My baby story - Part 2

Part 1


When I found out I was pregnant, my brother was in 1st grade. Our dad passed away a few years earlier. With my brother being so young and not yet capable of truly understanding death, he had a difficult time dealing with. I don't think we ever fully understand death, but he had a particularly hard time.

My mom took the next few years after my dad's passing off. She became more involved in my brother's school. Because my brother was not in an emotionally stable place, the news of me might have also been difficult for him to process. I believe my mom had talked about my situation with his teacher.

As a parent, I believe this is an important thing to do. If a teacher is aware of events going on the family, they can be more aware of the child. If the child begins to struggle, they have an awareness of the reasoning behind the actions.

My brother's teacher was a wonderful lady. For years after he left the 1st grade, we would still run into her. She would always stop to chat and ask how all of us were doing. This teacher had some friends. These friends were looking to adopt a baby. The type of adoption they were hoping for was an open adoption. Her and my mom exchanged all the pertinent information with the hopes that it would give me more options.

I don't remember all of the details of how we met. I am fairly certain that I called the agency and they set up a meeting for us. I remember meeting them and thinking that they were wonderful people who would be wonderful parents. I vaguely remember all of the legal mumbo jumbo explained to me. It really didn't matter much. In my heart I felt this was the right thing to do. I fully understood that our legal rights would be terminated. 3 months in we couldn't decide we changed our minds and wanted the baby back. The notion that I would even consider doing something like that just wasn't me. I knew this would be a decision I wouldn't go back on.

If we decided to go ahead with an open adoption, we would cut all legal ties, but that didn't mean other ties would also be cut. We could visit, write letters, call on the phone. The extent of those were up to us to agree upon.

After we met and talked everything over, we left and had some thinking to do. My boyfriend ad I spent many, many nights talking about what the right thing to do would be. We talked about what it would be like if we kept the baby. We tried to think of places we could live and how we would be able to bring in money. At the time, we didn't know about WIC (a government program to help low income families). I still think that if we knew about that program, ti wouldn't have changed our minds.

In our hearts, we knew this couple was where we wanted our baby to go.

As clear as if it happened yesterday, I remember sitting in study hall, hand-writing my letter to them. We had talked it over and we both agreed that we wanted our baby girl to be raised by them.

Over the final months of my pregnancy, we met with the couple a few times. We could see in their eyes how happy they were to finally have the chance at a child of their own. Even though this baby girl was growing inside of me, I thought of her as theirs.

They started the process of getting their house ready for a new baby. We learned that they had chosen a name for her. I will not share it here, but I will say that their choice in names was just perfect.

They were happy to have a baby to look forward. I was happy because I felt like I was doing such a great thing. Everything seemed so perfect.

Until the day I gave birth.

End part 2




I am linking this up
with Shell's Pour Your Heart Out

To continue reading - Part 3