adoptive mother who writes beautifully about the ups and downs of adoption. She is featuring a guest post on her blog each day in November to celebrate National Adoption Month, and today is my day. Click *here* to read it.

I do want to add a caveat. My post is about the pain of placement, and I didn't try to pretty up the feelings. But I do not feel any of that pain now. I left that dark beast behind me. I am in such a good place with things. So when you're reading, please keep in mind that the pain I described was temporary, that I got through it, that I'm happy now, and that it was absolutely worth it.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl

I was going to write this whole long post about my stay in the hospital, but I couldn't decide between including all the little details and giving a general overview. I'm still not sure. It's a very personal thing, labor. I think I'm going to go with an overview. I feel like I sometimes share a bit too much of myself on this blog, and while I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it is nice to keep some things to myself. I've already written it all out for Roo on the blog I keep just for her.

So this isn't going to be too detailed, but I've written it out the best I can. I was surprised to find in writing it that I feel bad that P and M missed it, that they weren't there. I wonder what things would have been like if I'd found them sooner, if they had been there for Roo's arrival. I feel a little guilty. I wouldn't trade my time as Roo's mother for anything in the world, but I do feel guilty for what P and M missed. Obviously, their version of this story contains a lot more detail :)

I was induced not long before 9pm on Sunday, July 5th. Twelve hours after that, my water broke. I got an epidural on Monday night, and … I was still pregnant on Tuesday morning. I figured the baby would come when she was ready. I wasn't worried.

My doctor was. “You're still pregnant,” she said, looking stunned.

Figured that out all by yourself, did you? I thought. But I just smiled and answered in the affirmative.

"You shouldn't still be pregnant." Her eyebrows narrowed as she perused my chart. "We're going to need to do a c-section," she concluded.

I worried then. I'd imagined childbirth going any number of ways, but none of my scenarios included being carved open like a Thanksgiving turkey. But my baby needed to come out, and my body didn't want to cooperate. The appropriate arrangements were made, and I was wheeled into an OR.

They pulled a partition up so I couldn't see below my own sternum. I didn't need to see. Thanks to my childbirth classes, I knew exactly what a c-section entailed. I was just grateful my doctor has very small hands. I didn't need someone with David Letterman-sized paws digging into my uterus.

I couldn't feel anything. It was nice. The doctor told me I'd feel a bit of pressure. Not much else was spoken that I could hear. Finally, she told me it was time, and a few seconds later Roo was born. They showed her to me, and in that moment, I was forever changed. I took one look at her, all tiny and pink and bemused, and I fell deeply and irrevocably in love.

I had thought more than once during pregnancy that if adoption were the right choice, I'd know it when I “met” my baby. I suppose I thought I'd just look at her and know. How stupid I was! No one could possibly look at their newborn baby and think, right then, who wants her? Because I wanted her, and I never wanted to let her go. I loved her so much already. Adoption was off the table in that instant, and I resolved never to think of it again. This amazing, fantastic, most perfect little person in the world was my baby. My mind was made up.

A nurse came to check on me in recovery and when she saw that I'd shaken off the drugs I'd been given she lifted Roo, wrapped up like a little burrito, and put her in my arms. I looked at my baby, and she looked at me, and nothing else in the world mattered.

Five Days in July

I am horribly behind in telling Roo's story. I'm not going to get all caught up today, but I thought I'd at least get a bit more of it written down. Maybe it'll be easier to write than I think it will.

My due date had passed. It sneaked up on me, really. It seemed like I ought to still have three weeks left. I felt horribly unprepared. Some days it was all I could do to take care of myself. The thought of caring for a tiny, helpless newborn was overwhelming. I secretly feared I wouldn't be able to do it. And what if I was a horrible mother?

To make matters worse, I began having nightmares about my baby being injured - being dropped, or falling, and they terrified me more than anything in the world ever had before. I didn't want my little girl to ever hurt. Ever. I wanted her to be happy and safe and secure, and I wanted her to have everything in the entire world. I didn't ever want her to feel scared or confused or worried or sad. I recognized that I had very little control over quite a bit of that, and I hated it. I already loved my baby girl so very much. I felt that she deserved better than me but I was too selfish to let her go. I just couldn't do it.

The day after my due date, I had a visitor - a woman named Cindy from my mother's ward. I was acquainted with her, and I knew she knew I was pregnant, but she had her own struggles and I couldn't imagine why she would have taken the time to come visit me.

Cindy brought me fresh-baked bread. She teared up when I answered the door. She said that she was very proud of me, and that she loved me. She said she admired my strength. Her kindness was overwhelming. I wrote in my journal that night, "Kindness is a funny thing that way. Sometimes it's more overwhelming, more of an emotional blow than cruelty or apathy." I cried for twenty minutes after Cindy left, completely undone by a simple act of kindness.

I had a doctor's appointment on July 2nd, a Thursday. I spent 20 minutes hooked up to a couple of monitors - one for the baby's heart rate, and another for my contractions. I read a months-old issue of People magazine while the monitors beeped and clicked. When the technician returned and checked the results, she said I'd been having a few small contractions, and had I felt them? I hadn't, but I was excited at the prospect. The technician checked the other monitor. She also performed a brief ultrasound, checking fluid levels and fetal movement.

"You've got a happy baby," she told me.

My doctor felt that I should be induced. "Well, what about Friday?" she asked.

"Tomorrow?" I asked. "Friday is tomorrow."

She made a face. I think the weekend had caught her unawares. She instead scheduled me for Sunday the 5th at 7pm. I don't know what it says about my maturity that my first thought was, Sunday at 7? I'll miss "The Simpsons."

My contractions grew stronger as the day passed. I could feel them now. My mother refused to let me drive anywhere alone, afraid that my labor would progress suddenly and she'd have to come rescue me anyway. She didn't make me feel particularly calm about being induced. She was induced with her first baby, my brother. That was nearly thirty-four years ago, and she still winces and clutches her stomach at the mere mention of the word "induce." It made me nervous. It was amazing how quickly I went from not wanting to be pregnant anymore to not wanting to not be pregnant quite so soon.

I knew that my relationship with my mother was going to change when the baby was born. My mom had taken good care of me throughout my pregnancy. In a funny way, it was like I was her little girl again. I knew that my own maternity would change that. It made me sad. I didn't feel ready. It was stupid, because I was 25 years old, but I still felt like a little kid in so many ways.

I tried to take my mind off things by narrowing down my list of baby names. I got down to three or four that I loved but I couldn't commit to one yet. I wondered if that meant something. Adoption was still on the back of my mind. I thought, maybe I can't choose a name because I'm not supposed to be the one who names her.

Sunday the fifth arrived. I was depressed. I knew that I was supposed to be excited, but all I wanted to do was cry. I was terrified that I was going to be a bad mother, that I would grow to resent my baby for the way she changed my life. I worried that I wouldn't bond with her, that I wouldn't be patient enough, that I would always love her a little less than I should because of who her father was (I don't, for the record).

I thought more about adoption during the first week of July than I had ever before. The prospect of someone else raising this baby used to frighten and depress me. But the thought suddenly didn't feel as awful as it had before. I wasn't sure what to make of that. I hoped it was nerves.

I loved my baby girl so much it hurt. I only wanted what was best for her. But what if that wasn't me? What if I wasn't meant to have her? Would I know somehow? I hoped so. And I hoped that I was meant to have her, because I didn't think I could handle one more devastating loss in my life.

I hated that this was my line of thinking a few hours before I was scheduled to be induced. It seemed like I should be thinking something else, anything else. I should have been doing something other than thinking myself sick.

