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.
