Saturday, May 27, 2006

Peace and Gratitude

Yesterday was rough. I was at GWCA offices first thing to pick up Emerson's documents. Poor Beth. She had to run for tissues when I had a little emotional breakdown after reading that Emerson was found June 25, 2005 and her birthdate is estimated to be April 3, 2005. I had heard of birthmothers keeping the babies born in winter until the weather warmed up some to make sure they would survive...but Jiangxi is warm in April. So after knowing Emerson for 2.5 months, how could her birthparents have left her? I wanted to have love in my heart for my daughter's birthparents and this really threw me for a loop.

Thanks to my wonderful June Jitterbug family and their support and various perspectives, I went to bed yesterday having reached some measure of peace. Here's my post to them:

"Thank you so much to everyone who responded to my pain on behalf of my daughter today.

I will admit (please, no flames) that when I first opened "the email" and say her age, before I saw her photo, I felt very disappointed. When I was DTC, my expectation was "average referral age, 11 months". Then over the past 6 months, we've been seeing younger and younger babies and I was expecting 11 months as the OLDEST and was prepared for the possibility of very young baby. At 13.5 months, I knew I'd missed her first birthday, her first words, her first teeth, her first steps, etc.

But the instant I opened that photo, I just melted. So my first gut reaction to the lag in her being abandoned was purely emotional. Through my own life's filters, I was viewing this from the perspective of having such a strong emotional attachment immediately with this child and couldn't imagine being told now that I couldn't bring her home, so how could someone who has actually held her and fed her and comforted her and stroked her beautiful cheek while she slept EVER let her go?

But you are all completely right in that my circumstances are not those of her birthparents and I will never know the extent of the difficulties they faced in their lives that led them to this decision. And knowing how robust this little sweetheart is now, and apparently was at the time of abandonment, I'm finding a new peace and gratitude that she was given the chance at a healthy start at life before she was given up so that I could be her forever mommy.

Thank you all for being such a beautiful source of support and reason. (I promise to be back to my giddy self shortly...or is that more of a threat??) :) "

So this morning I'm off to Louisiana to bring grandma and grandpa a picture of their newest grandchild...and to eat as much boiled crawfish as I can. In several sittings throughout the day. It's the cajun way. :)

I can't wait until next spring to see the look on Emerson's face when she sees crawfish for the first time! LOL!

3 comments:

glo said...

I am glad you are settling down some on the inside. No one will ever know for sure those missing pieces of the why and when. I honestly do not understand ow anyone gives up a baby be it hours days, eeks or months. If I were a chinese gal and they were not going to let me keep my baby, I might try to hide or do anything I could to keep her and enjoy her as long as I could. It would seem to be very desperate conditions and yes, if she was healthy when found, she received good care, and could very well have a heart broken young birthmo out there, praying for "you " to give her, what she was not allowed to. You just never know. My life style has always been to assume the best , until someone proves me wrong. This one will be hard to prove. My grandbaby was a few eeks old when she was abandoned. We will never know for sure either.

Amy said...

She is beautiful! It's ok to have mixed emotions about things. Take a peek at our blog that talks about some things. It's interesting to see how people have been responding. We're not always honest, and I think you did a great thing by opening up! Blessings Amy

henna's hearsay said...

Have the acceptance letters been sent off yet?