Birth

Here’s the moment everyone has been anxiously anticipating. The woman who is planning to place her child with you is about to give birth.

Ack! It’s headless chicken time. A woman is about to have a baby! What do you do? What do you do?

Although boiling a pot of water seems to be the answer to that question every time it comes up on TV, the proper response in this circumstance is: Whatever she desires, that’s what.

If she wants you standing beside her coaching through the delivery while your husband records the event on camera, that’s where you’ll be. If she wants you pacing the hall with her mother, you’ll pace. If she wants you stuck at home until she’s ready to see you, you’ll be getting about your life as best you can, but with your cell phone never more than a centimeter from your grasp.

! It’s possible that where she thought she’d want you before going into labor will not be the same place she actually wants you once labor has commenced. As best as you can, you must respect her wishes even if they are not part of what you knew as the plan. Of course, if she decides at the last moment that she wants you to cut the umbilical cord and you’re the type that passes out at the thought of splinter removal, you may have to give this some hard thought and try a bit of negotiation … or find yourself a crash helmet, just in case woozie turns into ‘down for the count’.

It’s a baby … and you’re chopped liver

Soon, voilá, it’s a BABY! (That’s easy for me to say, but believe it or not, voilá isn’t actually a word often uttered with that final push. Maybe in France?)

Once again, it’s mom’s call on what happens. The ball … the baby, the future of everyone involved ... yep, that would be her court it’s in.

You’re pretty much chopped liver right now, so you need to be prepared for how powerless you will be over everything for a while. Go with the flow, and take notes if you can. Within a few days this time will all be a blur and it won’t be easy to reconstruct events that you will be asked to recount for years to come.

Without doubt, these will be some of the hardest days of your life.

Before you get carried away with just how hard it is to pass the hours knowing the baby is here, seeing it, perhaps holding it, but not yet being able to take it home, or even to legitimately call it your own, walk a mile or so in the mother’s maternity moccasins on a perspective hunt.

She’s just given birth, is sore and exhausted, AND is coming up to crunch time. There is no way these days will be anything but heartbreaking for her. Yes, soon everyone who’s anyone in this adoption will come face to face with that truth we talked about way back at the beginning of this book: adoption is as much about loss as it is about gain. No one, however, will experience this with the depth of emotion the mother will feel.

You may be having a few days of frustrated and anxious misery while waiting for the baby to come to you, but a lifetime of joy is just around that next bend.

Credits: Sandra Hanks Benoiton