Adoption...What You Don't Think of Until It's Too Late

First let me say, WOW it has been awhile! Second, what you are about to read, for those of you who have not given up your rights to parent, but are rather hoping for that mother to do so, I will warn you now, you probably don't want to read further than this sentence. For those of you out there that are "sisters", with stories similar to mine, maybe you will relate, or maybe you are still new to the intricate and heart wrenching world of adoption. What I am going to say is by no means an attempt at changing a future first mothers mind about giving up rights to parent their child...OK, maybe just a little. OH HELL, it's definitely an attempt to keep any unsuspecting Mother to be from living the never ending, nauseating, gut wrenching, hole in your heart forever life of placing their child into someone elses arms forever.

I thought that I had thought about my choice, every facet of it. I thought I was "OK" with my decision to give my child to this man and woman who told me one thing, only to find out twenty years later..it was all lies! My thought process was this, I am 17, I am single, I don't have a job, I haven't finished school, her father is doing things with his parents knowledge that no young person should be doing, and most likely will not finish school(which he didn't). My mom is a single parent, barely taking care of me and my sister, I can't expect her to care for me and my child. What do I have to offer her? I don't want her to miss out on things(material mind you), I can't provide her with the stability of a mother and a father. I'm not capable of providing her the things a family with two parents would be able to. I am doing this out of my love for her. She deserves more than what I have to offer her. What I didn't realise though, that I do now, is that I was doing the only thing I thought I could do. I felt, that once I said it and once I'd picked this couple, I couldn't change my mind. Guilt maybe? I felt like I couldn't change my mind, everyone had done so much, the lawyers, the aparents paid the doctor bills, plus my mom's heart was breaking, how could I keep a baby and make her feel obligated to help me.

See, I thought I'd thought of everything, but I didn't. At seventeen, truly, do we really see the whole picture? My mind didn't have any knowledge of the hole that my heart would be forever an open wound. I didn't realise that my love for my first daughter would see me through. I didn't realise that I COULD take care of her and give her what she needed. Love, a home, food and the basic necessities that she needed to thrive were there for me, I just needed someone to show me the way. If I had known then what I was giving up, I never would have signed those papers, I NEVER would have missed out on all those Firsts. I would have been MOM, Grandma or Nana or Mema, whichever the case might be. See that is what no one ever tells you, you are giving up not just the right to be a parent to your child, but the grandparent to their children too.

What a cruel joke Adoption can be. For those of us not able to experience "open adoption", I suppose it can be worse. Or those of us who have semi, only to have that door shut in your face because of the aparents lack of trust, or just out of sheer meanness maybe(sometimes). That to me is the cruelest of all. Now, in the midst of reunion, I am feeling that knife in my heart just turning and turning with every thought of what I have missed out on these years gone by. Now to my first daughter, who is soon to be a mom, I am no one. I am but the incubator that shielded her and gave her a place to grow and thrive, until her entrance into the world when she was ready, and gave her to another. I grew to love her before I knew she was there, from the first instant I knew she was growing inside my womb, I loved her. Before I felt the first flutters, until the moment I felt her turning somersaults and reeking havoc on my insides, I loved her. She was mine, if only for that brief amount of time, she was mine. They may have had all the "firsts" that came after, but I had her FIRST. I felt her growing, I saw her first, I held her first, I counted her fingers and toes first. I changed her first, I fed her first, I cuddled her first while she slept in my arms and I gave her those first kisses and breathed in every scent of her sweet baby smell FIRST.

I have this, I have those memories, they are mine, forever etched permanently, no one, especially those who lied to me to get what they wanted, will ever take that away. They might be "mom" and "dad", but I am her Mother forever. They are her babies Grandma and Grandpa, but I am the Grandmother.

I will just find some comfort in knowing that a little of who she is and who her children are, is apart of me. For example, two of the names she chose were names that I chosen while carrying her. Ironic really how life comes full circle no matter what we do with it.