I started dating Andrew at the end of November, 2013. I had already liked him for a whole year by that point, but chose to not exclusively date him because I was so stuck on the church rules of not being in a serious relationship until I was 18. But after so many realizations that I didn't want to, and couldn’t be without him, he asked me to be his girlfriend, and I finally said yes.
Let 6 months go by.
I discovered I was pregnant. I could feel my body was
changing, but I didn't want to go buy a pregnancy test. I knew by mid-June that
I didn’t need to carry around pads anymore because it wasn't coming. But Andrew
wanted a definite yes or no. So by the end of June, he took me to the store and
we bought two tests. We went back to my house to figure out the answer to the
big question that’s been hanging over our heads, but my best friend’s car was
there, so Andrew didn’t want to come in with me because then they’d ask what we
were doing. So he left me to take the tests by myself. Turns out best friend
and my sister weren’t even there, so I was completely alone in the house. I
went to the bathroom, followed the instructions and left it on the counter. I
went back to see the result a little while later. The answer was a really bold.
Congratulations, you’re pregnant. I just looked at it until I realized how
alone I was with this life changing news. I ended up lying down in the fetal
position crying for an hour. I had no husband to go surprise with the news, I
didn’t even know whether to be excited or not. I know some people who would
kill to have a positive pregnancy result, and yet here I am, a 17 year old girl
crying on the floor, 6 weeks pregnant. I remember telling Andrew a few hours
later, I remember the look of disgust/disappointment on his face, like his
worst nightmare was coming true.
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| Amount of weeks, baby bump and sonogram |
There are three things you can do when you become pregnant:
keep it (I favor this option), abortion (I wrote my entire Junior Research
Paper on how terrible abortion really is, so no way), and lastly adoption (I
didn’t really have an opinion at that point.) Andrew wanted option 2, I wanted
option 1, and our final compromise was option 3.
I honestly thought I
could do this, I could raise this baby. I’m an adult, and I have nine months to
get everything together. Nine months is a long time, right? I could go to
school for a semester to get the experience, then come home and raise my baby.
I don’t need my Bachelors of Fine Arts to photograph people for a living, I
could just learn by myself. Was I ready for this challenge? No, but I had time
to become ready. I had enough support that I wouldn’t have to worry
financially. My mom was even willing to be its formal guardian for the first
few years so I could really get on my feet. My boyfriend was game for this
plan, so I was in heaven—I’d get to keep my little love bug. Unfortunately, Andrew
later told his parents we were giving our baby up for adoption. He came to me
and told me that was how it was going to be; no if, ands, or buts. My heart was
broken. I was growing a baby with the man I loved and now I couldn’t keep him?
But he’s my baby!
“When marriage is not possible, experience has shown that adoption,
difficult though this may be for the young mother, may afford a greater
opportunity for the child to live a life of happiness.” President Gordon B.
Hinckley, “Save the Children,” Ensign, Nov. 1994, 53.
I could tell there was no fighting the decision Andrew made,
so they next day I cried myself over to the computer and looked up the sight
for LDS Adoptions (www.itsaboutlove.org).
I put in my criteria for my baby’s parents and eleven results showed up. The
profiles had the couple’s names and a quote of their choice. I can honestly say
that I chose my child’s future parents by just that information. The fourth
couple down the list had really cool names, and their quote was about how the
Lord’s timing isn’t ours. I clicked on their link, and read about them. Well, I
tried reading but the crying was a bit out of control at this point. He spoke
Spanish, so does Andrew and I pretend I can. She plays piano, so do both me and
Andrew, though Andrew is way better. They have a dog named Andy, I call Andrew
Andy sometimes—this was cool to me, Andrew didn’t think it was as fascinating.
