The Wounds of Adoption (Part Two) Parts Of Our Story

  When my husband and I were married we were twenty one and twenty two. We got pregnant and miscarried at nine weeks just around our one year wedding anniversary. It was the miscarriage with no seeming end, and eventually after lots of drama, I was diagnosed with a molar pregnancy that unfortunately carried on into needing seven rounds of chemotherapy over the course of a couple months. It was awful. When it was all 'over,' as in no more chemo and the massive tumor was gone, the doctor told me he was not sure if I could have children. I was the youngest person in my province to have had what I had at the time so they were not sure of the outcome for me. Usually in the severe scenario that I was in I would have had to have a hysterectomy. I was told to wait at least a year before trying to conceive again. So my husband and I did courses to become foster parents and did respite for families that had foster children. We were both working at different jobs and living at my parents as life had taken a pretty big piece out of both of us. We did this because we had no clue of the future and fostering seemed like a caring loving thing to do if we could not have children.
   We started doing respite for a fifteen year old girl who had a baby girl. We had met her just before she had had her baby. After she had her she did her best to parent but she made irresponsible choices ~ young choices really ~ and the ministry had to keep tightening the reigns to keep her little one safe. At one point she asked us to adopt her baby when she was just about six months old. We said yes without a ton of thought. We were young ourselves and we felt like such a future was before us. Why not be open!  It all fell through though and we were a bit more broken. She kept trying to do all she needed to do to keep the ministry happy. We stayed involved in her life and her sweet baby girl's life and continued to do respite for the baby girl. I remember this little girl sitting in a high chair, yelling orders to her mom while waving a fork around, and getting into cupboards and pulling things out, and I thought to myself, 'this little girl is going to be handful one day!' ~ well now she is my handful :) At that time I had no inkling of what was to come! After more months as the baby got older, and the mommy felt the pressure of more and more responsibility, and 'freedom' called like a siren song, she once again asked us if we would adopt her. This time we could feel it was more serious and we said yes once again. However we were more wary this time, more cautious and our view a bit more calloused. We loved this little girl as much as we knew how. She was so sweet and we did really want her for our daughter.
  Time passed and things got into motion and because we were foster parents she moved in with us. We found out we were pregnant shortly after her mother asked us to adopt her. The ministry miraculously decided to make a special exception and still allow us to adopt her even though I was now pregnant. Her birth mother changed her mind multiple time over months and the stress was extreme. However through it all I felt such a push to battle for her. I felt like I needed to fight for her and so I did. I wrote her birth mother letters and I prayed and prayed and through it all in the end she was ours for keeps. There were so many loopholes that had to be gone through. One massive moment was in court the birth mother fired her lawyer who was pressuring her to put all sorts of legal rules on what we could or could not do with our soon to be daughter. This would give the birth mother lasting power. She fired him on the day of all the papers being signed and at age sixteen she represented herself in court. The judge honored her and all the papers were signed. Everything was fraught with so much drama and stress. I have written this quickly and without massive detail but it was so stressful. I was pregnant also and worried about if I would get sick again or lose this baby and we had to move twice and buy a house. All of this while adopting and not knowing if she would actually be ours.
  Sometimes just the process of actually adopting seems the beginning of a deep wound. It starts with starry eyes and beating hearts. Will this treasure actually be ours? Then the process, the legalities, the time, time, time, the power being in so many other hands and our hearts being stomped on over and over while we can really only wait and fill out paper work. It is torturous. In all this we do not know the end result, and when we do finally hold that treasure in our arms  ~we only know that moment. We cannot see what lies ahead. We hope the open adoption, or the transition from country to country, or trying to breast feed, the attachment,  or whatever it is that we hope will be doable, will be okay, but there is nothing that we KNOW other then that we will love. It is the opening of a wound that pours out and that we have to be strong enough to heal no matter how many times it opens up. When we are lying on the floor by the empty crib sobbing because the birth mother changed her mind again ~ when we are burst wide open ~ when our grief has swallowed us whole ~ when we have waited so much longer then we ever dreamed ~  we have to get up and keep fighting...but so often there are hazey thoughts we don't want to recognize about this not being how we thought it would be. So hard this all is right?
  One day it was all a reality though. We fostered to adopt so it took a couple years for it all to actually be legalized as there was 'no rush.' By then I had a very colicky stressed out baby and a toddler that needed so much. One day it just simply came in the mail. One piece of paper saying it was all done and she was ours.  I was going through every motion I could to keep going and I remember just sitting down in the kitchen and feeling it ~ I was her mommy forever!
  It has been crazy and amazing and bewildering and there have been so many hellish moments and so many magical ones. I remember the first time she called me mommy. We went to an ultra sound during my pregnancy and she came. When my husband brought her into the room (she was not even two yet) she was able to express that she thought the lady was hurting MOMMY! I never forgot that moment and there were so many other ones. So many good ones, so many heart wrenching ones. I remember this moment (the last time we saw her birth mother) when she clung to her birth mother and said, 'mommy, mommy' in this voice that I can't explain but it shattered me because it hit me so hard that I have to share her. I have to share her forever.
  It is amazing how much our hearts can take. Even when we swear that THIS IS IT and WE ARE DONE and WE CANNOT TAKE THIS STRESS OR PAIN OR TRAUMA ANY MORE (of the whole process)...we just keep on going don't we? We want to blame others and be angry at the process or the innocence that is being taken from us, but we are doing it to ourselves. It is us that has opened ourselves wide open. We may have payed thousands upon thousands of dollars for this. We may have lost our marriage, or been separated from our spouses from months on end for this, we have hoped so deeply, cried so many tears for the moments we are in right now, we have lost so much of ourselves for this. We have done this and it is good. It is hard, but I do believe it is good. So we keep on. We keep reaching deep, reaching out and giving. It is beautiful, it is what we wanted. We have been gifted the greatest gifts. We are thankful.