Calling me Momma

For so many years, I had longed to be a mother.  Really, since the day we got married, I was ready to throw out the birth control and get our little family started.  My much wiser husband wanted to wait a few years.  We started trying the summer of 2007.  That fall was our first miscarriage, followed by surgeries, a move, new job for my husband, and the beginning of fertility treatments, and the experience of even more loss; pregnancies and a failed adoption.   Those treatments were hard.  Hard on my body.  The losses were hard.  Hard on my emotions.  Hard on our marriage.  Hard on my will.  Throughout all of it, I remember thinking, it should be this hard to become a mother. 

Through all the loss and hurt, we struggled waiting.  I was not a very patient waiter, so once we were matched with Isaac's brithparents, things seemed to move rather quickly.  We were matched on a Wednesday, drove to Louisville to meet  them for the first time that Friday at lunch, and then she was induced for low amniotic fluid the next Friday, two weeks early.  Things were happening fast, so it seemed.  We drove eight hours, all night long, not knowing if she had had the baby yet.  We arrived early that morning, and got settled into the hotel and found the hospital. Later that night, 24 hours after she was induced, little Isaac was born, and within minutes we were able to hold him.  At that moment, as tiny as he was, he held a big place in my heart. 

We were able to each hold him for a few moments 

as they moved him between the OR and the nursery

 We stayed with him at the hospital, caring for him, rocking him, feeding him, and enjoying the moments, knowing soon he would have to go into foster care until the court date where his birthparents rights would be terminated.  We didn't know how long we would be separated, we were told it could be a week, or as long as four.  Nothing could prepare us for the long ride home, after saying goodbye to him in a hospital parking lot.   His foster parents were amazing and we were reunited after ten days (our agency said one of the quickest court dates they ever had in that county). 

               

We had to stick around the area until ICPC had cleared both states, and during that time we visited the Louisville Bat factory.  We walked around the museum, watched the move, and went on the tour of the factory.  At the end, they hand out little souvenir bats.  The gentleman who was our tour guide, handed me two, and said "Here you go momma, one for him too".  I almost stopped dead in my tracks.  He called me momma.  He didn't know my history, didn't see the hurt, didn't know of our past, just saw me in that moment, of what I was, finally.  A momma. 

Outside the Louisville Slugger Bat Factory

Since Isaac could talk, he called me Momma too.  Now that he's getting older, the occasional Mommy, or Mom sneaks into his vocabulary, but most of the time it's just Momma.  And there is nothing else I love more than just being Alex and his Momma.  It's amazing how this simple, two-syllable word could heal so much hurt.