Can you imagine? I'm not looking for pity here but just to get some people to understand. Can you imagine carrying a pregnancy.... feeling every kick and movement, hearing every heartbeat, watching every u/s.... Gaining weight, vomiting up your meals, and feeling your body become weak as it nourishes the fetus inside you sucking out your energy. Then you eventually go into labor... if you're like me five... six times.. going to the hospital and being put on machines, being injected with steroids and medications to help the pregnancy remain. Then eventually going into real labor and being in labor for five... seven... ten.... hours? Then pushing for who knows how long until finally a healthy baby is delivered. You hear this baby cry, screech ! You feel your heart tug at you as they rush this baby you delivered, YOUR baby, out of the room...
You are not permitted to go see this baby you just birthed, not right away, and doing so is going against the "morals" of the adoption plan you have set up.
But you do it anyways, the next day. You have to see this baby. You must hold him or her against you and breathe in your child's scent.
You go down to the NICU or nursery and your baby is crying frantically, screaming his or her lungs out. You walk over and you gently pick your baby up, sit down and lay him or her against your chest. He or she stops instantly, recognizing you as mother. But you have no carseat, no money, and will have no home if you leave this hospital with this baby right now. What kind of mother would you be, you question yourself? What kind of person and mother would I be to leave with this tiny little person with no means of caring for him or her at all? What kind of mother would I be to not stop and think about my other child back at home who needs me, who I can barely care for at this moment either? I'm a bad mother. He or she doesn't deserve me. They don't deserve me as a mother. I am useless, I am worthless. I can't be what they need me to be right now. I am alone, I have no support, no help. How can I keep my baby?
You stare down at him or her for hours, counting the eyelashes or the breathes this newborn takes. All of a sudden the prospective adoptive couple swoops in with their excitement. Your tears are ignored. They pressure you to hold "Their" baby. How can you say no? What can you do right now? How can you say, "I want more time?" How can you deny them? What an awful person you would be to take this moment away from them. How could you make them nervous about taking this little one home? How could you ruin them? Their emotions matter more than yours. You are unable to speak, scared to say anything wrong to these people so eager to take your baby from your arms.
You leave the room empty handed and go back to your recovery room alone. You cry your eyes out searching for any way to keep your baby but no ways are to be found. Nurses come in and you beg them to talk, they shake their heads and say they're too busy and shuffle out the door on their way. Nobody comes in to see how you're doing, although your cries are pretty loud and hard to muffle even with the pillows.
A lawyer comes in and tells you to follow him. He leads you into a large room that has two older women sitting at it. They gaze at your, as if they're staring deep into your soul. Then all this paperwork is pushed in front of you and a pen handed. The lawyer grazes through it telling you "initial here, initial here, now sign here". This is too much, this is too hard, you mentally and emotionally shut down. Your eyes glaze over and your hand glides over the papers just doing as told as you zone out. What else can you do? You leave, get in your car and drive home.
Later that night your breasts fill with milk and you try to sleep, you awaken hearing baby cries, your baby's cries, the ones you heard in the hospital before you picked up your baby. You dart upwards from the bed searching everywhere - where are these cries coming from? Too disoriented to realize they're coming from your own head. But they're real, too real. Your baby needs you, you need to find him or her.
Days pass and every night you wake from dreams screaming, instinct tells you to find your baby - even though your brain tells you that your baby isn't here. Your baby can't be found.
You beg the universe to please let this pain leave, please let it stop. But it doesn't. You're overcome with so much grief and nobody there to understand. You call a friend or a family member and you're told, "You did what was best, you'll survive". But you don't feel like you will. "You'll get over it, he or she deserved better". My other child deserves better too, I shouldn't be here. The world crumbles around you and your emotions are negated by everyone at every corner you look.
You end up going to check yourself into the hospital because you know you can't make it through this alone. Your emotions are too powerful, too strong. But you did the right thing, right? Your emotions don't matter at all. Who cares about how you feel. Except, you can't shut it off. It's there and it will never go away.
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