March 2009, Part One

I kept adoption in the back of my mind, but I also started looking at baby names, keeping my options open. If I was honest with myself, I didn’t want to go with adoption. I wanted to keep my baby. And since I was in no rush to decide, I figured I might as well start looking at things from the keeping-the-baby point of view. In my forays into the birth mom support group, I’d gotten to know a birth mom who kept her baby for two weeks before placement. I told myself that I was allowed to follow her lead – if I didn’t want to make a decision until after the baby was born, that was okay. In the back of my mind I thought I might do what she had done.

In the meantime, I decided to take a break from LDSFS and from the whole adoption thing. When H asked me (via instant message) how I was feeling about things, I told him that, at the moment, I was leaning towards keeping the baby. H asked me to give the baby my last name, not his. “i would like mine to die out,” he wrote. He asked if I was getting things together to prepare for having a baby, and I told him I’d done a bit of sewing, and checked prices of furniture on-line. Most of the rest of our conversation was rubbish, including this little gem from H: “i smoked weed because it makes you feel AWESOME!!!”

We discussed potential custody arrangements and I got the impression that he would be mostly hands-off – coming to see me and the baby a few times a month, that sort of thing. I didn’t dwell on it too much, because I had enough to worry about without future hypotheticals in my head.

My baby was a kicker. Her little feet and fists were in constant motion, and I loved the feeling. I loved to go to Target and look at baby clothes and bedding. I bought a few tiny things – sleepers and Onesies and socks. I told myself that, even if I ended up placing my baby, I could use them someday, for another child. If I ever had another child. Privately I thought this pregnancy would likely be the only one I ever experienced (and I still think so, sometimes).

All I’d ever wanted out of life was to be a wife and mother. Obviously, I’d sort of skipped the former, but here was my shot at the latter. Was it so wrong? I felt like everyone around me thought that single parenting was a horrible mistake. It seemed like they wanted to make me feel bad for wanting to be a mother, and it angered me. I was a mess of hormones and more than once I cried myself to sleep, feeling bad not only for myself but for the precious baby in my belly whom no one seemed excited about.

Pregnancy was very lonely for me. I hated shopping alone for baby things. I hated going alone to doctor’s appointments. I hated the feeling that I was the only one who seemed to be happy that I was having a baby. As wonderful as my mother was, it wasn’t the same as having a husband. I started to wonder, to worry. Could I be enough for my sweet baby? Could I love her enough, take good enough care of her? I could be a good mother, but I was just one person. Would I be enough?

H continued to IM me on and off. In one conversation, he said that he had no problem showing an R-rated movie (Kill Bill) to a 12-year old. He said a few other things that worried me. I started to really consider what H’s influence might do to my baby. What sort of things would the baby be exposed to? What things would she hear? What fumes might she inhale? What would she see? What would she be taught about God and morals and right and wrong? It worried me.

The baby kicked more and more each day. My appointments, lonely as they were, went well, and I was assured I had a healthy baby. I wasn’t happy with my weight gain (my doctor wasn’t worried, but I was) so I added more fruits and veggies to my diet. I’ve never been a big fan of produce, but there wasn’t anything in the world I wouldn’t do for my baby. I ate apples and carrots and salad and drank more water than I ever have before. It felt good. I felt good. My baby was happy and healthy, and I still had months to think about what I was going to do with my little kicker.

And Then, Some Days ...

... I look at the latest Roo picture I have, and I think: She's healthy. She's happy. She has an eternal family. She is still perfect, the most perfect baby I have ever seen. She has an amazing family, a family I love.

I gave that to her - indirectly, of course. But the perfect, happy Roo who is sealed to her mommy and daddy, is perfectly happy because she is sealed to her mommy and daddy. Maybe she would have been just as happy with me.

But maybe she wouldn't have been. It's not a risk I was willing to take.

She is happy. I will be happy, too, even if I'm only happy for her.

I did a wonderful thing, and no matter how selfish I am sometimes, I was selfless enough when it really counted. I forget that sometimes. That no matter what else happens, I did something pretty amazing once, when it needed to be done. I can't count on other people to remind me, so I'll remind myself.

It doesn't matter if people don't like me. It doesn't matter if they think I'm stupid or mean or a freak or a loser. It doesn't matter what things people might say to me that hurt me or cut me down. I will build myself back up. I will think of Roo, and I will be strong. I am strong. I'm not going to worry if no one else ever says so or thinks so. I will say so. I will think so.

And someday I hope Roo will think so, too.

I love her.