Suddenly, it was half past six, and I realized I wasn't quite ready to go. I rushed around (as well as I could with an overdue baby in my belly), putting a few last-minute things in my bag and double-checking what I'd packed already for myself and the baby.

My mother put my suitcase in her car while I hefted myself in. I was tired and nervous and overwhelmed. My throat fizzed with unshed tears. We were running late; I could cry later. I knew that my tardiness wasn't criminal - it's not like they could start the induction without me. But I've always hated being late. I urged my mother to drive faster.

She found a parking space and we headed into the labor and delivery triage area. It was 7:20. I gave the receptionist my name and she disappeared to get my paperwork. There were five pages, and my name was on the top of each one. No, wait. My name was at the top of four of them. Someone else's name was on the top of the fourth page.

"Oh, sorry about that," the receptionist said, shuffling a few papers at the desk and finding the page that was mine. But the misplaced paper got me thinking. It hadn't occurred to me before then that I wasn't the only woman having a baby that night. That probably sounds terribly self-centered of me, but it's true just the same. I wondered about this other woman - Teresa - who was also filling out the stack of having-a-baby paperwork. I wondered if she was married, if she had any other children, if she was nervous. I wondered who was going to be in the delivery room with her. I wondered if people were excited for her. I hoped so.

My paperwork was processed and my mother and I were shown to my room. There was a hospital gown folded up on the bed and the nurse told me to put it on. My mother settled our belongings while I went into the bathroom and changed. I closed the door behind me, and I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror over the sink. I realized then that this was the last moment I was going to be wearing these maternity jeans as a pregnant woman. When next I put them on, I would be a mother. I stood there for a few minutes, memorizing the feel of wearing clothes and not being hooked up to monitors so I'd have something to cling to during my stay. Slowly, I donned my hospital gown. The motion had an air of finality about it.

For some reason, I thought of the movie "Men in Black," where Will Smith's character is told that the suit he's given is "the last suit you'll ever wear." It sounds stupid, but I had that kind of feeling just then. Like this was the last hospital gown I'd ever wear. I knew that once I opened the bathroom door, I was no longer myself, Jill, a pregnant woman, a person. Once I opened the door, I would become a patient. Things would happen, and be done, and it was slightly terrifying. I hate being a patient. I hate disappearing into a chart. I knew that once I was out there, there would be monitors and tests and an induction and eventually and IV, and I would simply be a room number to the doctors and nurses.

I stood there in my hospital gown. The air felt different already. The gown had changed me. Wheels were in motion.

I opened the door.

Why?

Most of this is lifted from my Formspring but I'm still without Internet access so I thought I'd cheat a little to tide y'all over until I can post regularly again.

There's a question that I seem to be getting a lot lately - why did I choose adoption after nine weeks? What changed for me? I've probably been asked at least three times in as many weeks. I'm not saying it's an unreasonable question. I can see why people might be curious. Of course, I've always felt like my blog was pretty self-explanatory. But then I went back through some of the archives – not much of it, because I hate my own writing in retrospect, but the pertinent stuff – and I discovered that I've been a bit nebulous about this particular issue. I apologize.

I got the question in my Formspring a few weeks ago but I sort of let it float for a while because for some reason, I didn't like the way it was asked. I'm not blaming the asker. I think I was in a funny mood when I read it, and I get a bit defensive about my placement story. I think to me it felt a little accusatory – like I'd changed my mind about wanting to be Roo's mother after having the job for a while, which absolutely wasn't the case. I didn't feel differently. If there was a difference, I wanted it even more than I did right after she was born.

This is a topic that is very dear and precious to me, and so I want to say this carefully and not write down the wrong thing. It's important! How can I best explain this without sharing things that are sacred to me?

Let me phrase it thus: I always knew what Roo deserved, and what she needed. My biggest obstacle to choosing adoption was my fear that it would undo me, that the pain of placement would be more than I could bear. Of course, nine weeks of motherhood is only going to sharpen that kind of pain, isn't it? And I reckon it did, although it's the only way I know. I don't know what it would have been like to place right after Roo was born.

I wanted to be Roo's mommy as soon as I knew she was growing in my belly. I want to make that much abundantly clear. It was never an issue of me changing my mind about being a single mother. Rather, the more time that passed, the more my love grew for that little girl, and the more I loved her the harder it became to deny her what I knew she needed the very most.

When Roo was seven weeks old, I came to realize something important. I realized that although adoption might mean abject misery for myself, not choosing adoption meant abject misery for Roo and for me. I had caught glimpses over the weeks of what Roo's life might be like as she got older, and they terrified me. I came to the point where I knew I would never be able to forgive myself, to live with myself, if I didn't do what was best for my precious baby.

There are other factors and elements that are too personal and private to share, but that's the short version. Basically, I'm a little slow - sometimes it takes me a while to do the right thing. But I did eventually, and that's what's important. I have never regretted it for a second. I would place Roo with P and M again in a heartbeat.

In Which I Tell a Story I've Told Twice Before

This is probably going to be a little TMI, so consider yourself warned.

Today marks two years since a home pregnancy test showed two lines instead of one. I've written about it before, here and here, but I like to reminisce, and I'm putting off doing something unpleasant, so I'm going to write about it again.

I've said before that I knew I was pregnant before I knew I was pregnant. (Here's the TMI part.) My period was militantly regular. I had never in my life been so much as ten hours late - until October two years ago. Things should have started on the 20th, but didn't. Each day that passed increased my sense of foreboding. It put a bit of a damper on my birthday as well, because all I could think was, I'm three days late. I tried to talk myself out of a panic. I'd been sick a few weeks before. Maybe the antibiotics had messed things up a bit.

That got me through my birthday. And each day that passed, as much as I worried, I thought, today's the day. Well, the 24th wasn't the day, either. I told myself that if nothing happened the next day, I'd buy a home pregnancy test. Nothing happened. I bought a home pregnancy test. I can still remember - like it was this morning - driving home from Target with a sick feeling completely unrelated to pregnancy hormones. I already knew the truth. And all I could think of was, my brother is going to be so disappointed in me. In retrospect, it seems funny to me that my first thought was not for myself or my baby or even my mother. My first thought was, what will Scott think? I have let him down.

I love my brother. He is one of my favorite people in the world. I'm sure he's done stupid things in his life, but nothing major, nothing serious. And he's the sort of person whose goodness inspires others to be as good. I felt like a failure. I didn't want him to know how badly I'd messed up because I was afraid he'd think less of me for it.

Well, as I'm sure you know by now, after I waited the prescribed amount of time, and two pink lines appeared in the results window of the test, and I swear, I could feel a chasm form in the space-time continuum. Now there was only before, and after. I was desperate for the peace and safety of the before, but there was no going back from the after. There was a grand canyon between the two, and that terrified me more than anything. I had made some serious mistakes before, but nothing I felt I couldn't sort of take back through repentance.

This was something I most certainly could not even dream of taking back.

My mother had gone out shopping. You may recall that my father had died only about seven weeks before all this happened. In those days, my mother distracted herself from her grief by leaving the house and getting a head start on her Christmas shopping. Many times she had offered to take me with her, and several times she had pleaded with me to go with her, but I almost always declined. I've never been one to distract myself from my grief. I wallow. And on top of my grief over my father's death was worry about a fight I'd had with H. After our breakup in July we'd tried to remain friends (and obviously we still saw each other on occasion) but I had a hard time separating my emotions and I'd fought with him. I was afraid that the words I'd said in anger had permanently ruined any chance of even friendship with him - he being of course the only man who had ever been interested in me.

(That didn't sound right grammatically, but I'm too lazy to look into it, so please ignore it if it bothers you as well.)

