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Originally Posted by -maggie
For years I always believed that dd was always meant to be with her aparents. I believed that was the plan before I was pregnant with her. She was their baby, not mine. But now, I wonder if that thought was just my teenage mind trying to justify everything..... Maybe my journey was destined before I was born. I just don't know.
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Maggie, I know what you mean. I did the same thing in my mind when I carried my son. I didn't make the relinquishment decision until I was seven months pregnant. Until that point, I felt incredibly bonded with my baby. And then I started the hard part of detaching from him while he was still in the womb. I remember my teenage mind telling myself that he
really belonged to his future adoptive parents in some weird spiritual way. When I look back on the whole thing 37 years later, I'm kind of inclined to think that it was just a way to mentally protect myself from what was coming. BTW, I still felt bonded to my little guy the last two months of my pregnancy, but I felt incredibly guilty for feeling this way. I remember a few weeks before he was born, my aunt walked into the room and caught me rubbing my abdomen and talking to him. I felt like I had been busted doing something wrong, for pete's sake.
To be honest, this type of thinking ended up with me getting pretty angry with God. I couldn't figure out at 17 years of age why He didn't just let DS's amom conceive her own child and let me have mine. It seemed kind of cruel to me at the time. Of course, I don't feel that way anymore. But I did think for a number of years that God didn't give a hoot about me.
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Originally Posted by -maggie
Life Lessons? I think I have learned the importance of all the little things in life. I am a better mom. I hate to admit it, but I don't think I would of been without the adoption. The adoption made me see the world differently. It changed me. I was not the same person after.... I'm not sure how to explain it... I'll think about this one some more!
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My son's birthfather made the same comment to me years ago, that losing his firstborn son to adoption had a very direct effect in how he parented his future children. The year after our son was born, he got married and eventually had three more children. And he was an absolutely fantastic father to those kids...they adored him. He told me once during those years that losing DS gave him a "wakeup call", that he never took any of his children for granted. Unfortunately, he passed away when they were teenagers. But when I heard those kids give eulogies for their dad at the funeral, I was so impressed with the deep relationship he had had with them.
Maggie, I know what you mean about adoption changing you. I know it changed me in many ways. Although adoption doesn't define me as a person, the changes I went through after relinquishing my child profoundly changed the person I became in adulthood, if that makes any sense.