Saturday, November 28, 2009

My friend, my birth son's Mom.

The past few days I've been privileged and blessed with the honor of visiting my birth son and his family. It has been the most comfortable and completing experience for us all. My birth sons mom and I are friends first and moms second. I cherish her friendship and cherish her as my birth sons Mom. Earlier today she and I shared with my sister the story of how they came to adopting and how I came to placing my birth son for adoption. Just listening to each others stories and how beautifully we were intertwined left me in awe. I love my birth sons mom. She has an easy laugh, caring eyes and a warmth about her. She is an excellent mother and I appreciate her as a person. Over the course of this visit we have spent hours just talking about children, marriage, and life in general. This visit has definitely drawn us closer to each other. The friendship allows something in this experience that delicately upholds us all and that is trust. Trust in God first because without Him this would have never been, and trust in each other to uphold what has been so beautifully formed. Walking around this friendship is a young man whom we both love deeply. She said it perfectly today, for the love we both feel for him we gladly oblige, we gladly share, and we gladly love. It is perfect and I rarely use that word to describe anything, but in this circumstance it is appropriate. In fact, she and I have decided to write a book together about our experience and how this adoption has truly knitted us. Amazing? Yes.

Friday, November 20, 2009

One night a Mommy: Part 3

I wanted my son to know that his parents ( Adoptive Parents) were there for him from the very beginning. So, I invited his mom to go with me for the remainder of my Dr's visits. She was able to hear the heartbeat, she was able to see the ultrasound, and both his parents were in the delivery room with me when he was born. I did this for him, I wanted him to know they held him from the moment he was born, which they did. It was joy and tears when he was born. He was this perfect little brown baby boy. He had so much hair, just like E-man had when he was born. I asked for him to be in my room for the one night I would be in the hospital. The hospital had written down on my chart that this baby was being placed for adoption so they couldn't understand my wanting him in the room. I guess looking back now, they were probably more accustomed to closed adoptions where the baby is whisked away and kept separate from the birth mom, I'm not sure. So, for one night I was his mommy. The next morning his mom and dad showed up to the hospital and I was again so joyful over the fact that this couple I had grown to love were going to be the ones to raise my son. She sat with me in the room while making phone calls announcing the baby had been born. Then, the tears welled up and the previous nights pain hit me again. She lovingly put the baby down , held my hand and said" You know, I will be able to tell him that you wept over this." When we all left the hospital they put him in the car and I waved goodbye as I went back to the home I was staying in. The following 3 days were very painful and out of it I wrote three poems. One of which I will post. I saw them the following Sunday at church and we sat together. I held him in my arms as I had the other night, but this time I held him as his birth mom. I knew I was holding my birth son and it was okay. A gentleman from the church came over and put his arms around his mom and I and said "Congratulations to you both!" How perfect was that! We held a dedication ceremony and a couple of weeks later I flew back to Arizona, with E-man in my arms.

The legacy of a Birth mom

Somewhere out there is a woman
Whose heart is thinking of you
She thinks of you everyday
Believe me I know this is true
When she found out she was with child
She had to face reality
knowing she couldn't raise you
She had to face other options you see

Abortion was not the answer
how could she ever kill you
So adoption became her answer
Yet she needed God's strength
to see her through

The thought of letting you go
Haunted her day and night
Yet despite of her pain
She knew that this was right
Don’t think she didn’t love you, didn’t want you, didn’t care
Letting you go was the hardest thing she’s ever had to bear
Her love for you was painful
Yet she hopes one day you’ll see
Because of all her love for you
She was able to set you free

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Part 2: meeting my sons parents.

I knew early on in the adoption process that I wanted an "Open adoption". I couldn't imagine going through life not knowing what my son looked like or him not knowing me. What I was hoping for was the privilege of peeking through the windows every now and then to see how he was doing. I had no expectations of what that would look like, I would have been content with a photo or a letter. I remember going to a restaurant to meet with potential parents for my son. I vividly remember walking into the restaurant and seeing this smiling couple. The husband seemed very nice and his wife had such warm and caring eyes. Without even knowing them, I knew that who I was meeting was my son's parents. I can't explain even now how I knew,except to say that Providence had a complete role in it. I was very young and lacked so much wisdom yet I knew from the moment that I met them, they were the ones who would raise my baby. I left the restaurant sure ,yet wanting to see them again. We met again a couple more times and each time I left being reassured that yes they were the ones. We met at McDonald's while their first adopted child and my first born played in the play area. I knew I would be telling them what I think they already knew, that yes this baby I was carrying in my belly would be the child they'd carry in their arms. I told them both and we wept together. She held my hand and told me that they had already decided that they wanted to help me whether I was going to place the baby for adoption or not. My son's Mom and I really found a kinship that has grown over the years. I trusted them with my most precious son and now 13 years later they are trusting me with their precious son by allowing my family and I to stay with them for a week and visit. Talk about a "little peek" into his life. Never would I have imagined how far back the curtain would be pulled and how much our lives would become so sweetly intertwined.
Click here for part 3!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The Scarlett Letter A of Adoption