Once I got over my initial, heart-stopping shock, I numbly descended the stairs and collapsed on the couch in front of the TV. I had thought about turning it on to distract myself but I couldn't seem to remember how to work the remote control, so I sat there and cried.

My mother came home not long after, excited about her purchases, which she immediately removed from their bags to show me. I tried hard to look enthusiastic, to smile and give the appropriate responses, but I have the world's worst poker face. The fact that I hadn't quite managed to stop crying was probably a clue as well. My mother asked what was wrong, and I just shook my head. In retrospect, it seems sort of odd that she'd ask about my tears when my father's death was so recent. Perhaps, being my mother, she could sense that there was something different about my unhappiness that day.

She persisted. I cried harder. "I can't tell you!" I sobbed. I realized later that as I spoke I had nervously shredded a number of half-used Kleenexes and set them in a pile on the ottoman in front of me. This, too, might have been a clue to my mum. She urged me to tell her, saying that I could tell her anything. At this, I let out a half-sob, half-cry, and tried desperately to get my vocal cords to function properly. No such luck. I hadn't even used the word "pregnant" out loud to myself. I sure as hell couldn't say it to my recently widowed mother.

I remember crying harder then. My mother kept asking me to tell her why I was so upset, and I kept refusing, shaking my head and sobbing and shredding Kleenex. Finally, she said, "The only reasons I can think for you to be this upset and not tell me are that you've got AIDS or you're pregnant. Which is it?"

I looked up at her. The good news, I thought, is that I don't have AIDS. But I said nothing. I couldn't. She knew just the same.

"You're pregnant," she said. I nodded.

We both cried then.

It's funny to remember it now - I can remember it so clearly, and yet it feels like it happened to someone else. Now I can't fathom being that selfish and blubbering and weak in the face of such a thing. I suppose that at this point in time I've simply been through enough that almost nothing fazes me anymore. I suppose it's because I experienced something that made my selfish and blubbering and weak that I'm no longer any of those things.

I guess part of what has changed my perspective is Roo. As hard as things were, I'd do anything in the world for that little girl, and if I had to go back and do it all again I'd move heaven and earth to get her here and to the point she's at now. She is happy and healthy and so very loved. She has phenomenal parents. She had to get to them in a rather unorthodox way, but I'm okay with that.

I am as happy today as I was devastated two years ago. The apparent cause of the devastation ended up being my saving grace. I don't know where I'd be today without Roo. I don't like to think about it. I don't like to think of what my life would have been without her, or what the world would be like without her.

Two years ago my life changed deeply and forever, and I am forever grateful.

June 2009, Part Four: the End of the Line

I wanted more than anything in the world for my baby to get out of my belly. My entire body hurt all the time. I was so tired of being pregnant! I felt massive, like a beached whale. Moving was agony. I went downstairs in the morning and only went upstairs once a day when it was time for bed. One day I went downstairs but forgot my mobile phone upstairs. I cried when I realized it. I cried over a lot of things. A TV commercial for antidepressants made me cry because the people in it looked sad.

I wanted my baby to be born but I still worried like a worrying worrywart. I secretly felt that my baby deserved more than I could give her but that I wasn’t brave enough to trust her care to those who could give it to her. Was I too selfish and immature to me a mother? Would I depend too much on my mother? What if I was a horrible mother? What if I just couldn’t do it? I was going to have this teeny-tiny, helpless little person completely dependent on me for everything – on me and me alone.

I was overwhelmed. I felt like I couldn’t do it. I wanted my baby to have everything in the world, to be happy and know that she was loved, completely and totally. I wanted her to be safe and secure and comfortable. I didn’t ever want her to feel scared or worried or sad, and I knew I couldn’t control that. It scared me. And there were so many things I couldn’t control! SIDS and car accidents and random violence and whooping cough and so many other things … what if something awful happened to her? I hated the thought that I wouldn’t be sealed to her, that something could happen to her and she’d be lost to me forever. I get all teary just thinking about it now!

I loved my baby more than anything, and I prayed that it would be enough. More than once I lamented to my therapist that things would be so much easier if some nice man would take pity on me and marry me. I suggested marrying a man who needed a green card, or a gay man who wanted to get his parents off his back. My therapist said that was a bad idea. He never has had a sense of humor, that man.

It came down to this: I knew deep down that my baby deserved so much better than me. But I was too selfish. I admitted it. I knew myself. I love too much, too quickly, too deeply. I knew that I would set eyes on my baby girl and never want to let her go. I’d told myself before that I’d decide for sure what to do with my little girl once she was born, but I was lying to myself. I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t possibly not be this little girl’s mommy.

My due date came … and went. I was never one of those women who want to deliver early. I wanted my baby in for the full 40 weeks. But past 40 weeks? I knew I was going to be crabby until she came out. Being past due is perfectly normal, but I was a million percent sure of both the date of my last period and the day I’d gotten pregnant. I was done cooking.

I don't know what I expected on my due date, really. Trumpets and fanfare, maybe. The beginning of labor. A party. A phone call. A migraine. Anything. Nothing happened. Nothing was ever going to happen that day, and I knew it all along.

To take my mind off things, my mother took me to see the movie "Up." I wrote about that *here*. I'd expected a fun little cartoon but it turned out to be quite a tearjerker. I couldn't imagine how devastating it would be to get the news that Carl and Ellie got. That sort of shock should have pushed me towards adoption, but it had the opposite effect. My baby seemed more precious than ever, and I thought to myself that I simply couldn't bear it if I lost the one good thing I had going in my life.

And, I thought, how could anyone ever love my little girl as much as I did? I couldn't fathom it, so I pushed it from my mind.

June 2009, Part Three

Usually, I'm the one who cuts and colors my mom's hair. I've got a cosmetology license, and I'm much cheaper than a salon. But for reasons that would take too long to explain here, my mother went to a salon in mid-June to have her hair done, and I tagged along.

I got a million questions and comments and congratulations from the hairstylist, her co-worker, and other clients. It was refreshing and wonderful and made me very happy. I thought to myself that this must be what it’s like for pretty much any other pregnant woman. It was nice to feel normal for a change.

My youngest brother finally spoke to me on the telephone. He told me that he and his wife were praying that I would make the right decision. This meant that to them, there was a wrong decision, which irritated me. I was having a baby. That was the right decision, end of story. I really wished people could have seen that.

Owing to a combination of procrastination, fear, and defensiveness, I was due in two weeks and I hadn’t told any of my extended family that I was expecting (don't judge me). I wasn’t looking forward to their reactions. I fully expected everyone to pity my poor mother – first she lost her husband, now this. And I’ve always felt like a loser and a screw-up compared to other extended family members - not so much a black sheep, as a sick sheep who wasn't producing any wool. This wasn’t going to help. But my mom was going to visit my grandmother for her birthday, and I came along. I wasn’t sure what to say but I figured my belly would do the talking for me.

There’s a line in the Genesis song “No Son of Mine” that goes, “I rang the bell with my heart in my mouth.” I never understood that line until I got out of the car in front of my grandma’s house. I closed the car door with my heart in my mouth. I felt a nausea unrelated to my pregnancy.

I trailed my mother up the steps onto the patio. My mom gave my grandma a hug and went into the house. I bit my lip and gave my grandma a hug.

“Hi, Grandma. Um, I’m pregnant,” I said.

“Oh, no you’re not, honey, you’re just fat,” she said consolingly.

Just a refresher, here’s what I looked like in mid-June.



Fat? Just fat? I mean, I'm not a toothpick like most of my cousins, but really? Just fat?

“Um, no, really, I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, honey, no you're not, you just need to lose some weight.”

“No, really, Grandma, I am pregnant.”

