Links to Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven & Part Eight are at the bottom of this page. Ultrasound - Jan 1992 Birth Day Birth Day (left) & Placement Day (right) Placement Day Placement Day Placement Day 2-3 wks post-partum, my first hike w/ dad's hiking group. Top Left: 4 wks, Top Right: 3.5mos, Bottom: 7 mos Adoption Day - 10mos (I think)
My apologies that “soon” turned into 3 weeks. I had a lot of pictures to sort thru & scan in.
I ended Part Eight by saying that placing her for adoption & having some early visitation wasn’t the end of the story. There is no end to the story because it is has been an ongoing, growing relationship not only between my daughter & myself, but also a friendship with her mother that I could have never imagined. Even pondering it now, I’m just amazed at what God has given me. It’s beyond words.
Through the adoption I obtained something greater than I gave away. At 19, I was essentially a child. But her mother never treated me with disrespect. Initially, I viewed her a mother figure in my life, a mentor. At some point, I realized that we had a deep friendship…a bond in our daughter. What makes it so amazing is that I never expected it. I expected her to be a wonderful, loving mother training my daughter with Christian values & ethics. But I could have never anticipated the role I would play in their lives.
Over these 17 yrs, she has given advice and asked for advice. She has asked for my input & opinion on matters that have flabbergasted me. Not because of the subject, but because I am amazed her level of peace in allowing me to play such a role in my daughter’s life.
Remember those 12 other adoptive family profiles I viewed? That’s exactly what they lacked, peace. It emanated from their protective & guarded words. They didn’t say it outright, but they screamed, “We’re going to take your baby & hide her away from you. We want your baby, but we’re afraid of you. You’re a threat to our family!”And rightfully so in some cases… Hey, I’ve met plenty of other birthmothers & I have been afraid too. I am not condemning adoptive families for these feelings. This is all completely natural and I would feel the same way too. My point is that my daughter’s mother had the same peace from God that I had & He grew in us an unfathomable blessed friendship. Second only to my friendship with Yeshua.
Note to Birthmothers: Your adoption, whether closed or open, is an opportunity to assess your life & make necessary changes. Grow. Learn. Mature. Progress. Make life choices in light of your child whom you loved enough to give to bless another family.
Note to Adoptive Parents: Love your birthmothers (& other biological extended family). Pray for them as you pray for yourselves in raising your child. Both will make a tremendous impact in their lives and yours.
Ready for some pictures?
Story Links:
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part One
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Two
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Three
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Four
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Five
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Six
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Seven
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Eight
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Nine May 20, 2009
All This For $53.50 May 16, 2009
Preparing for our upcoming trip meant making sure we could all get thru our vacation without running out of clothes. I decided that I would not go retail shopping for these clothes. Instead, I stopped at our local Goodwill. Take a look at what I bought for $53.50…
Each item cost an average of $2.94 before tax & $3.14 after tax.
For me: Jeans (1), shirts (1), skirts (1), & shorts (1).
For “I”: Pants (1), & shorts (2).
For “G”: Shorts (3).
For “Q”: Dresses (2) & skirts (2 – these can be shared w/”M”)
For “M” Dresses (2) & Shorts (1)
And some ham too…
What We Did With Our Friday Morning May 16, 2009
Friday morning started out pretty good. I got up at my new forced time of 7:30am.
I spent some time working productively on my travel plans notebook. As I often tell people, I don’t plan much in my life except vacations. While I don’t schedule my plans down to the minutes & seconds, I do like to have all of the essential information at my fingertips. This will be especially handy before we (that’s myself & 4 kids) disembark to run down the concourse to breathlessly catch our connecting flight. In my notebook are maps of all the airports we will be in, so when they tell me our connecting flight is at gate such & such, I won’t be hurriedly traversing thru the airport trying to read signs & keep track of my children. I’ve also got all the family bathrooms mapped out.
The tabs across the top mark the beginning pages for Flight Info, Rental Car, Hotels, & To-Do (as in things I “want” to do on my vacation).
The tabs along the side mark the pages for the specifics: actual flights, hotels, rental car, places. These tabs are in chronological order down the page even though the bottom two tabs are for pages more towards the front of the book.
I worked on my notebook until my girls woke up. They had expressed a desire the night before to bake a “blueberry cake” in the morning. So, I bought a Krusteaz blueberry muffin mix and we followed the instructions for making a Blueberry loaf.
Initially, 6 year old Q was very distraught that I was using a loaf pan (which I had to buy the night before too because I somehow have gotten by without one…oh yeah, I have a bread machine). Somehow I managed to convince her that her “cake” would still be a cake, but just be shaped like bread.
.
…and of course, they had to add food coloring swirls.
We hadn’t been at the cake baking long when 9 year old Ee-duh (a sibling mispronunciation we use to harass him with) demanded his daily ration of pancakes. I opened up the freezer and terror gripped me. Well, it wasn’t that bad, but he wasn’t happy when I told him I forgot to buy pancakes. See, I had intended on making the pancakes first thing that morning, but had forgotten about that when I saw my notebook calling me to organize our vacation.
