Thank you

**I'm calling Clio "the baby" in this post to protect myself, sorry. I'm sure M & T have renamed her.**

Thank you all for your prayers and support. We are rushing wildly through every stage of grief today and yet we can feel the prayers lifting us up and keeping us sane. This morning I considered posting the "Tragedy" post and then never coming back to the blog, or deleting it tomorrow, but in the end I am a writer and I'm going to use this as therapy for a little while, to work through my grief. I guess some of this might be just for me, but I'm happy to share it with those of you who are loving me through it.

I thought some of you might like to know a little about how this happened. Yesterday we were in the hospital with the baby and M & T showed up with T's mother and sister and her kids and his 13-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. They tried to kick us out of our room to use it to visit with their family and hang out with the baby and we were shocked because we had never asked them to leave their room when they were the ones there and we were visiting. True, M had just given birth when they had a room, but still. That was my first inkling that something was up. I was very agitated during the whole 2 hours they were there and ended up calling my mom. I can't put into words how I was feeling, but the closest thing would be the feeling of bugs crawling in my veins and my brain. It was the longest 2 hours of my life, I think. I have never had women's intuition that strongly and it was torture. My mom stayed on the phone and comforted me and used up all of her cell phone minutes. That's what moms are for!

The nurses ended up giving M & T the room next door and we could hear the baby crying for about 45 minutes and it tore up my heart to hear her. When T's family was leaving, J and I went out into the hallway to greet them and be polite, but they were pretty cold and mostly ignored me. T's mother had been very nice to us on Friday, so that was strange. We spoke to M & T for awhile and I could sense that something had shifted in our relationship, in their attitude. It's easy now to look back and see warning signs in some of the things M said, like "I woke up this morning and immediately thought of the baby's little face!" and "It's easy to fall in love with her." I felt uneasy, but couldn't work up the courage to confront them and ask if they were changing their minds. We stayed in the hospital with the baby last night, and learned how to give her a bath. She is just perfect, and I'll always treasure the memory of the time I spent with her, no matter how painful my attachment has made this separation.

The baby is not at fault in this and I still love her with all of my heart and hope against hope that she will have everything she deserves in life. Most of all, I hope that M & T give up their cigarette addiction, because my heart breaks at the thought of that little baby's clothing smelling like smoke throughout her childhood, and her lungs being exposed to second-hand smoke from both mom and dad every day. Yesterday when M & T brought her back to us she smelled so strongly of smoke that I immediately called the nurse to come bring me a new outfit and blanket. Yuck.

This morning I had mixed feelings, again with the women's intuition, but I ignored them and didn't take as much time saying goodbye to the baby as I should have. I cuddled her for about 10 minutes and then kissed her cheek as we left the nursery to go drive to our lawyer's office. I will always regret not being more deliberate and not praying over her. All the way downtown I had the hymn "It is well" in my head, particularly the first verse:

"When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul."

Now I think this was preparing me for the horror that awaited us. We got to the lawyer's office and she told us that "They changed their minds." My stomach dropped to the floor and J spat out "What?" and our world collapsed. The time since then has been a blur of grief and practical actions like removing every single thing in our house that has to do with baby and locking it all into the nursery, away from sight. However, I can't lock my memories of the baby away in that room and they steal into my mind uninvited, causing such intense pain and nausea that I haven't been able to eat all day. Our social worker told us that we need to grieve this as if the baby died, and that's the way it feels right now. We are trying to walk through the pain and find a way out into hope for the future, but each step is torturous.

Right after hearing the news from our lawyer, T called my cell phone and said that they had changed their minds because they love her (and they know we love her too) but T never had a chance to parent his first daughter and he wants a chance to be a dad now. He said he was sorry and I had to use every ounce of energy not to give the automatic people-pleaser womanly response of "that's OK." Instead I said "I don't know what to say" and then listened to him say sorry again before I said "we wish the best for the three of you" and "goodbye." It's not a lie. We wish the absolute best for the baby, and if she has to live with them, then we wish the best for them so that they can give the best to her. At this point, my feelings are that if they weren't parenting the baby I would be wishing pain and suffering on them. Sorry, that's just how it feels right now to be me.

What finally came out is that T's mother met the baby and fell in love with her. She promptly offered M & T $8,000 in cash and a house to live in (T's father's house, which has been on the market and not selling for awhile) if they kept the baby. This happened Saturday afternoon, which explains M & T's attitude on Sunday. Evidently, M & T are planning to get married this week. So, they'll be married with a house and $8,000, but that won't go very far with a new baby, since both of them are still unemployed at this point, unless they know something I don't. We are livid at T's mother for pulling the rug out from under us after not being involved in any aspect of the adoption until now. Why, oh why didn't she offer the money in March and save us this pain? She saw the baby's beauty and fell in love, like grandma's do. And the baby is beautiful, oh so beautiful. I don't know if it comes across well in pictures but all of the nurses kept telling us she is the most beautiful newborn they'd ever seen and I concur.

So, our joy has turned to heartache and my heart that was once hard and bitter with my infertility and became soft and open these past few months is quickly feeling brittle and sharp again. The nursery I once took so much joy in is now a graveyard. J and I will celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary on the 18th and now we will do it alone, without a baby. The celebration will taste like ashes in our mouths. I will never be the same person, never trust in the same way, never hope with such optimism. I need Prozac.