Again, she insisted that I just needed to diet. I was tempted to say, Well, that's news to me, because my doctor's done several ultrasounds and it sure looked to me like I was pregnant.

Finally she seemed to believe me.

“Well,” she said, “I didn’t even know you were dating anyone.”

(This was, by the way, the reaction of pretty much everyone - they were stunned not at my pregnancy but at the fact that I had actually had a boyfriend.)

“I’m not,” I said. “I was.”

And out came an edited version of the last year of my life. But my dear old grandma, ever the Midwestern stoic, took it all in stride.

“These things happen,” she said, and she told me about a relative who’d become pregnant after a death in the family. I felt a little better. I don’t know why I was so nervous to begin with. This was, after all, the woman who, after my dad told her his cancer had returned and he was going to die soon, had sort of shrugged and then complained about her satellite dish.

I really am a genetic mutant, I think, because I like to talk things out and feel my feelings, and my dad’s immediate family is very much the opposite. I love them dearly, I really do, but they tend to react to life-changing news by either shrugging or changing the subject.

But it was good to get it out in the open finally, and good to see my grandma and talk to her. It had been months. And now that my grandma knew and would spread the word, my mother seemed to be more open to talking to people about it. She told one of her friends on the phone. Her friend was excited for me, which I thought was super nice. I wished more people were excited. Getting it out seemed to relax my mother, too. She seemed less tense, and less prone to snap at me.

My brother came over to help put the crib together. He also gave me a priesthood blessing. I don’t think I could ever say enough about what an amazing brother I have. He should be given an award. I don’t think I could have gotten through my pregnancy without him.

My last full month of pregnancy was ending quickly but I hadn't yet reached the point where I just wanted the baby out. I liked being pregnant. I liked feeling my baby kick. I liked knowing she was safe and healthy and happy. As long as my little girl was in my belly, I didn't have to do anything or make any decisions. I dreaded my pregnancy ending and life getting more complicated - and even then, I knew it would.

June 2009, Part One - Crying

It was hot. I was tired. My baby was wiggly.

To stretch out without pain, and to combat the heat, I’d begun swimming every day at the neighborhood pool. The water was cool and lovely and it was so nice to have a break from carrying around my baby weight. My baby seemed to enjoy the water, too – I noticed that when I swam, she wiggled a little differently in my belly as though she could feel the sudden weightlessness of her home.

The car seat and stroller set I’d had an eye on went on sale at Target, so I bought it. I had fun putting the stroller together and attaching a few toys to the handle of the car seat. I knew my baby wouldn’t appreciate them for a while but I thought they were cute. I also had fun (yes, fun) finishing up the last of the pre-baby laundry, folding it and putting it away. All that I needed was a crib and a baby. I was nervous but excited.

Having almost everything ready for my baby gave me time to worry about other things. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s worrying. My newest fear scared me, though. I already loved my baby so much, but I knew that half of her came from H. What if I loved her less for that? What if she looked just like him and it hurt me to see her face? I hated that thought. I never wanted my baby to feel I was punishing her for the mistakes I’d made. I hated that I was in a situation where I hoped my baby didn’t look like her father. This was not the life I’d planned, and this was certainly not how I’d hoped to become a mother.

From my journal: “I was reading on the ParentsConnect blog today about the best things about being pregnant, and someone commented that one of the nice things is that they were never really alone. I liked that. I thought about that when I was home alone tonight. That I wasn't alone, because I had you to keep me company. You wiggled then, too, as if to remind me that you were there.”

My emotions were all over the place. I would have these moments of great joy and excitement followed by the worst sort of depression and fear. I was going to have a baby – a wonderful, happy, exciting time – but no one was excited. No one was happy. I was curled up on the couch one night, crying, and my mother tried to cheer me up. She asked me what baby names I liked. As I rehearsed my list (with pros and cons), it occurred to me that here I was, three weeks from my due date, and this was the first time anyone had asked me what baby names I liked. How sad was that?

Neither my sister nor the younger of my brothers spoke to me on the phone. My mother would talk to them and report that they’d asked about me (more likely they’d asked if I’d come to my senses yet) but she never mentioned specifics and they never asked to speak to me directly. Each time one of them called and told my mother what a horrible mistake I was making, I felt more and more alone. It seemed like my mother was the only person on earth who cared about me and my precious baby.

I cried. Because each time I went to the store, I bought one more baby item alone. Because only my mother had asked about baby names. Because I had no friends to talk to about anything. Because I was single and my ex was a jerk and our relationship had been so messed up that my skin crawled at the thought of a man even looking at me again. Because even if that wasn’t so, I was still alone. Because I felt like I was relying too much on my mother and it wasn’t fair to her, and because if I didn’t rely on her so much, I would be completely alone in the world.

I cried because no one thought I should keep my baby, because no one cared how I felt about it, because no one would ever be happy for me, throw me a baby shower, buy my baby cute little gifts. Because no one would want a baby announcement from me and I bought them anyway because I could not bear for my little girl to not feel loved and wanted and like the whole world was dying to know exactly when she got here and what she was like. Because this little girl I was going to deliver was precious and sweet and innocent and good and everything seemed so unfair to her – she deserved a million times better. She deserved the world and I didn’t have the strength to give it to her.

I cried because she was all I had, and because there should have been two parents, happy and in love, excited for her to be born. I loved her desperately, and I hated the thought that she might ever think anyone I know didn’t think she was the best thing in the world. She deserved all the love in the world and then some. Why couldn’t my family see that?

May 2009, Part Four

Although I continued to think about adoption fairly regularly, I had decided that it would simply be too much for me to handle and I had mostly decided on single parenting. As such, I’d given up on LDSFS, but S hadn’t given up on me. In what was perhaps a last-ditch effort to dissuade me from single parenting, S arranged for me to meet with a single mother and a man who was raised by a single mother. She (S) said it was just to give me an idea of what single motherhood entailed, but it was pretty obvious by the stories I heard that no one in the room thought I should keep my baby. It made me angry. I was sick of people pushing me toward adoption without asking me what I thought of things. I know that people meant well, but the thing about unsolicited advice is, it’s unsolicited. I didn’t want other people’s thoughts bouncing around in my head. I had enough of my own thoughts up there.

Have you ever seen the movie Wall-E? It’s a very cute movie I’ve seen several times. It’s set in a future where people no longer walk. They are fat, blob-like, and get around on little hover-chairs. Their feet are too fat and puffy to be walked on. At the end of May, My feet looked like Wall-E people feet.



Feet aside, I thought I'd be bigger at this point in my pregnancy. My belly was still pretty reasonable. I became convinced that the reason I didn’t have a bigger belly was because my baby was burning off calories for me. She had the busiest feet I’ve ever seen. She kicked and wiggled and hiccupped and punched happily for hours on end. I’m not sure where she found the room to move, but somehow she managed.

I bought diapers and wipes on sale at Target. All I needed was a car seat and a crib and I was set. I decided that my baby was going to be born exactly one week late (which she was!), so I had a little time left. I made a few halfhearted attempts at putting a hospital bag together but couldn’t find the energy or the motivation.

My mother spoke and planned as though I was going to keep my baby, which was a relief. I wasn’t sure how to explain to her that I didn’t feel I could make up my mind until the baby was born. But she seemed to know just the same, in the way that my mother so often seems to know the things I can’t voice.

My decision (sort of) made, I began to worry about more practical things, like money. I have a cosmetology license, so I knew that I was employable. But I hated the thought of strangers watching my baby for twenty-plus hours a week, and I didn’t want to impose on my mother and have people accuse me of making her raise my baby for me.