Some Days ...

... it's all too much. Everything. Everything hurts. I feel like I just can't ... I don't know. I just can't.

I miss my baby. I miss the sweet newborn that was mine. I miss having her nap on my shoulder, hearing her soft breath and feeling her silky hair against my cheek.

I want to look at the older pictures of her, six albums' worth, and remember her ... but the sight of her sweet, perfect little face cuts me to the core. Because she is not mine. I grew her - those eyes, that chin, they're very much mine - and gave her life, and loved her and took care of her. And she is a stranger to me. A perfect, wonderful little stranger.

When I placed Roo, I gave her parents a notebook I'd filled with everything in the world there was to know about Roo. Her schedule, her habits, her temperament, her health. I was a Roo expert. I knew her better than I knew myself.

That honor belongs now to P and M. They are privileged to know the ins and outs of Roo - to know every little thing about her - the sound of her breath, the faces she makes, the bumps in her tiny teeth. I signed all that away.

I will never regret my decision. And yet ... I miss her. I miss her, and it hurts. She is not mine. She will never be mine again. That will never, ever change. Which is sort of horrible. With my dad's death, I grieved (and still grieve), but that was different. My father will never be any less dead or more dead than he is. Nothing about that will change.

Things with Roo will change. The grief began with a birth, not a death. She will learn and grow and become her own person. Her life will have ups and downs like everyone else's, and things will change. And I won't be around for any of it. I will be an observer, a witness to it all, but it will not be mine to share, to enjoy, to thank God for.

To be a birth mother is to experience the worst sort of unrequited love. I love Roo with every atom of every cell in my body. And she will never really love me back. Not in the way that she'll love her mother. Which is how it should be. I know that. I wanted that.

And yet ... it hurts. And I'm going to live with that pain for the rest of my life.

I'll do it, though. I'll do it for her.

I'm Not Proud of This ...

I'm really not. And I wonder if I'm going to get a lot of vitriol for voicing this. But my current blogging philosophy is that it's best to be completely honest about my feelings and experiences because trying to paint a pretty picture isn't going to help anyone.

I need to make something abundantly clear, first and foremost: I am NOT for one second referring to P and M in any part of this. They are, in my mind, what every adoptive couple should be in patience and attitude and love. None of what I have to say applies to them AT ALL. I love them more dearly than I can say and if anyone even so much as thinks anything unkind about them, I will beat that person up.

That said ...

Sometimes - rarely, really, but every now and then - I get irritated by the attitudes of some hopeful adoptive couples. There, I said it.

I don't get irritated by many of them, and as I said, it's something rare. I love adoption and I think it's heartbreaking how many wonderful couples can't have children the typical way. Heck, I've got two pages of links to adoptive couple blogs in the hopes that maybe I can play some small part in helping their birth moms find them.

I try to go through my link lists fairly regularly to make sure I don't have any bad or invalid links. For the most part, I like reading their blogs as well. It helps me to feel that I've made the right decision for my little Roo.

But every so often I'll read something in one or two of their blogs that just grates at me. There's no kind way to explain it - no way of putting it that will make me seem any less juvenile and petty and selfish.

It's something that I'm guilty of, myself, which makes me a hypocrite, and I am acutely aware of that. It's something that everyone is guilty of at some point in this adoption thing, and I certainly don't fault anyone for it. It's just sometimes I get sick of it.

Desperation.

I'm not going to pretend that I can even for a second imagine the agony of the seemingly interminable wait to be chosen. I've never been on that side of it, and I hope and pray that I never will. I feel I can relate a little to the insecurity, the doubt - why not me yet? What is it about me that has kept me from being picked? - because I am single with no love life to speak of, and although I'm probably going to get crap for saying this, I think there are certain similarities in being single and wanting to get married and in being approved and waiting to be chosen.

I'll duck for a moment to avoid the rotted fruit being tossed in my direction.

All done?

Good.

But therein lies some of my beef with why-haven't-we-been-picked-yet desperation. And let me state again, I know how cruel and insensitive this is going to sound, and I am not the least bit proud of myself. When I read that sort of thing on a blog, my knee-jerk reaction is, hey, folks, count your blessings. You've got each other. You're sealed to one another. You've got something, even if it's not exactly what you always planned. No, you don't have children, and maybe you never will. But you have each other, and you've been approved to adopt. You have been found worthy to be parents.

Birth moms never get that official seal of approval.

And birth moms rarely have birth fathers involved to be there with them, to share the burden and the pain. I don't have a good man by my side to say no, we don't have a baby, but we've got each other. In my case, I don't even have a father around for support.