Plus, these people are really beautiful people with the whole stunning blue
eyes thing going for them. That was all I had to go off, but in my heart, the
decision was made; these are my baby’s parents. So I went on with my day with
this grief in my heart, I was so mad that I found this perfect couple because
now I knew that this adoption thing really was going to happen. Maybe if they
weren’t so perfect, I could keep my baby. Later that night, I prayed harder
than I ever had pleading with the Lord to help me decide what was best for
baby, not for me or Andrew or anyone else. I remember asking Him to make sure
my baby was with parents that were so in love with each other, and, with all
the humility in my heart, make sure his parents would be sealed together in the
temple. Because that’s what he deserves.
“When choosing adoption, unwed parents grant their children this most
important blessing (the temple sealing ordinance.) Adoption is an unselfish,
loving decision that blesses the child, birth parents, and adoptive parents in
this life and throughout the eternities.” First Presidency statement, Oct. 4,
2006
He deserves the best. But
couldn’t I be the best? I knew it right then and there. And I knew I
couldn’t ignore the feeling in my heart any longer that I already found my
baby’s parents. The next day, I worked up enormous amounts of courage to email
the couple. I walked away broken-hearted but more sure of the decision.
Over the next little while, I fell in love with them through
emails. I learned a lot about them and they learned about me and Andrew. In
August, I moved to Logan, Utah for school. And about a week in, the couple was
going to be driving through Utah for a get-away weekend and happened to stop
by. We got to go eat dinner. I walked in and she walked right up to me
immediately and gave me the biggest hug ever. As she continued to hold me in
this embrace, I just looked up at her husband and smiled. They were the
sweetest people ever, they answered all my questions and helped me understand
how the process of adoption works from their side. Overall, I fell in love. I
got on Skype to talk to Andrew right after they dropped me off and basically
fell apart but at the same time felt so held together. They are definitely
going to be my baby’s parents, and they are going to be so awesome.
“I received such a direct answer to my prayer that there was no doubt in
my mind about what we were supposed to do. That confirmation helped us stick to
our decision when we felt caught… in our own feelings and desires. To say that
I cried would be to put it mildly. My heart was full and broken at the same
time. How could I feel such a peace in a decision that brought so much pain? It
was the hardest—but most right—thing I have ever done.” The Gift of Adoption,
Ensign, Feb. 2009
And so time went on. Emails back and forth, checking up and
sending pictures of my baby bump once I finally got one. Some people get to
find out the gender of their baby at around 16 weeks. But no, not me. Plus my
baby is super active, we watched him kick and punch me instead. So when I went
to my 20 week appointment, she tried figuring it out then but she just couldn’t
tell. Two days later, I went to the hospital, my roommates excitedly in tow, to
get the full anatomical scan of my little love. The technician answered all of
our questions, most of them sounded like “How can you even tell that’s a
kidney? It’s a circle inside of a bigger circle.” Pretty quickly into the
ultrasound, he froze the screen and looked at me and told me to guess what the
gender was. Mind you, it looked like a bunch of blobs on a black background.
Once he pointed out what to look at, I could see it clearly. It’s a boy! Once
all that excitement was over, he kept going and showed me all the chambers of
his heart, the cord and blood flow, measured the femur for gestational age
(which was exactly accurate), looked at his lip, his brain and all his fingers
and toes. It is still so hard to realize that those images are of my baby, and it’s inside me. After so many years of watching
birth stories and seeing everyone else’s sonograms, this one is actually mine. Kind of. And that’s what I
have to constantly remind myself. Once we got out, it was time for celebration
at Jamba Juice. I got on Skype with Andrew and told him to make his final
guess; he always thought it would be a boy and I was going for a girl just to
hopefully win. But he won, and I couldn’t even be mad. We had been waiting so
long just to be able to call baby a him or her, and now we knew, and Andrew
just had the biggest, happiest smile on his face. I then texted the mom and
dad, and luckily they were together and from what I got from all the smiley
faces and exclamation marks in the text, they were pretty happy too. I think
all of us were going to be happy either way.