At my next doctor’s appointment, (TMI ALERT!) I had more protein in my urine than my doctor was happy with. My blood pressure was also high (for me, anyway), so my doctor ordered some blood tests to check for preeclampsia. If anything came up abnormal, my baby was on the way out.

I panicked. I was expecting another month to prepare. I wasn’t ready yet! After my blood test, I hurried home to throw together a hospital bag. I talked to my mom for a while and felt a bit better about things but the nerves remained.

My pregnancy books said to start watching my body for signs of labor. I wrote in my journal: “Oh, joy. One more thing to worry about. Because, you know, I don't have enough on my mind at the moment. Now I get to watch for signs of labor. Is irritation a sign of labor?”

My blood test came back fine, and now I found myself nervous in a good way. In a month, give or take a few days, I was going to be a mommy, and I couldn’t wait for my baby to be born!

Here's the Story

Once upon a time, I thought I'd get myself "caught up" in telling my pregnancy story, and I thought I'd get to the point where I was exactly a year out, and I could reflect on labor and delivery and all that a year to the day afterward.

Obviously, I'm not there. I don't think I've gotten to the end of May yet, have I? I'm slacking. And stalling. I don't know if I'm ready to go there yet. I thought that distance, that time - a year, for crying out loud - would make a difference. I thought that like with everything else, the pain would lessen after a while, and I could write about things without getting so emotional.

Why do I always have to be wrong about these things? I started reading through my journal for the month of June, year 2009, and I couldn't do it. It hurt too much. The pain felt so fresh. Maybe it's because of the time of the year. It feels too much like it's what's happening now. I can close my eyes and pretend I'm there. It hasn't been long enough yet.

I don't think I'm ready yet. I meant to be. I thought I'd be. When I wrote that bit on my due date, I realized how far behind on my story I am, and it was frustrating.

I started this blog for Roo but it's too public now for me to be as open about things as I want, so a few months ago I started a private blog, just for Roo, and I spill everything I can think of there, because she deserves to know everything, not just what I feel comfortable sharing with the world. Last night I wrote a few things down for her, because it was on July 5th that labor was induced, and I wanted to record my memories of that for her.

I could barely type through the tears. I'm getting throat fizzies just thinking about it. So many things have gotten easier with time, but I guess this isn't one of them. It comes down to this: I'm just not ready yet. Someone asked me on my Formspring a few months ago when I was going to finish my pregnancy story, and the answer I gave at the time was true at the time. But I'm not sure now. I think the answer is, when I'm ready.

And I'm not there yet.

Due

I know I'm getting ahead of myself as far as the story goes, but today is notable and so I shall make note of it. One year ago today, Roo was due.

Why on earth do they even give women a due date? I don't know anyone who's delivered on their due date. I knew Roo was going to be a week late, anyway, and she was, exactly. The fact that she really should have been six days late and not seven is something I try not to think about. I still remember how stunned my doctor was to see me on the morning of July 7th.

"You're still pregnant!" she exclaimed.

Figured that out all by yourself, did you? I thought. What I said, in between contractions, was, "Looks that way."

And she said that wouldn't do at all, and less than an hour later I was being wheeled into an OR.

But we won't go there just yet. One year ago was Roo's almost-birthday. The end was near, and I was gigantic. Here I am exactly a year ago with a waist only 7 inches less than my height.



I was hot, and I was miserable, and I wanted more than anything in the world to NOT be pregnant anymore. It felt like I'd been pregnant forever. One of the disadvantages of finding out I was pregnant early on in the process was that I'd felt every single day of my pregnancy.

I got back from Ireland last night (longest Tuesday of my life) and I hadn't realized until I came home how nice it was to be away from my house for a month. My flat in Athlone had no memories attached to it - it was just an empty shell, a place to stay for a while. My house ... my house is where my dad lived, and where he pretty much died. It's where I found out I was pregnant, where I grew Roo, where I brought her home, and where I came after placement. If memories were ghosts, my house would be severely haunted.

It was strange, really. Being in Ireland I felt worlds away, not just physically but mentally, from adoption and from Roo and from all of my emotions about that. And coming home, I felt the absence of Roo in the house, something I haven't noticed since the first few weeks after placement. The house seemed so quiet and empty and had I not been completely exhausted from being awake for some 36 hours, I think I probably would have cried myself to sleep. As it was, I crawled into bed and fell asleep in about 15 seconds, something that hasn't happened in longer than I can remember.

It hit me last night, actually, the reality of my situation here and what I've been through. I was standing outside Sky Harbor's Terminal 3, waiting for my mom to pick me up, and something about the stifling heat and the slight breeze and the sounds of the traffic and the almost-dark reminded me of going to the hospital to be induced, and of leaving the hospital with Roo, and of taking her to the ER that night at the end of August because she wouldn't eat (she was fine) ... and I cried as I stood there with my luggage, overwhelmed at both the baggage next to me and the baggage within. The three heavy suitcases at my feet seemed an apt metaphor for my feelings, and just thinking about it now makes my throat fizz.

I don't know if anyone else gets that, but when I've got tears working their way to the surface, my throat feels tight and I swear it fizzes.

But back to reality. Today is June 30th, and for the rest of my life the date will remind me of Roo, and how excited I was to be a mommy soon. I remember that for at least part of the day, I double- and triple-checked Roo's things - her crib with its sweet pink bird bedding, her tiny diapers, the wee little Onesies and socks. I tested the construction of the crib, pulling this way and that to make sure it was screwed together properly so Roo would be safe. I watched a little TV. I waited.

I waited for contractions to begin - I knew I wouldn't give birth that day, but I thought maybe I'd feel a twinge of something. I waited for a baby name to come to me, but none did. I waited for a decision to come to me. I was prepared for a baby but part of me wondered still if I was making the right choice to parent this baby. No decision was forthcoming. The idea returning from the hospital and not having a baby to put in the crib caused a physical ache.

I miss Roo today. I don't know if it's awful or not but when I was away I didn't feel I missed her as much. I guess I had so many other things to do, and places to go, and things to think about, that missing her just wasn't as high on the list. Is that awful? I even forgot to pray for her one night, and I woke up after 15 minutes and remembered and felt like the worst person on earth. How could I ever forget to pray for Roo and her family? Some nights when I'm extra tired they're all I pray for. And yet I forgot.

Being home, I miss her more. There's little to distract me - there's laundry and unpacking, of course, but I don't have any buses to catch or places to see or things to do. It's strange. I've been theoretically busy all day and yet I'm horribly bored.

I miss her. But I think it's okay. I think I'm okay. I can miss her and be okay. It's just a little harder thinking back to how things were, and thinking about how they might have been. I know I did the right thing for Roo. I've never doubted it. It's just that I remember how a year ago I was so excited to be a mommy.

And now I'm not a mommy. And it kind of sucks.

May 2009, Part Three

Have you ever noticed that once you buy something, you see it everywhere? My parents bought a Toyota Highlander a few years ago. I never noticed them before, but once we had one, I saw Highlanders everywhere. Likewise, once I made plans to travel to Ireland this summer, I began noticing news articles about the country, products that were manufactured there, celebrities who were born there. I noticed Highlanders and Ireland because I had a reason to see them everywhere.

It was the same with my pregnancy. Once I had been only vaguely aware of things like diapers and Dreft. Now, the world seemed to be full of babies and pregnant women. They were everywhere – in movies, in magazines, and on TV. I like to watch “The Office” on NBC. It’s not as funny as it used to be, but by now I have a vested interest in the characters, so I keep watching. The season finale last year ended with Jim and Pam finding out they were expecting a baby.

