Time Flies ...

There was a time where I thought that I would spend the rest of my life marking every Wednesday as one more week that had passed without my baby.

But here it is, Sunday, and I just realized I forgot that last Wednesday was seven weeks since placement. It's a strange feeling. P and M have had Roo almost as long as I had her. It feels like an eternity in some ways. It seems like a lifetime ago that I was in the hospital having Roo, or that I was up three times a night fixing bottles and feeding a baby. Sometimes it feels like maybe it was just a dream, that I never had a baby at all. I have days when I scarcely think of Roo, when I think that I don't miss her much at all.

And then some days I'll come home and see her picture and want to collapse on the floor and cry for all I'm worth. I will notice, in a picture, new fat rolls on Roo's legs, and I'll remember the feel of her little feet kicking my belly from the inside, and I'll marvel that I grew this little person inside of me, and I'll lose it because that sweet, precious baby isn't mine.

She has become a stranger to me. I once knew her better than I knew myself. I knew everything there was to know about her. I was a Roo expert, an authority, and she was my world. I don't know her anymore. I don't know what songs she likes to hear, what time she likes to eat, what makes her smile, how much she weighs, where her hair has thinned out, how she likes to be held. Realizing that is a loss in and of itself. It's almost as though I've lost a little bit of myself in losing that bit of mom omniscience. I don't know a thing about her anymore, except that once she grew inside me, and I gave birth to her and I loved her, and I still love her, this little stranger of mine. I miss her dearly.

And yet, I go on. I think that's the biggest bit of progress I've made in seven weeks. Where once I would have brooded about for an entire day about things, today I can miss her, and I do miss her, and I can still go on. I can eat and sleep and exercise and go out with friends and do things that people my age do.

It seems impossible that so little time has elapsed since I placed Roo. The world seems such a different place now. Every day that passes makes me just a little bit stronger, a little bit better. It is not easy - but what in life is ever easy? I like to tell myself that each day that passes brings me another day closer to the life I want to live, with a good husband and another sweet baby, one that I can keep. It doesn't do a lot, but it helps some, and most days, some is enough.

Time will pass whether I like it or not. My time with Roo slips farther and farther behind me. But I take comfort in that as sweet as her first weeks of life were, the rest of her life is going to be even better. She isn't my baby anymore, true, but she is going to have an amazing life, and I love knowing that I gave that to her.