I'm a birth mom, which means I placed a child for adoption. It is an awesome open adoption and I'll write more about that tomorrow. Right now though I am backtracking a bit and the reason I wanted to write these "mini blogeries" ( blog+series) is because in less than a week I will be visiting my birth son ( the son I placed for adoption) and his family. Again, I will write more about that tomorrow. Today I want to talk about the experience of my adoption from the angle of a culture in which adoption is not viewed upon well. Being that I am Hispanic I faced quite an opposition to my decision to place my baby for adoption. It was an already difficult decision to make, but add in the fact that my family and most of my Hispanic friends viewed it as a form of abandonment. I struggled with my own cultural experiences where if you had 10 kids and a 1 bedroom home, you all just slept on the floor! The oxymoron in this though is that abortion would have been completely acceptable and perhaps even the " more responsible" thing to do. I was too young to have another baby and I was not financially nor emotionally equipped to provide what was needed. So, it wasn't so much that I admitted those things, it was more the fact that I didn't choose an abortion. Isn't that strange? How can you give your baby away? Yet "how can you kill your baby?" didn't necessarily come out of any one's lips. Perhaps it is easier if you don't think about it, I'm not sure. For me, choosing to place my baby for adoption meant that I was crossing a cultural pickett line and it was very difficult. Most of my family didn't quite understand what good would come from that decision. It took my Mom about 7 years after the fact to finally say, you made the right choice. Some of my family still today views me as less of a person for the decision I made. I'll be honest, I'm completely okay with that because, I see my birth son flourishing and having the life I had hoped for him and as a birth mom I proudly wear my scarlet letter A, it means that I chose life and life more abundantly for my son.
click here for part two!

Monday, November 9, 2009

a little loose tooth, a big revelation

So....Samuel (my 6 year old) started growing a permanent tooth behind all of his teeth and I panicked a bit. I wore braces for 5 years when I was little because my teeth were so bad and worried that Samuel may also have problems with his teeth. WELL, this morning he kept saying one of his teeth was hurting and when I checked it we found it was loose! Yes, that means this baby tooth is getting ready to get out and his other tooth will be able to move in. I'm relieved and yet this was an example of what can happen at certain times of our lives. Sometimes there are parts of our lives that are growing and developing without the necessary space alloted for that growth. It almost seems impossible for a change to take place and then it happens, room for that growth. Just like Samuels' little tooth, some things have to go in order for the more permanent things to stay. Let's face it, at times it can feel like " pulling teeth" ( parampamching) and yet I believe the key here is to allow things to occur in their time, rather than rush them. The bible speaks so much of God's timing and today in this sweet little mouth I saw a perfect example of that.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

QUINCHO BARRILETE

It's okay you're probably looking at the title, thinking " huh what?" It's the title of a very famous song written in the 70's by a man from Nicaragua. Long story short I grew up hearing my family listen to the song and they usually sang along with a bottle of something while playing cards. As a child I thought they were crazy. Years later when I ventured off to Nicaragua I became somewhat interested in this country that my family so loved and yet fiercely fled. Once in a while I will hear a song from those times but they tend to sadden me because it reminds me of my mother, which then reminds me of the fact that she is no longer here. Anyways, tonight I ,for the first time, listened to the song and finally understood it's meaning. The song is about a little boy killed during the revolution,and the song at that time carried a heavy political message which stood contrary to the powers that were(and unfortunately still are). I sat and listened to the song a few more times and even googled it to see how great the impact of that song truly was. I realize now that my family probably listened to the song with that same bittersweet sensation I now feel in my own heart. For them I'm sure it was a jog down memory lane, perhaps an air of what once was and the stark reminder of why it could no longer be. So over cards and spirits(the liquid kind) these songs played and without my knowing they became embedded in me. When I hear this music it will still take me back to those days only now I won't look at my family as if they were crazy(although they were) but I will also fondly look at them in appreciation for what they endured.
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