Jim’s reaction just killed me. It broke my heart, too. It must be nice, I thought, to be expecting a baby with a man you love who loves you. A man who, while panicked out and nervous, is ultimately excited. And plans on marrying you in any case. I cried.

From my journal: "I will never know that. I feel it deep down. Let's face it. It's not like I date or anything. It's not like I'm ever really going to get the chance for that kind of happiness ... It would be nice, wouldn't it? To not have any of these complications I've endured with H. To have people excited for you, happy for you, buying you presents, sending you cards, asking happy excited questions instead of being disappointed in you ... to go to childbirth classes with your baby's other parent, to know he'll be there the whole time with you ... I know what I could have, how much better things could be - should be - and it hurts me. It kills me. And I worry so much, and I worry about after she’s born - I am going to worry about every little thing, I just know it. And it would be so nice to have someone to share the worry with ..."

I was exhausted all the time. Pregnancy and fibromyalgia were a formidable combination, and I couldn’t imagine how much more miserable and exhausted I’d be in a month. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of my sweet baby girl – knowing that it was all for her, for her safety and health and comfort. I couldn’t believe how quickly time was passing me by. My due date was nearer and nearer but I didn’t feel any nearer to a decision.

I missed my father terribly. I wondered, not for the first time, if I wanted to keep my baby to fill the emptiness created by my father’s death. There were, I reasoned, worse reasons to have a baby. And I already loved her so much! But I worried. A baby, I thought, I can handle. But babies don’t stay little forever. Before I knew it I’d have a toddler, a small child, an elementary-schooler. Could I handle that? What would my life be like? What would hers be like?

I’d always wanted to have my children close in age as well – preferably with the same father as well, but that couldn’t be helped now. But this baby might be all I got. I wondered if I could be happy with that – just me and my little girl. I hoped so, because I had pretty much given up on men in general. "They are stupid, selfish jerks who expect too much and don't think they should have to do anything in return," I wrote in my journal.

Again and again I considered the idea of adoption. But I didn’t think I could bear to give my baby up. I knew it made me horribly selfish, but, I thought, okay. I’m selfish. Plenty of selfish people become moms, and things work out okay for them. Surely, I thought, my selfishness would be balanced out by the good it would do my baby to have her with me. She knew my voice, my heartbeat. Any child of mine would be decidedly quirky. I could help her with her quirks and love her anyway.

I finished my childbirth classes. I was a bit nervous about that. In my mind, once I finished childbirth classes I’d feel much more confident about labor and delivery. I didn’t. I knew I’d get through it somehow, but I didn’t like to think about it. Part of that, I think, is that I knew that once my baby was born, I’d have to decide what to do with her, and the thought of making a decision terrified me.

My little girl would be worth the worry and stress, I thought. We discussed newborn care during the last class, and there was a poster of a funny-looking little newborn, all mottled skin and clenched fingers and toes and squishy face and too-big head. Absolutely adorable, as were the newborns in the labor videos we watched. I wrote:

"The newborns at the end were so precious. So sweet. All wrinkly and funny-looking and wide-eyed and bewildered. They just killed me. And I thought, wow. Six weeks and I'm going to have my own precious little bundle of squishy sweetness who needs me, who has kicky feet and a teeny-tiny chin and a wee nose and pretty lips and long fingers and fat toes. My very own little funny-looking newborn with red spots and bendy legs and puffy eyes. Perfection."

I was nervous and excited and I absolutely could not bear the thought of placing my baby. I recalled all too clearly the kind of pain I’d felt when my dad died. I didn’t think I could bear it again. I wished I could just keep her in my belly forever. She was happy and safe and warm and well-fed in there, easy to care for and carry and keep safe. I'd gotten used to being pregnant, and I liked having my little girl with me wherever I went.

May 2009, Part Two – Mother’s Day

May brought my first Mother’s Day. I’d already gotten a great gift – my 3D ultrasound. I wasn’t really expecting much. I don’t think my mom was either, but she got something just the same, something she didn’t deserve.

H’s mother wrote her a letter. She e-mailed her, and she did it on Mother’s Day, first thing in the morning. My mom didn’t want to tell me about it at first. She didn't say a word. But I could tell that something was bothering her. At first I assumed it was me, that she felt a little strange about the circumstances of my first mother's day. I asked her several times what was wrong, and finally she told me.

It was a very manipulative letter. I don’t want to get into it, but suffice it to say that H had lied to his mother and said he’d never heard back from me, and H’s mother had a little pity party about how it must be nice for my mom to spend Mother’s Day surrounded by her grandchildren, and how maybe she should stop to consider how H’s mother felt, not knowing what was going to happen to her grandchild, blah blah blah. It upset me greatly and I cried for a while. I felt like Mother's Day had been ruined for all of us, and it was all my fault.

But my mother – my dear, sweet, strong mother – the one who should have been more upset about it than I, was the one who made me feel better. She said that she wasn’t going to let the letter bother her, and I shouldn’t either. We went to my brother’s house for dinner. He and his wife had gotten a card and flowers for my mom, and a card and a box of chocolates for me.

Their kindness was overwhelming. Cruelty and nastiness, I’m used to. I can more or less handle it. But kindness and understanding were still sort of foreign to me, and brought me to tears much more quickly. It was a lovely card, and the chocolates were my favorite kind. After their kids were in bed we all just sat and talked for about an hour, which was great. I'd worried that my pregnancy would make things awkward and uncomfortable but that wasn't so. It felt good to feel normal.

I was a bit depressed I didn't get a cute mother's day-for-the-mother-to-be card, but then who would buy me one? My mom, perhaps, but it seemed like more of a husband sort of thing to do, and I had no husband. Probably never will, I thought to myself. No one had wanted me before. Why on earth would anyone want me now?

I began to suspect that childbirth classes were a huge mistake. There were so many more things to worry about than I’d ever imagined. On the day we discussed labor, I thought to myself again that, sorry, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t actually want to deliver a baby. The only way I got through hearing about everything was to remind myself that my mother had made it through childbirth with each of her children, and she’s no glutton for punishment. If she could do it four times, I told myself, I could do it once.

More than once I began to have doubts about whether I could be a good mother. I thought that such concerns were probably normal, but that didn’t bring me much comfort. I wondered: Am I too selfish? Too anxious? Too tightly-wound? What if I couldn’t take good care of my baby? What if I lost my patience? I wasn’t certain what you were supposed to do with a newborn. I knew about feeding and diapering and supporting the neck and sleeping on the back, but that was about it. How much crying was normal? How many diapers was a baby supposed to go through? How often was a newborn supposed to eat?

Could I give my baby everything she needed? All the attention, all the love? I knew I loved her, and that I’d love her even more once she was out of my belly. But I thought, was love enough? I wanted to be a good mom so badly. But I wasn’t sure if wanting was enough, either.

I wanted to keep my baby very badly. It felt like the right thing do to about 95% of the time. Was the other 5% nerves and anxiety, or something more? I had trouble stomaching the thought of adoption, the thought of my baby being someone else’s to cuddle and care for. It didn’t sit quite right with me. It was like an emotional heartburn. It wouldn’t digest properly.

I continued to meet with my therapist weekly. I read him the letter H’s mother had written. John was galled. He agreed that the whole of it, especially the timing, was distinctly manipulative. He also said not to let it get to me. My mother met with her own therapist, who helped her craft a terse response to the message. She heard back quickly – H told his mother I’d never responded to his e-mail. Based on what H’s mother had to say, it seemed that H had been telling his mother naught but lies for months. Oh well, I thought. Their problem, not mine. My mother ignored the second letter, and we agreed to put H and his mother behind us.