He was miffed. But I assured him that I would make his pancakes while the cake was baking. He just had to be patient…which no one in this house seems to enjoy being.
As soon as the cake was in the oven, I grabbed all the pancake ingredients to make my quintuple batch. Wouldn’t you know it? My ground oatmeal was on E and I didn’t have time or feel like grinding up anymore. So, I grabbed the wheat flour instead and was on my way.
Since I do this on a regular basis, I don’t even bother digging the recipe out. Of course I have trouble remembering how much baking powder & salt I need. So, I guessed. When it hit me that I had put twice as much baking powder in as I needed, I really thought I had botched the pancakes. I didn’t know what would happen really. Oh well, I moved forward. It wouldn’t be the first time I slaved over pancakes only to have him tell me how much he hated them.
Just as I toss the beaters from the hand mixer into the sink, I remember what I always forget…the vanilla and almond extract. I added my vanilla. Then I went to pour the almond extract into a measuring spoon and I swear half the bottle emptied into the mix. It’s a small bottle, but still…that’s a lot of almond extract. I mixed it in with a wooden spoon figuring he was going to hate my botched pancakes anyway, so why bother worrying about the almond extract.
As I got to the end of the pancake batter, 9 year old son said he wanted to try making the pancakes on the griddle. He was able to make about 14 of them and use the spatula to remove them. He also made a big deal about wearing one of my aprons. I don’t know what all the fuss was about really because it’s a unisex black apron.
Anyway…so here they are…minus the 4 he ate.
So, that’s what this crazy household did on Friday morning.
(Remember the “cake”…between the girls who did some heavy damage and dh only a tiny square remained.)
* Pictures taken with a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P10
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Eight May 5, 2009
Links to Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven are at the bottom of this page.
My mom and I were the first ones to leave after placing my daughter with her family. (They still had paperwork to do and such.) We hadn’t reached the end of the road, when my mother, never too good at finding the right words for the moment, said, “I would have helped you keep her if you wanted to.” I’m sure she meant to comfort me in some way, but…I turned away from her and stifled back the tears as I started out the window.
Along the long drive home, a few tears eventually did come, but I didn’t let her know it. I cried, not about the adoption, but about what I felt was a lack of understanding and insensitivity. She didn’t get it. And I suppose it was odd that I would expect her to as I doubt I ever shared with her how God spoke to me and how He had filled me with peace. All she knew was that I had made a decision to give up my baby.
Throughout this whole process, from the day God spoke to me until this day, I hadn’t shed a tear over the adoption. I was genuinely happy for them and completely resting in God’s peace. As I saw it, there was nothing to grieve over. So I didn’t.
Back at home, I was relegated to sleeping downstairs on the couch (mom didn’t want me climbing stairs with my stitches). The next morning, I marveled at how much pregnancy weight came off overnight. And I began my diet of soda crackers (nothing seemed very appetizing) and water.
Then the phone rang…
“I called [Anne-Marie]…to tell her how [the baby] slept all the way home…, and how many times she woke up in the night and how often she was feeding! I wanted her to know that I was a wonderful mother, meeting all of [the baby's] needs with tremendous love and care and devotion. She had, and will always have the right to know this firsthand.”
Initially, I didn’t know how to process her mother sharing all of this information with me. It wasn’t that I didn’t care to know or didn’t want to know. But rather than dwell on it; I just listened, responded, and took it all in figuring I would do something with all of it later.
As she talked, I held the gift she had given me the day before. In a white square jewelry box was a heart pendant on a necklace and a heart-shaped note. The note read: “To [Anne-Marie]- This little heart symbolizes the love and gratitude in our hearts for your precious gift to us. We promise to keep in touch and be the best parents ever!…”
She kept in regular contact with me. Soon we arranged our first visit. My daughter was 4 weeks old when I drove down to visit early on a weekday morning. According to the open adoption counselor the adoptive parents had been educated under, this visit should have only been for no more than three (3) hours. Well, I arrived at 9 am and I didn’t leave until almost midnight or later. There was a lot to talk about. She had a lot to show me. Things she had made as part of their open adoption training meant to be shared with potential birthmothers. She also had a stack of books about birthmothers and open adoption, newsletters from the open adoption counselor, etc.
There was also a time of Q & A. She had a long list of things she wanted to ask me, things she would be able to tell my daughter about me, my family, her biological father, etc. We had a lot of fun getting to know each other.
I cannot even begin to describe the blessing of being able to share in my daughters early moments. While I wasn’t there physically to witness most of it, they took endless videos and still pictures. My first photo album was filled before she was 3 months old, if not sooner.
Two events really stand out for me from those early months:
During one visit, we were at a restaurant having lunch. A woman approached to admire the baby. She asked, “Who’s the mother?” Her mother smiled at me and we said as we smiled and giggled, ‘We are.” I’m sure we gave a quick explanation and I reflect back on that with great pleasure at how I was blessed to share in that joy.
