Day 110: One year

One year ago, I took a personal day for an afternoon to check out a few daycares. I knew she wouldn't be born in time to need one just yet, but I wanted to get a head start. I figured that daycares would fill up fast for fall and I wanted to have my choice, not be stuck with somewhere I wasn't happy with. I checked out a few and actually had one that was my front runner which is where she is now.

First picture - too many wires

I got home just in time to see my husband put on the finishing touches to his dress uniform for the military ball. He looked so handsome that I instantly regretted my decision not to go. I told him so. He said, "How fast can you get ready?" and I sprang into action. Thirty minutes later my hair was pulled up, make-up touched up, and I was hastily adjusting a gown that had been hanging in my closet from a few years prior.

I knew I would be tired the next day, but we had already paid for the tickets. Our friend Josiah drove us to the hotel in Austin that was hosting the ball. We took pictures and paid exorbitant sums for cheap wine. We sat down to eat and listen to the guest speaker. Some pictures of that night were ones I lost in my phone update last week. I had taken a picture of the program with my phone. I can't remember who he was, but just before he came up to speak, we were asked to turn off our phones.

I looked at my phone. We had six weeks before our baby was due, but every minute I was prepped and waiting for the phone call. I had a feeling she might be early. I decided to make a big deal of leaving my phone on would be silly, we had six weeks to go. Little did I know, during that speech our daughter was being born.

Holding her hand for the first time

We didn't get the phone call until the next day. I was very tired. It had been a long afternoon after a late date night at the ball. My phone rang at 3:55. Adoption Alliance came up on the screen. I answered and quickly stepped into the hall. Nikki told me that our little girl had been born the night before in an emergency C-section. She had very few details about the condition of our daughter. The birthmother had been depressed and decided that one line of cocaine would make her feel better. Between the drugs and moving some heavy furniture, her placenta abrupted.

The baby was in distress, so the doctor had to perform a C-section that was pretty drastic. At this point I realized the baby might not be ok. The drugs, the premature birth, the C-section all could have hurt my baby girl. I started shaking and my knees gave out. I sank to the floor. One of my teacher friends noticed me upset in the hallway. I was alternating between tears and panic. It took a few very tense hours of running and planning and packing to get ourselves ready to be gone for who knows how long.

We raced up to the hospital, several hours away. By the time we got there it was very late and because the baby was in the NICU, we weren't allowed to see her right away. We had to get wristbands and be approved to visit. It was hard to leave the hospital without being able to see her. We saw the birthmom and talked with her. She said she would take us down to visit in the morning. But she felt pretty rough after such a difficult delivery and had such a large incision.

I was so excited and nervous. We didn't know what to do or what rules we were supposed to follow. She took us down to the NICU, we washed up and gowned. They showed us our baby for the first time. She was almost two days old by the time we got to see her, but she was still so terribly tiny. Less than twelve hours after I got to hold her tiny fingers for the first time, she was legally ours (in guardianship).

It was a long week of gowning and washing to go into the NICU every three hours. We did let the nurses take over at night. I figured that I would be getting sleep deprived soon enough. We finally took her home 8 days after she was born, tiny and struggling with feeding issues, but growing.

Lil Bit was so tiny and fragile looking, but it was impossible not to fall in love with her. She was so bright eyed and aware from the get go. She stole my heart the first time I saw her and never let me go. Daddy melted too. Babies aren't really his thing, he likes when kids get older and have more personality, but he couldn't help falling in love with her. She had him wrapped around her finger before our first visit was over.

Those first couple of weeks and months had some really rough patches of sleep deprivation and exhaustion. She and I gradually figured it out together. I can't imagine life without her anymore. She was the most precious gift and blessing in my life.

I struggle everyday to make it through the hours I am away from her. While there were tough minutes that seemed to last a year, I wasn't prepared this year would fly by in a minute. She is already changing so fast. I just wish I could slow it down a little and have more hours to enjoy her. But today she is an infant no longer, instead is one year old and will be for all too short a time. I plan to spend every second I can this summer just memorizing her face and watching her learn and explore. But I know next year, her two year old picture will be almost as different from today's as this one is from the first ones last May.

It is hard to believe how precious she was to me in those first few second of seeing her face and impossible to believe that she grows more and more precious to me daily. The wonder of a mother's love is that it is boundless. I just wish my energy were too. Ha! 

Day 340: Prettiest Girl in the world

Today I woke up ready to take care of business. There are stacks of papers everywhere. I have stuff to shred, stuff that needs filing and just stuff. Plus in the mix are things I have just been meaning to do. One of those things was to email pictures to the attorney who helped up finalize our adoption early. I can't tell you how much it meant to me and Chad to have the adoption finalized before he left. While according to the attorney, only one of us had to be there and the baby didn't even have to come, we were so disappointed to have missed her physical birth due to the fact that she was so impatient to be here, neither of us wanted to miss her second "birthday."It was a special day for us to welcome the prettiest girl in the world into our family.