As a single pregnant woman, there is nowhere you can go for validation - no one to tell you that they've looked into your finances and your emotional health and relationship skills and everything else and found you to be a perfectly acceptable mother. The attitude is so often the opposite - you were stupid enough to get into this mess. You can't even take control of your own life. What makes you think you could possibly be responsible for someone else's? No one will tell you that you will make an excellent mother and that any child would be lucky to be in your care.

I searched for that kind of validation during my pregnancy. I couldn't find a single soul who thought I should keep my baby. No one on earth, not even my own mother, thought I could be or do enough for my child. I was found lacking. Not only did my baby's father desert me, but those close to me, whom I loved and admired and respected, also felt I simply wasn't enough, nor could I ever be. Those who knew me best found me lacking.

Adoptive couples have relative strangers - adoption agencies, caseworkers - telling them they are wonderful people, that they've lived lives of example and responsibility, that they've made the very best choices and will be wonderful parents.

Birth mothers have people who know them through and through telling them their babies deserve better than to have them as a mom.

When I was pregnant, I remember hearing someone say that it wasn't fair that so many loving, wonderful couples couldn't have children. The person who said it went on to imply that, as a knocked-up skank, I owed such a couple a child - they deserved to be parents and I didn't. My attitude, once I'd gotten past my initial offense, was that no, it wasn't fair that these couples were childless. But you know what else wasn't fair? I was single. These couples had each other, at least. Whom did I have? No one. Just my baby. They had each other for eternity. I had no such guarantee. This might be the only child I ever had, my only chance at a family. Yeah, their lives were unfair. But you know what? Injustice abounds. And I don't owe anyone anything.

I was wrong about that last bit, of course. I owed Roo the best I could possibly give her, and once Heavenly Father made sure I knew that, and told me who her parents were supposed to be, I gave it to her.

My point is ... well, okay, I'm not sure I have one. I guess it would be to be grateful for what you've got, even if it's not what you thought you wanted. I've come to realize over the past few months that this time I have as a single adult is going to benefit me. I am going to enjoy it while it lasts. I am going to study and travel and organize my life so that when, God willing, the time comes that I do marry, and have children (or not - there are no guarantees) - I will be a better version of myself, better prepared to be a wife and mother. I want to be happy just as I am - single and childless and slightly chunky. I want to learn to be happy without a man. I want to be responsible for my own happiness, instead of waiting for someone to ride in on a white horse and do it for me.

I think that having that kind of attitude - that I'd be happy with, but I can be happy without - is going to make me more attractive to men, and I think that there are certain parallels in adoption.

A birth mom doesn't want to read that your life is miserable without children. She doesn't want to feel that your happiness hinges on a baby. The most appealing thing to a birth mother (in my opinion, anyway) is a couple who wants a baby very badly, but who are making the most of life without one because they know that it will happen when it's meant to happen, if it's meant to happen at all.

And now I'd like to apologize for being immature and petty and selfish and whiny and rude and inconsiderate. It's a bit of a departure for me (don't laugh) and it's not something I plan on revisiting. I just needed to get it out, and if you've made it this far, then God bless you, little buddy. Because this was quite a rant.

February 2009, Part Two

My sister came to visit over Valentine’s Day weekend.

We’d never gotten along very well, owing to the fact that when we shared a room during our formative years, I was exceptionally obnoxious and she was exceptionally strong-willed. We’d learned to play nice as we got older, but I suspected that had as much to do with her moving across the country as it did with any real maturity or understanding.

We’re five years apart – 4 years, 10 months and 2 days to be exact. It’s a difficult age difference for sisters, and I always got the impression that in my sister’s mind, I stopped aging or maturing at around age 13, when she left for college. I was stuck forever as the bratty little sister, and it was only in the last two or three times we’d seen each other that we actually started to enjoy each other’s company.
The visit went well, for the most part. We got along swimmingly, and I dreaded the announcement that I knew I had to make. In light of my sister’s recent fertility issues, I was especially anxious about sharing my news.

Each day of my sister’s visit my mother asked me when I was going to tell her. I told her not yet. How on earth do you begin such a conversation? I didn’t know, so I put it off again and again. Finally, the last day of her visit, I decided to spill. My mother, my sister and I went to my brother’s house for dinner. And after dinner, when we were all sitting around and talking, I finally blurted it out.