May 2009, Part One

I keep looking at the 3-D ultrasound picture, at my baby’s wee little nose and chin and pretty lips. I thought she was the cutest fetus ever (I still think so). If there were ultrasound beauty contests, my little girl would have won, hands-down. She was the most perfect little person I’d ever seen. Everything I read said to expect a decrease in fetal movement, but no one told my baby. She kicked and wiggled happily a LOT. I loved it.

My back did not. I’m not a very tall person, and the extra 30 pounds I was carrying were murder on my spine. I invested in a few belly bands, which helped a bit. I hadn't taken more than a vitamin during my pregnancy but one weekend I finally broke down and took two Tylenol. I felt guilty for it, too. I was immensely proud of not having taken any medication. I was determined that, no matter what else, I was going to grow the healthiest baby I could.

I knew from ultrasounds and appointments that my little girl was healthy. But I wondered what sort of little person she would be. The 3D ultrasound lady told me that personality in the womb pretty much carries over after birth. So I decided she’d be a busy little bee, kicking and alert and happy (and I was right!). Kicking was pretty much my favorite thing ever. My baby kicked on a pretty regular schedule. She kept me up at night quite a bit. From 3 to 4am it was party time in my womb. I worked a lot of SuDoku puzzles since the kicking was hard to sleep through.

My siblings continued to call my mother and tell her what a horrible decision I was making. They apparently believed that I’d make my mother raise my baby while I went off and did … something else, I don’t know. It irritated me. It still does, even a year later. No one was excited for me, or for the baby. I knew that circumstances weren't ideal of course, but I HATED that my baby was being punished for my mistakes. I felt (and still feel, actually) that there should have been a little more compassion, and a bit more perspective. A wonderful, delightful little girl was going to be born, sweet and perfect and fresh from God. And not one single person on earth seemed happy about it, only me. No one asked how my pregnancy was going. They only asked if I'd come to my senses yet and got angry when the answer was no.

In retrospect, I'm able to be a bit more understanding about things, but the hurt is still there. Allow me to interrupt my story for a moment to say this: if you know a woman who is facing an unplanned pregnancy, you've got two options. You can be supportive and kind, or you can be a jerk about it. You might think the choice she's made is a horrible, terrible mistake, but the choice isn't yours to make, it's hers. Being a jerk about it is going to accomplish one thing: hurt feelings. It's not going to make decisions or change minds. It's simply not. It's going to hurt feelings and ruin relationships. Your choice, really.

May was notable for me because it was then that I took childbirth classes with my mom. It sucked to be there with her instead of a husband. I hoped people knew that she was my mother and not my ... partner. I worried that people thought we were a lesbian couple. My mother laughed at the thought.

"Easy for you to laugh," I told her. "They think the best I can do is a woman in her fifties!"

I learned quite a bit - there were videos and handouts and at one point I thought, you know, I've changed my mind, I really don't want to have a baby after all. I decided that a good way to encourage teenagers to use birth control was not, in fact, to make them carry around flour sacks, or those electronic baby dolls. Childbirth classes seemed a much more effective contraceptive to me.

I bought baby things here and there. In the back of my mind I was still considering adoption, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from buying baby things. I made a few trips to Babies ‘R’ Us. It is a horrible place to be in alone. Couples everywhere, happy couples, starting registries. I envied them. I wanted to start a registry, too, but I didn’t see a point in it. You only need a registry if people are going to buy you gifts, and people only buy you gifts if they're happy for you.

No one was happy for me. I hated that. I wished that people could look past circumstances and just be happy that a baby was going to be born. It irked me that no one could, or would. But my little girl always seemed to know when I was upset. She’d give me reassuring little kicks just when I needed them the most. It was like she was saying, "It’s okay, Mommy. I’m here, and it’s okay."

At my mother’s insistence, I met again with S, this time to gather information about single parenting. LDSFS had initially told me that they’d help me explore my options, and give me information about whatever I chose. It became apparent, however, that they were not used to dealing with women who chose to single parent once that decision had been made. S wasn’t very enthusiastic about the idea of me single parenting. She told me that she’d put a "soft hold" on one of the couples I’d met with, meaning they weren’t really available for any other birth moms to choose. I was irritated. It was no wonder they’d been e-mailing me so frequently! I hadn't asked her to do that, and it bothered me that she’d have done so without my input. S told me that no matter what I chose the couple really liked me and cared about me and wanted to keep up a relationship.

"Seriously?" I asked. "So if I keep my baby and single parent, this nice married childless couple would still like to hang out with me?" I couldn't see it happening. I couldn't see the couple ever liking me once I'd told them no. I didn't even much like myself for telling them no. They were the perfect adoptive couple - I couldn't have asked for anything more from them. I wasn't sure why I hadn't chosen them, really, except that I simply couldn't bear the thought of not being my baby's mommy.

As my pregnancy progressed, I became more and more moody and emotional. And as the weather heated up, my feet got fatter and fatter until the elastic on my socks cut into my ankles and I decided to give up on shoes and socks and wear flip-flops everywhere. Even if my feed hadn't puffed out, flip-flops were inevitable because I reached the point where I could no longer touch my feet. I had vague recollections of once being able to reach my toes and ankles, but those days were long gone.

I had started attending church again. It was awkward going to a singles ward while pregnant, but I couldn’t forget the story I’d heard from a married birth mom. She’d met her husband in church when she was eight months’ pregnant. She’d been asked out a LOT at eight months’ pregnant. The men in her ward had been impressed by her consistent church attendance and obedience. I decided that would happen to me, too. If she could meet her husband while pregnant, so could I. If nothing else, I would charge ahead, make new friends, and show a little faith. I bought a simple black maternity dress from Old Navy and felt thankful, not for the first time, that I didn’t look as far along as I was.

Church wasn’t much fun for me. Ninety-nine percent of the time, no one looked at me, no one talked to me, no one sat by me. I think that my bishop was probably the only person who was glad to see me there. It was rough. I knew I’d messed up, but I was trying to do better. On occasion the Relief Society president would sit by me out of pity, but she never said more than “Hello” to me, and she always got up quickly when we were dismissed, as though she didn’t want anyone to see us sitting together. It hurt. I left church after Sacrament Meeting, went home and cried. It was a routine I’d stick with until the end of my pregnancy.

I didn't know everyone in my ward, but I knew enough about enough of them. I was certainly NOT the only one there who wasn't taking the sacrament. There were at least a handful of people in my ward who had done some pretty serious things. The only difference was, their mistakes weren't making their feet swell. I felt like my maternity dress bore a scarlet S for skank.

I used the word "unfair" an awful lot when I was pregnant, and this was another instance. I hated that I had to suffer publicly for my sins when there were seriously messed up people who escaped public scrutiny altogether.

But I wasn't going to church for them, I reminded myself. I was going for God, and for me. My Heavenly Father was happy to see me there even if no one else was. My baby wiggled around when I sang the hymns. Sitting in church, I was able to think a bit more clearly about what my baby's life would be like with me as a single parent. Would she feel as out of place as I did, being the only little girl in Primary without both parents at home? What would she feel on Father's Day when all the little kids got up to sing to their daddies? I knew what she would feel, and it broke my heart. I cried, thinking of my sweet, innocent girl feeling left out and sad because of something that wasn't her fault.

It made me question the idea of single parenting. I hated questioning. I pushed it aside as best as I could, and counted the minutes until I could leave church.

April 2009, Part Four – Odds and Ends of the Month

Despite my “decision,” I wanted to keep my options open. I looked into what being a single mother would entail – what I would need to buy, what my expenses would be. I had a fairly decent savings built up from my last job, and I was prepared to use it.

