Paper miscarriage

Children do not come into the world easily. Nor do they seem to enter families easily. At least not my family.

Buttercup entered my family the day my mother died, while I was still under bedrest orders from my surgeon who had performed a radical hysterectomy on me just 10 days earlier. While I was preparing for my surgery, Mom compared it to the physical pain of childbirth, telling me many times that that would be my labor.

"It'll be like you've had a C-section!"

And then some.

So what is this, then?

Three times we have petitioned to an agency for a particular child, and three times different families have been chosen to proceed.

Three times.

It's easy to tell yourself that it's unwise to become emotionally involved. Don't get attached to the photo, no matter how much the little girl in the picture looks like the female, Asian version of your husband. Don't get attached. Don't do it.

But how do you stay detatched when, in order to even be considered as potential parents, you have to imagine life with this child as your daughter? You seek a doctor's opinion. You ask yourself whether you can give the things this child needs, and you answer in detail, and in writing.

You write pages upon pages of answers to questions, all designed to convince someone beyond any shadow of a doubt that this child, and only this child, was meant to be your daughter. There are no better parents for her, you write, and no better child for us.

You think "this time it will work out because everything seems to be falling into place in just the right ways." You get your hopes up. You look at her picture more than you should. You read about the city where she has spent the first year of her life. You do your homework on her medical needs.

You read about famous people who share her birthday.

And then the phone rings while you are in the shower, and because you are expecting good news, you wrap in a towel and run to the phone. You are dripping water on the kitchen floor as you hear that, once again, another family has been chosen.

You will have to wait. You will have to start over. You will have to find another child who seems to be your daughter, and you will have to fall in love with her and beg to be matched with her, knowing that it may not happen.

One of these days, one way or another, we will be matched with our daughter, and we will be so grateul to have her. We will be on our knees thanking every delay and misstep that led us to the little girl we will bring home.

I know that. I know that babies do things in their own time.

But I am grieving today. I'm grieving over the children I haven't had - the daughters I imagined but will never know.

When a woman miscarries, it is no comfort to her to know that, one day she will love the child she does have. You cannot tell her to be thankful for the babies she loses because she may treasure all the more the ones who survive - ones who may not have been born if it weren't for the ones who did not survive.

This is different, of course. Those children have found families, and that is always a wonderful thing. It's wonderful enough that I feel guilty for my sadness at not being the mother they found.

I don't know what will happen next. I don't know when I'll be able to imagine another daughter.

Comments

[moreena]

I'm so sorry. Just so very sorry.