I'm entering 2012 feeling full of sadness about our adoption. I am still completely excited about growing our family, about meeting this next baby, about everything that comes with a new baby (okay, maybe not the sleep deprivation part, but pretty much everything else). We are still completely sure that we want to do this. We still have peace in our hearts about this journey.
But as I greet this new year, the peace in my heart feels heavy. I can't help but remember the start of 2011, the year that we would become parents and meet the baby that was in my [oh so large] belly at the time. I didn't make any resolutions because the year seemed to hold so much change. I knew that simply adapting to that change would likely consume me. I already felt so much love for the baby growing inside of me (whom we wouldn't know the gender of until his birth), I could only imagine how that love would rock my world when there was an actual baby in my arms. And now that he's here, it would be impossible to overstate how much I love him, and how changed I am by his presence in my life.
And then I think about the baby that we will meet in 2012, likely growing in his or her mother's belly right now. I wonder if she's feeling the same things I felt last year - overwhelming love, excited anticipation, the promise to be a good mom. Does she rub her belly every morning as she wakes up like I did, grateful to feel her baby kicking around in there? Does she look at other babies and wonder what her baby will look like? Do tears come to her eyes like they did to mine when she thinks about finally feeling that baby resting on her chest?
I hope that all of those things are true. I hope with palpable desperation that the baby in her belly feels a mother's love. But knowing what will happen next, that a Child Protection Services worker will have to take that baby away from her due to "abuse or neglect," my heart breaks for her. There are a million roads that could have possibly led her to that end - addiction, mental illness, an abusive partner, systematic failure to impart basic life skills - but no matter what the circumstances are, I can't fathom a situation in which having your baby taken away from you is not completely devastating. And so my heart feels heavy for her. I'm sharing in her heartbreak today.
My heart breaks for the baby, too. He or she will become a part of our family only because the family that was supposed to raise him or her was unable to. Worse, for that failure to even be known by us means that there will be actual hardship. The baby that we will call ours will suffer "abuse or neglect," and then grow up without a biological family. In so many ways, it's downright unnatural. In so many ways, it seems impossible to survive. I feel crushed under the weight of it all. I'm sharing in this sweet baby's heartbreak today.
And then there's us. The adult children of two sets of married parents that both still buy us stocking stuffers. The parents to a healthy baby boy that came easily and with nothing but joy. A support system of friends that have known us since a time before cell phones. And none of it seems fair. Our good fortune feels so lavish, so uncommon, so completely opposite to the despair that our baby will be born into. My heart breaks for the injustice of it all.
*****
After a week or so of this heartbreak stirring up inside of me, I finally told Shane how I was feeling last night. To say the words out loud seemed almost impossible. I wept for the mother, for the baby, for the thousands of babies everywhere that might never belong to a loving family, for our own family for being so brave to support us through this all. Bless his heart, Shane just let me weep. He didn't try to lessen it or fix it or make sense of it, all of which would have been impossible anyways. He just listened until I had unloaded it all, and then he quietly said the only thing that could have possibly felt both true and hopeful at that moment: It's God's baby. It's not ours, and it's not hers; he or she belongs to God. Just like Louie belongs to God. Just like we all do.
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6 comments:
Very sweet and honest, my friend.
I think you'll find any mother who makes that connection you talk about with an unborn baby would do everything in her power to raise that baby including changing any unsuitable parenting that would result in a child's removal.Life ain't simple, adoption is complex.
Beautiful, Anna.
Von, I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from. Are you suggesting that all mothers whose children end up in the foster care system do not love their unborn children? Or that all children in the foster care system are in some way there because their mothers / parents did not love them enough to raise them appropriately? Furthermore, are you suggesting that my feeling of sadness for a birth mother's loss (even loss to the foster system) is unwarranted or inappropriate?
I whole heartedly agree with your statements that "life an't simple [and] adoption is complex," which is precisely why I have mixed emotions and a heavy heart about the matter. To say that children end up in foster care because their parents didn't love them enough to do everything in their power to raise them seems like an oversimplification of the issue, to say the least. -SportsFans Daughter
I think I might be concerned if your heart wasn't heavy about this. It's one of the many, many reasons I know you're meant to adopt. You love and feel every aspect of this child's existence, from every side. You're an amazing mom, Anna. Proud to be your friend ;)
I'm not saying any of those things Anna which is why I said it's complex.
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