My baby story - part 3

Part 1

Part 2


When I ended Part 2, I led you to believe that this part would be about the day I delivered a baby girl. And while it is, there is a funny story that I must share before I jump into that.

I was approaching my due date. While I wasn't huge by any means, you could definitely tell I was pregnant. Every morning I waddled my ass down the street to my sister from another mister's house. We would then proceed to go to our bus stop - her walking all nice and normal. Me? Not so much.

We took the bus every day and we had the same driver every day. As much as I hated the man for making us listen to Howard Stern every morning, I did appreciate the fact that he seemed to look out for his precious cargo.

One morning in particular, we boarded the bus. He stopped me at the top of the steps and informed me that he was a volunteer fireman. If anything were to happen, he would know exactly what to do. That was not exactly the man I wanted to deliver my baby, or any baby for that matter. But I did appreciate his words.

Shortly after that, not sure when, but maybe a week, 2 at the most, I woke up in pain. Nothing severe, but enough to be annoying. The fact that it was 5 in the morning only added to the annoying factor. I am not a morning person by any means!

Thank goodness I still lived at home and had my mom to help me. She asked how much pain I was in and if the pains were consistent. Enough and yes. We grabbed my bags and headed for the car. Half way out of the driveway I felt the sudden urge to...


Call my sister from another mister. Did you think I would say push? No, we'll save the story of my 2nd birth for another time! I'm sure she would have figured out what was going on if I wasn't at her house by a certain time. But I still had to call her.


I'll spare you the details of the actual birth itself. It was nothing out of the ordinary. I had my epidural, the only time I had an epidural, and after a few more hours than expected, a baby girl was born. For obvious reasons I can't share any pictures, but trust me when I say she was absolutely perfect. 10 teeny fingers, 10 teeny toes, and a teeny bit of blond hair on her teeny head. Yes she was small, 6 1/2 pounds, but she was healthy and perfect.

I'm not sure if it was hospital policy or if it was my situation, but the baby slept in the nursery at night. The nurse would bring her into my room when I asked and take her back when I asked. I spent those 2 days in the hospital feeding her and changing diapers. I also loved to watch her sleep. The boyfriend (now husband) also came to visit. Watching him hold her broke my heart. I could tell it was hard for him as well. But I think if we didn't spend a little time with her we would regret it for the rest of her lives.

My last day in the hospital was full of so many emotions. I was happy to be going home. I'm the odd one who actually likes hospital beds, but they still don't compare to my own. As happy as I was to go home, I also didn't want to leave. I knew when I was finally wheeled to the entrance of the hospital, there would be people there waiting for me. Not people who were taking me home. They were people waiting to take a baby home.


I was quite capable of walking myself out of the hospital, but I had to follow hospital procedure. I didn't always like to follow the rules, but I really wasn't in the state of mind to argue. On the back of my wheelchair hung my bags. Balloons were tied to the handles. A teeny pink bundle was nestled in my lap. Through the hospital we went.

We came to the front doors and I knew it was time. Time to make the exchange. The smiles on the faces of the new family helped remind me that this was the right thing to do. We were in no position to provide a child with all the opportunities they deserved. This couple could provide what we couldn't. They took their teeny bundle. The balloons, too. There was no reason I need to keep any pink congratulatory balloons.


I have never considered my first baby, now a young lady, mine. She has and always will belong to the people she knows as her parents. But that doesn't always make it easy for me. For years I had good days and bad. It didn't help hearing abortion rumors when I did return to school. Who says that shit? I found out who it was and it took everything I had to not kick his ass. And I wasn't a fighter.

Now that we have 2 of our own children, it can still be difficult. I wish they knew more of their sister. We do have pictures around the house. They are aware of who she is. My son is only 5 so his level of understanding is not all that deep. Through the years we have visited. I'm not sure if I mentioned if before, but we decided on an open adoption.

For the past year or 2 we have only sent cards and pictures to each other. As any parent knows, life happens. I know she is involved in activities, as are the 2 I have at home. Add to that the weather (last winter here was nothing short of brutal!) and family things, and visiting is not as easy as we sometimes hope.

I know she knows who we are and our 2 kids know who she is. Deciding to go the adoption route was a difficult decision, but to this day I still feel we did the best possible thing. I still have my bad days, though not as often as I did in the beginning. But that doesn't mean I regret anything.

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

My baby story - Part 1

I read many blogs. Some of those blogs are very inspiring. The authors tell stories of their life. They tell these stories from the heart.

I feel it's time for me to share one of my stories.

Thank you Shell, Ian, Erin, and Kmama for inspiring me and giving me the courage to share.


This is the story of my birth story.

My first birth story.


The year was 1996. 17 years old, enjoying my senior year in high school. I was dating a wonderful man. The man I would later marry.

We were teenagers and we did what the typical teenage couple does. I'm sure we can all relate. One thing leads to another. In the heat of the moment, we didn't think to grab any kind of protection. It won't happen to us.

But it did.


Telling my mom was one of the scariest things. Still living at home, I would have to deal with the repercussions from her daily. Not only was I scared about what would happen to me, I was also a little ashamed. Another knocked up high school girl. She used to be such a good kid. That's what they would all say.

My mom was very supportive, but she did stress that I needed to step up. She wouldn't be the one to make the doctor appointments for me, nor would she be the grandmother who raised her grandchild.

After I told her, telling my boyfriend, now husband, really wasn't that hard. To say he was shocked would be an understatement. Without even saying it, we both knew that abortion was off the table. We were going through a rough patch in our relationship at the time. We didn't know exactly what path we would take, but we did decide to work on us and make the decisions together. To this day, I am very grateful for that.

In the beginning, no one had to know what we were going through. We both knew other girls in our school in the same situation. We both had heard what others were saying about them. Some of those comments were good, but most were not.

I don't recall any negative comments once I was starting to show. Were things not said? I doubt that. Did my friends keep me from hearing the negative rumors? Most likely. If that is the case, I thank them for that.

I didn't really talk about my pregnancy outside of my close circle of friends, but I did have to tell my teachers. I was due towards the end of the school year. Since I would still be in school, I needed to figure out how to keep up with my work in order to graduate.

As my belly started to grow, it became more and more real that this was really happening to me. We needed to figure out a plan for when the baby was here. Panic was creeping in. We didn't know where we would live. Neither of us had good jobs. I worked at Burger King, and him, cleaning a bakery after school. That kind of money would make it difficult to buy a crib, formula, and god knows what else.

But as this panic started setting in, a plan started to take place.


To continue reading - Part 2