From my journal:

“Good grief, you're a mover. Aren't you supposed to sleep in there on occasion? Give Mommy a rest?

I don't much care. I love knowing you're happy (I've decided they're happy kicks). I know you're warm and safe and cared-for as long as you're where you are.”

The baby discovered my ribs, and her little feet were almost always digging in. I tried pushing them away; she pushed back. It was uncomfortable but delightful at the same time. My emotions weren’t so cut-and-dry. I wrote in my journal: “I've felt weird today. Like I didn't want to keep you. It scares me. Especially because when I thought about, ok, say I don't keep you, it freaked me out. I'm hoping this is just some normal hormonal thing. Because I do want you. I want you more than I've wanted anything in my life. I love you so much already.”

My mixed feelings scared me. On the one hand, I did not want to give my baby up. I felt that, if I did, I would have nothing left. But every so often I found myself thinking that I really didn’t want to be a mom just yet. I felt selfish and awful and disloyal for thinking so. But I missed my antidepressants. I’d been taking them for 10 years before I got pregnant, and had to drop them all cold turkey when I found out I was expecting. My brain really noticed the absence, and it wasn’t happy. I told myself that having a baby would give me a bit more stability and routine, and that that would help.

I had strange dreams. I dreamed my baby was born a boy, and I was disappointed. I dreamed that I kept losing track of my baby, and when I tried to feed him (she came out a he again), he suckled weakly for a few seconds and then stopped and gave me a reproving stare. I worried that he would starve, and people around me told me that if they were his parents, he’d be eating normally. They were awful dreams. I tried to remind myself that they were only dreams, that my baby was indeed a girl, and that she would certainly eat when she was hungry.

All the pregnancy books said that crazy dreams were normal, which helped me feel a little better. The books also suggested putting together a birth plan. I found a fill-in-the-blank birth plan on-line and printed it out. It was six pages long, and I was quickly overwhelmed. There were too many things on it that I didn’t want to think about. All I really wanted was to get my baby out with as little pain as possible, and if the doctor needed to do something to help get her out, the doctor could do that. I wrote that on an index card and tucked it away to take with me to the hospital.

Braxton-Hicks contractions started up every now and then. It was getting harder and harder to sit comfortably. When I did sit, I had fun watching my belly roll around and wiggle as little hands and feet poked around. I watched American Idol that year, and I noticed that the baby seemed to dance a bit more when Danny was singing. I got a kick out of that, since he was my favorite.

I scheduled a 3D ultrasound for the last day of the month. There was a coupon in the Money Mailer, and my mother thought I deserved a special sort of thing like that. I so looked forward to it. I couldn’t wait to see my baby’s teeny-tiny little nose again, and get a better look at her face, and see if she smiled or sucked her thumb, and get a sense of what sort of little person she was.

The receptionist told me the ultrasound rooms could seat 8 friends and family members. I cried about that on and off. Because I didn’t have anyone – I went to my doctor’s appointments by myself, I got excited about the baby by myself. I hated feeling so alone. I knew it was my own fault for doing things wrong. But that didn’t make it any easier to take. I felt lonely and isolated and unloved, and I hated it. I wondered if my depression would be passed on to my baby.

“What am I going to do with you?” I wrote in my journal. “I wish I knew. I want to keep you. I think I will. But I want what's best for you, what's right for you. It's got to be best for a little girl to be with her mommy, right? Surely I'm the one who will take the best care of you.” Surely, I thought, I could understand her best, relate to her problems. Care about her more than anyone else ever could.

Despite feeling a bit alone, my 3D ultrasound was a wonderful experience. It was absolutely amazing! My little girl’s hands were up by her face the whole time. She had long fingers and toes, which I could see clearly as both feet were up by (and sometimes in) her face. I watched in awe as the baby in my belly grabbed hold of her tiny toes. It was go cool to feel her move and see it at the same time. And she moved, and moved. The poor ultrasound technician had to keep moving the little wand around to keep the baby from hiding her face.

I was enchanted, absolutely bewitched. My baby had the cutest, tiniest little nose, and my family’s trademark chin, and beautiful full lips. She was absolutely perfect. I watched, transfixed, as my baby tugged on her toes and rubbed her eyes and flexed her fingers and made funny faces. It was pure awesomeness. I was disappointed when my time was up. I was sent home with a picture CD, a DVD of the entire ultrasound, and handfuls of pictures printed out. I quickly found my favorites and looked at them the most. I loved knowing what my baby’s face looked like – that she had my chin and long fingers, and that she had such long eyelashes (they were clearly visible on the scan!), and that she had my wide, flat feet with chubby toes.

I rubbed my belly with renewed vigor. My baby felt more like a real person than she ever had. I talked to her more. Having seen her face, I felt a deeper connection. When I felt her sneeze or hiccup, I could picture what she looked like at the time, the tiny nose wrinkling, wee little fists clenching. It was magical. I wished I could have had a 3D ultrasound every day.

April 2009, Part Three

I feel like I’ve picked on my big sister a lot in this blog. But at the same time, it’s not my fault she’s given me so much material, is it? That sounded a bit more mercenary than I intended. I digress. I’m not done picking on her yet. Mostly because of how she picked on me. I got e-mail from her (the day after H’s letter) that made me cry.

I know she meant well. I know she loves me. But my sister is just … I don’t know. I think a tactful way of putting it would be to say that sometimes she says (or types) things without stopping to consider how her words might be taken.

Most of the e-mail was the sort of things I’d expected – have faith in the Lord and His plan, get a priesthood blessing, remember that eternity is a long time, she supported me no matter what … blah blah blah. The kicker was at the end, and I quote:

"Not that you should go back and deal with the LDSSS people, but might there be another couple that you passed over, or just decided to adopt that you might consider? No couple would be perfect, but at least they could give your baby a family to be sealed to."

In other words, it doesn’t matter if you actually like them. Anyone would be better parents than you. I pity my mother; I’m sure I had nothing good to say about my sister after that, and my mom was the only person to whom I could vent.

I had arranged to meet S for dinner. I had a copy of H’s e-mail with me. As she read it, she reacted just as I had hoped, with plenty of eye rolling and a "Who does he think he is?" here and there for good measure.

"And he’s so messed up," I said. "He thinks he’s still got rights after he ignored his paperwork. He doesn’t have any rights!"

S nodded emphatically. "Well," she said between sips of Sierra Mist, "unless you decide to single parent."

I choked on my own beverage.

"What?"

It turns out, S had inadvertently misinformed my mother on the phone. Adoption, H had nothing to do with. But he did indeed have rights if I kept my baby. The thought chilled me to the bone. I cried, I lost my appetite.

"That’s not what you told my mother," I said, upset and confused. "You told her H has no rights anymore."

"I thought she was talking about adoption," S said. "Your mother must have misunderstood."

Now I was cheesed. My mother may have her shortcomings, but I knew she hadn’t misunderstood. I had made my mom go over her conversation with S in detail, and my mother assured me that twice she had made sure that S understood my mom was talking about me single parenting.

I left dinner early and got slightly hysterical on the way home. I told my mom what had happened. She let me cry as I spoke, and remained preternaturally calm. She told me not to worry about things, and to just tell H that I was going with adoption, since he’d been so eager for a response. I did just that. It was a very short e-mail.

I hated knowing that H had rights. I felt like my hand was being forced, like adoption was my only recourse, my only way of keeping my baby safe. And I didn’t want to place my baby for adoption! I wanted more than ever to be her mommy. My own mommy said that no one could force me to do anything, and she’s send me and my baby out of the country if she had to. That she would never let anyone take my baby away. For my part, I just hoped that H would leave me alone now that I’d given him a decision that didn’t involve him.