The other event wasn’t really an event, but rather a three-way discussion via snail mail and phone calls with the open adoption counselor in California. During a phone call, I believe, her mother had shared with me a conversation she had had with the counselor. The conversation was about the stages I needed to go through. One of the stages was grief. As I already mentioned, I had nothing to grieve about. You have to lose something to grieve over it. I hadn’t lost anything. In fact, I had received blessing upon blessing in not only sharing in my daughter’s life, but knowing her family and developing relationships.
So, as the story goes, I wrote a letter to the counselor, under and alias which she saw through in two seconds. My letter was blasting her about this grieving issue. I was a tad infuriated by her telling the adoptive mother that I “needed” to grieve. Upon receiving and reading my letter, the counselor called the adoptive mother to tell her that I was worse off than she imagined. Soon, her mother called me to tell me about the phone call. We talked about it and we laughed. The counselor just didn’t know me. The adoptive mother accepted my reasons for not agreeing with the “need” to grieve and we moved on to develop a great friendship.
At the conclusion of the adoptive mother’s story recounting their adoption experience she writes, “[She] is now nearly four months old. Our darling baby’s coos and gurgles captivate us, her cries tune us in to her needs, and her smiles melt our hearts. Our joy is indescribable! [Anne-Marie] has visited five times and will continue to visit whenever we can mesh our busy schedules. Thank you, [Anne-Marie], for your courageous decision to place your baby, and for making our dream come true!”
The story doesn’t end there, so Part 9 is coming soon!
Story Links:
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part One
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Two
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Three
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Four
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Five
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Six
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Seven
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Seven May 1, 2009
Links to Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, & Part Six are at the bottom of this page.
“Then on May 19th,…[the adoption agency] called with wonderful news…[Anne-Marie] had a baby girl!! They told us to drive [up] as soon as [Anne-Marie] and [baby] were discharged from the hospital.”
After giving birth, I was moved into a private post-partum room. My best friend and her 3 yr old stopped by. Three hours later, my mom stopped in. She looked at me and said, “Are you flat?” Apparently, she did not get the message we left for her and had gone shopping. Eventually, I was alone. Completely alone.
I walked down to the nurses station and asked for all the paperwork for the birth certificate and social security card. After filling that out, I walked down to the nursery. As I had mentioned, the hospital didn’t know how to treat me as a birthmother. They had kept the baby from me after DiDi had left, not to be mean, but not knowing that I wanted to see her and care for her. The nursery nurse was giving her another bath when I went in. Apparently, she had made a mess in her bassinet. I asked if I could feed her and she said she would bring her to me at the next feeding. We chatted for awhile. I held her there. And then I returned to my room.
Around midnight, the nurse wheeled her little bed in there and showed me where all the stuff was in the cart. She helped me get situated in the bed (the IV was more annoying than the other discomforts). And she left me there to feed my daughter a 4 oz bottle of formula. The nurse had turned off the light and I had the plentiful light from the hallway to see by.
It was a quiet peaceful time. I looked her over and reflected on everything I had “thought” she would look like or remind me of. What really impressed on me most was how she was an individual. A product on two sets of DNA, yes, but so much more. She was beautiful.
All of a sudden, a loud alarm went off, the magnetic doorstop released, and I was alone in the pitch dark, feeding my newborn, and unable to maneuver to the nurse call button. I had no idea what was going on and I hoped someone would come open the door soon. I waited, but no one came. She was fast asleep in my arms, so I just snuggled down with her in my arms and lightly slept.
Three hours later, the nurse opened the door and apologized. There had been a small fire in the hospital kitchen and all the “safety” features kicked in. I was relieved that was over. The nurse took her back to the nursery and I went to sleep.
In the morning, DiDi and my mom arrived. DiDi had brought a cute outfit and a car seat. I got myself cleaned up and dressed. The OB released me about 11am. I rode in the backseat of DiDi’s car next to the baby. My mom followed DiDi to the agency, which was run out of the owner’s home. It was a 45 minute drive.
We arrived before the adoptive parents. They were coming from a further distance in the opposite direction as we had just driven. I settled in on the end of a sofa holding my daughter. Very shortly, a car pulled up in front of the house and a familiar face was in view.
“…24 hours after her birth…on May 20th, we met [Anne-Marie], her mother…,[the baby], [adoption agency owners], and [DiDi]…at [their] pleasant home…”
“Even though none of us had done this before (including [the adoption agency]), everyone seemed pretty relaxed on the surface. [Anne-Marie] looked exhausted (can’t imagine why!), but for about an hour, we chatted and admired our precious little bundle. And what a beautiful little bundle she was! She had lots of thick black hair, flawless skin, and a perfect little 7 pound, 7 ounce body.”
And I literally placed my daughter into the arms of her mother.
“We took lots of pictures, and then said good-bye with lumps in our throats. But we also knew we would talk again very soon, and be arranging a visitation.”
Story Links:
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part One
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Two
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Three
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Four
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Five
Unplanned Pregnancy – Part Six
Part 8 coming soon!
