Doing it all again
Continued from previous post

Two years after adopting Ben, we returned to the same adoption agency to try again. It seemed like a repeat of our first scenario, which had included getting “chosen” a week after we turned in our paperwork and bringing home a baby two weeks after that (see Parts 4-7 of this series for details).

A week after we turned in our profile, we received a call that we’d been chosen by a 19-year-old. Coincidentally, she lived in the same city as we did. Her due date was in one month.

When we met for dinner, she told us that her pregnancy was a result of a brief relationship she’d had with a military man while she was living in the eastern United States. She had moved cross country and wasn’t sure how to find him. We met with her a second time, felt extremely comfortable with one another, and she assured us that everything was a “go” for the adoption.

Four days before she gave birth, our caseworker informed us that the young women’s family and friends had provided her with a crib, clothes, an apartment and child care so that she could continue to attend college part time, work part time and parent her baby. Her son was born on my birthday.

I swallowed the frustrated pain of dashed hopes. I told people I was doing fine. I rationalized that I didn’t deserve to grieve for this baby because he had never been mine in the first place. I believed that I would be over-reacting if I openly grieved.

While my husband and I were grateful that the young women’s support system came through for her and we thought that she’d make a great mom, we questioned each other. Did we unintentionally say or do something that had turned her off during our meetings? Everywhere I went, I saw people with babies.

In the next post…Grieving adoption loss