My heart was hammering faster than my baby’s, I swear. It was awful. I felt like I was saying some sort of expletive. The word “pregnant” felt dirty in my mouth. But everyone was so nice about it, and no one seemed too horribly disappointed.

My sister called her husband a few minutes later, to tell him, and she relayed the message, “He says to tell you we’ll adopt it,” only half-joking. Which was awkward. Then my mom called my brother in Canada to tell him. I wasn’t sure how he’d take the news, either. His wife was due with baby #4 just a few weeks after I was due.

It felt so nice not to hide things anymore, though – to not have to suck in my stomach or worry that someone would recognize my clothes as being from Motherhood Maternity. I still wasn’t sure about adoption, although I did tell my siblings that I’d met with a few couples, when they asked what I planned to do.

I wrote to H – a nice long letter, sort of an airing of grievances. I waited anxiously for his response. And waited, and waited. His inaction made me worry about what sort of future we would have together, and what sort of father he might be. And yet to place my baby for adoption just because of H … inconceivable.

I wrote this in my journal a few days later: “Part of me wishes I could be pregnant forever. As long as you're in my belly, you're mine. I wish you could always be mine.”

And the next day: “I can't even begin to describe how the thought of adoption makes me feel. It's like my heart is being ripped out. I can't bear it.

I spent a good portion of the day crying. Things went poorly with S, I haven't heard back from H and ... just a million little things. I've never felt so alone. I have nothing. How am I supposed to give up the one good thing I have in my life?

I wish I could keep my little banana baby inside me forever and never let her go. How am I supposed to let her go? To some other family, to be their daughter. Their parents and siblings will get to pick her up and play with her and love her and I won't. It kills me. I die.”

I didn’t get an e-mail response from H, but finally he contacted me via instant message. It wasn’t pretty.

He told me, “I pretty much realize that when you have this child, it's up to us to have a good friendship , because I don't feel I can ever be what you need in a relationship setting.”

Well, I thought, that would have been nice to know a few months ago.

(Aren’t you glad, dear reader, that I’ve saved all my Instant Messages?)

He didn’t have much useful to say after that – more excuses, things about how he was distancing himself to keep from getting hurt. Apparently it didn’t occur to him that his distance might cause me any hurt. The conversation devolved. He mentioned that he’d been a big baby despite his mother smoking throughout her pregnancy, and then made a remark I’m not even sure I should mention (so here’s your EXTREME TMI warning) to the effect that I should take a photograph of a rather personal place to show to my next boyfriend, because I would never be the same after I birthed his spawn.

My jaw just about hit the floor. I teared up. How could he be so crude, so flippant? My next several responses were monosyllabic while I gathered my composure. He asked if I was showing yet, and if it was “uncomfortable to walk yet, or just kinda like a fat chick at a mall?” We debated the efficacy of therapy (don’t ask) before he signed off, saying “ok, i'm getting tired, and, well, admitingly, drunk.”

End of conversation.

I wasn’t sure if he’d signed off yet, so I typed this out for him to see the next time he logged on:

you still there?
i'll take that as a no
well for the record, i'm still mad at you.
you treated me like crap for five months when i was really vulnerable and that's not easy to forgive.
and i've got ultrasound pictures but i don't feel like you deserve to see them because i still don't think you really care.
i just wanted to tell you that.
and you said you think you could be a good father but the fact that you were drinking while having this conversation with me says otherwise.
so ... yeah. i think that's it.

The next night he messaged me again, telling me that he didn’t think his drinking had anything to do with what kind of father he could be. He said he had poor stress-handling mechanisms or something like that, and I pointed out that children can be stressful. He didn’t see the connection. I gave up trying to explain it.

The month ended and I was no closer to a decision, or to any answers, than I’d been the month before. I was getting tired and depressed and my patience with H was wearing thin. I wasn’t sure what to do about him. I wasn’t sure what had happened with the papers he’d been served with. But I’d survived another month of pregnancy, and I decided that was something to celebrate.

I Really, Really Need This

Oh, Mrs. R. You kill me, you know that? I think I will actually cry when I don't win this giveaway.

You know what it is this time? I can't even believe it. It's a blog makeover! Click *here* and check it out.

I've been saving my pennies for months now trying to get the money for some kind of pretty blog makeover. I would be happy verging on obnoxiousness if I won this. This blog post counts as an entry for me. Oh, I'd love to win. The only thing I can remember winning in my entire life is a New Year's raffle. And the prize was a Spice Girls cassette tape. Their SECOND album. I still know all the words to "Spice Up Your Life."

I just wish I could spice up my blog!