Charlie Stuff

Today we should have brought our baby home. We should be exhausted. We should be covered in spit up. We should have changed a record breaking amount of diapers. I should have worried that I wasn't being a good enough mom.

Instead we stayed in bed as long as we could. I wore my pajamas all day and didn't put on any makeup. I sat on the couch and watched TV while Jack played video games. Jack and I sat on our bed and talked and laughed until I remembered I shouldn't be happy and broke down in sobs. Today I wondered if I would ever be a mom.

Last Tuesday we got a call. We were supposed to meet our birthmom and her counselor in American Fork. It was August 18th. The due date of our baby. I figured they wanted to meet to go over any last minute questions and make sure we were all on the same page. Jack and I sat in a room with our birthmom and her mom. We sat 1 foot away from her as she told us she changed her mind, she was keeping our baby.

Our baby had a name. Our baby had a nursery. He had a closet full of clothes/toys/diapers/etc. He had extended family who were all SO excited to meet him. He had a future. A future we had spent the last nine months planning. He was going to be happy. We were all going to be happy.

The counselor asked Jack and I if we had anything we wanted to say or talk about. We didn't say much, and the counselor tried to fill in the silence by offering us a sales pitch for her adoption agency service. Jack told her it was too soon, and that we didn't want another baby; we had one with a name, a room and loving parents, and another one wouldn't have been ours.

We left the room after that and broke down. We left one of our cars in American Fork and drove together. We drove to a park we had never been to in Orem and sobbed under a street lamp. We stayed there for hours, talking about how we felt and crying. Our insides ached and they still do.

We've talked a lot since, but the ache seems to linger. It's not something that most people can understand or explain-- to be on the precipice of escaping infertility's clutches, only to be sucked back to the very bottom based on decisions that were never in your control.

Jack and I have learned that things don't always happen for a reason. A lot of people believe that: we don't. Sometimes things happen not because it's God's plan, but because God's plan allows people to make choices for themselves. Choices that have a lasting effect and can ruin people's lives.

We don't know the long lasting effects of this experience. We don't know if we'll be wiser, bitter, shut off or more open, but the pain and suffering are very real and we can't imagine it ever being gone.

We feel like our baby has died. The child in our hearts no longer exists. We are in mourning. We have constant reminders all over our house of a life that was denied us. We cry over memories that don't exist because we never had the chance to make them. But they are real. Our baby was real. Our pain is real.

Despite this pain we're experiencing we feel so very blessed to have such loving friends and family. We've received emails, facebook comments, phone calls and gifts from people who love us. It means more than we can say to know that we are loved and cared for and this is not a burden we have to carry ourselves. Thank you. From the bottom of our hearts.