While I was thinking about how special this little bundle of joy is to my heart, how words fail to describe how laughter bubbles up inside of me when her face lights up in a smile, I thought about writing a letter to the adoption agency to thank them for helping us add Lil Bit to our family. I went to their website and thought I would just take a peek at the waiting families. I knew we were extremely blessed to get chosen this quickly, but it made me understand exactly how blessed when I saw that over half of the families who were waiting when we joined the agency were still waiting.

For those of you who are not familiar with the process of adoption these days, you are not really on a list like they used to have. You used to wait on a list and when your "turn" came up, you received the next available child. Today's adoption agencies are more focused on the birth mother's choosing the right family for her baby. She comes into the agency and looks at books prepared by the agency's waiting families. She chooses a family for her child, then the family can decide if they like the match based on the mother's background and prenatal information. We were accepted by the agency on March 1. We got a phone call March 25 that a birth mother had chosen us. While she needed a little more financial support than we had planned for, we were so excited that we chose accept the placement. We had been crossing our fingers for a little girl to add to her two brothers. This birth mother was far enough along that we knew the baby was a girl and healthy 26 weeks  already! It felt like a dream.

We had been praying that it would either happen almost immediately or take a year or so to get chosen. With Chad leaving I wanted him to be able to be here and bond with the baby before he left for Iraq or not to get selected for a baby until he was almost home. With the current army climate, it is so hard to plan a life. He has been on the luckier side of the army. He has been home 15-18 months between deployments, but has been deploying every other year or so since 2003. That is a topic for another blog - but it made planning an adoption and the process really scary for us. We knew he would be going back at some point, but this time he knew he would have orders again pretty much before he came home the last time.

God's hand was in this process and we were given the most beautiful little girl. I keep asking her for her secret, how she gets prettier every day, but she isn't talking. I knew I would love her and she would change my life. I didn't know how I would just hold her and be moved to tears by that love. I didn't know she would change how I see the world and my life.

While 9 families still wait to be chosen from the list, I held my daughter for hours today while she snuggled, giggled, slept. How blessed we were to become a forever family this summer. God was watching over us. As a new mother, I now realize the responsibility that comes with loving her. I just pray that God continues to protect her daddy and keep our family safe for a long time even if we can't always be together. Lil Bit deserves all the best. She was a game changer for me. No matter how tired I am from taking care of her, house, dog, school and sometimes even myself, I wouldn't trade a second with my beautiful girl. There are no words to describe how it feels to love this hard and I am just getting started - all you Momma's out there know what I mean. What a godsend to survive missing her daddy!!!

Day 352

And Labor Day = Lil Bit is 4 months old! Somehow she doesn't feel like such a Lil Bit anymore! She is already trying to sit up and can hold herself up with very little back support. Side to side is something else, she does the slow descent a lot. Kinda funny to watch her slowly tip over. Of course I am always there to catch her. I really wish I could be there to catch her forever. Putting her into daycare is just the first time I don't get to be the one to catch every cry or sniffle or smile and giggle. I know I will have to let her go eventually, but I think it is totally rational to want to wait to let her go until she is at least 5 years old. I mean most moms want to hold on until um 20, 40 or so = ).

Well I bit the bullet, and asked for help with the baby. I have asked friends for help before, but I hate having to do it. Despite all logic, it makes me feel like a failure, but tonight it was 4:30 and the baby wouldn't let me put her down and I was near tears overwhelmed by all that I had left to do. Don't even get me started on the things I WANTED to do, but the list of what had to be done was so long. I finally broke down and asked my neighbor and friend to come hold her so I could shower and take care of a few niggling chores. Thank you KARLA!! I was able to wash dishes, make breakfasts for the week, shower, clean out the fridge.  Felt so good to have an extra set of hands even if just for an hour or so.

We got a phone call today! The caller ID said U.S. Government, but I knew before I saw it that it had to be him. I don't know how I knew, but I usually get a feeling when he plans to call. It felt so good to hear his voice. The call center must not have been too crowded, because we got to talk for a long time. I put him on the phone with Lil Bit. Her whole face lit up when she heard his voice. It was too priceless! She was smiling and cooing back at him! I feel so much better about her remembering him if we can keep this up. She listens to her recorded storybook often and we listen to the messages on the answering machine. I have a board book full of pictures of our family, some really special ones of her and Daddy. I don't know when they go through the clingy stage, but I hope she remembers him enough not to be scared when he comes home.

One last thing to do, I have to write a monthly progress report to her birth mother and upload all the  pictures for her package. While right now, I am tired and it is just one more thing to do, I am so thankful for her unselfish heart! She could have aborted this unplanned child, or kept her despite knowing the life wouldn't be very stable, instead she saw a life for her daughter that she wanted us to provide. She chose us out of all the parents available to her and felt lucky she found us. I don't know the words to use, but I don't consider her the lucky one. She gave me the most perfect Mothers' Day gift I could ever have had. I had my daughter in my arms this Mothers' Day. A letter and a few photos are small thanks for such a gift.

Today was a day of many blessings, a phone call, a friend, and a precious little Bit of a girl turning 4 mos. Just goes to show, when the sky starts getting dark, a silver lining can always be found!