December 2008, Part Three

I met with S again. I told her I wanted to have H served. He wanted me to make up my mind? He was going to have to wait. And if he wasn’t going to be kind or supportive in the meantime, to heck with him.

I told S about looking at couple profiles, and about how I hadn’t felt any divine inspiration. At group I heard birth moms talk about the warm fuzzy feelings they had, and how they just knew when they saw their couple’s profile that they’d chosen right, and all sorts of other maudlin and sometimes nauseating clichés and hearts-and-flowers stories. I told S that I hadn’t felt that with any of the couples I’d seen. They seemed nice enough, sure. But there had been no heavenly choirs, no pillars of light.

She said that was normal, and that despite what I might have heard at group, she didn’t know any birth mom who’d had instant warm fuzzies. They all started off picking a few couples they liked, narrowing down the list, and meeting with them. I felt better after that. But I still didn’t feel 100% that adoption was the right decision.

My appetite was spotty, and my temper was all over the place. My brain was a thick swamp of hormones and hunger-crabbiness, and it was hard to think clearly about the right decision for my baby. I went back and forth on adoption like a tennis ball at Wimbledon. I was getting fatter, which depressed me because I lost weight after my dad died and I’d gotten down to a respectable size 12 when I got pregnant. I told myself that at the very least, if I went with adoption, the grief of losing my baby might equal my grief at losing my father, and I’d grieve myself back down to a smaller size.

That seemed like a bad way to decide on my baby’s future – a future I’d begun to wonder about more and more. What sort of person would my little Strawberry be? What would she (I always knew it was a she) do with those tiny fingers she was growing? Play an instrument? Throw a baseball? Write novels? My pregnancy hadn’t seemed completely real to me in the past. My therapist said I was detached. I didn’t feel it. Where once I had hoped to miscarry, with each day that passed I became more and more alarmed at the possibility of a miscarriage. The thought of losing my precious little fetus was unbearable. I took care of myself better than I ever had before.

I got a “Merry Christmas” text from H. I wasn’t sure what to think about that. My head knew, but my heart was confused. The part of me that still loved him wasn’t ready to completely shut him out. That part of me still wanted him around; wanted him to step up and be supportive and mature. I texted him back. He didn’t reply. I wept.

S texted me on New Year’s Eve telling me she’d given H’s information to the process server people. I watched a “Twilight Zone” marathon and brooded. I’d wasted so much of the past year! I wanted to take it all back, never have met H, spent more time with my father. I missed my dad so much! It seemed impossible for me to get through everything without him here. The past four months felt like years. How was I supposed to get through the next year without my daddy?

And how would my precious baby get by without a wonderful daddy like I’d had? The thought pained me. A little girl needs her daddy. But I was also pained at the thought of carrying this baby and then handing her to strangers. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I only hoped that the next few months would provide me with a few answers.