Then a lot of things happened at once. I started getting
sick and faint more often, school was exhausting me and not doing anything for
my major, and I missed Andrew so much it hurt every time I saw his face over
Skype. And I couldn’t take it anymore. I begged my mom, and we booked a flight
home for fall break, with no returning flight back to Logan. Once I got to
Sea-Tac, I waited for my Andrew to come and get me. I was looking around at all
the people in baggage claim, super anxious to see him for the first time in
over two months- a lot of people have to wait longer to see loved ones (ie:
missions) but to be honest, my situation is a little more real and serious than
just a boyfriend girlfriend relationship-- being pregnant and alone is not
something I’d wish on anyone. I thought everything would get better. I got sick a lot less, and
when I did I was much more comfortable being at home than in the dorm in Logan.
Mine and Andrew’s relationship was getting better too.
Someone asked me if we were still going give away our baby if we were doing
good and happy. And I always say yes. But in my breaking heart, I wish I could
say otherwise. So we set up another dinner with our baby’s parents for two
reasons: for Andrew to get to see them for the first time, and for me to fall
in love with them again so I felt better about giving the baby away.
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| 32 weeks |
Feeling baby kick is my absolute favorite thing in the
world, and he does it so often now. He loves music, and loves when I sing. He
kicks when I cry or if I’m stressed, like he wants me to know he’s there for
me.
I hated seeing pregnant women, especially pregnant teens,
because I knew that they got to keep their babies. I’d look at baby clothes at
the store, and just feel disgust because I would never get to put clothes on my
baby, because he wouldn’t be with me. Then I’d think about the couple I’d
chosen for my baby and wondered if she thought the same things—was it hard for
her to see pregnant women when she had been trying for so long and it hadn’t
worked out? Did she look at baby clothes and long to have one of her own, but
then walk away sad because it wasn’t happening? Was she driven crazy every time
she found out another person she knew was having a baby?
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| 34 weeks |
At the beginning of December, Mormon Channel released a new
video called Unplanned Pregnancy, Adoption and The “Best Gift Ever” - His
Grace (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSvnjfrGgik).
Watch it. I cannot describe the absolute pain
I felt and still feel every time I watch this video. Everything she is saying,
I feel—it’s like she’s telling my story too. I received a few messages after I
shared the link on Facebook, mainly about how adoption has made a difference in
their lives. There was a lot of “you can always talk to me if you want” which
honestly was appreciated. But my favorite message I got went a little like
this—“I know that what you are going
through right now is most likely one of the hardest experiences that you’ll
ever have throughout you entire life. No matter what decision you make, it’ll
always be in the back of your mind whether or not you did the right thing. I
balled my eyes out when I watch the video, and right now while I’m just
thinking about you making the same decision. You are going to make an excellent
mother one day! And no choices that you’ve made right now are going to make
that impossible. But I’m very proud of you for considering adoption. That is a
very hard decision. When I have had serious decisions to make in my life, it
has been so very beneficial to involve my Heavenly Father, and as I look back
on my decisions and question whether I did the right thing, it lifts me and
gives me strength to know that I didn’t make that decision on my own. If it was
right then, it’s still right now. Heavenly Father loves you, and most
importantly, your Heavenly Father loves that little baby.” As if I wasn’t
already crying. I want my baby so bad, even to this day I want to have him stay
with me. Even when the pregnancy was getting really hard, I just wanted to keep
him inside of me forever, because at least then I would get to keep him, at
least then he’d me mine and no one could take him from me. I don’t want
anything else, I just want my baby. Please.
“In placing their faith in the Lord as they make a truly selfless choice,
many unwed birth mothers find that from the ashes of their deepest pain, He
makes something beautiful—for her, the baby, and a loving family.” Rebecca M.
Taylor, “Why Adoption?,” Ensign, Jan. 2008
I turned to doing things to hopefully distract me from
grieving. I started taking more and more pictures of my sweet baby bump. I got
creative with editing and tried to lose myself in the technicalities of
photography instead of the subject of the photo. I watched as slowly but
surely, my belly button started popping out. I think it’s so cute. I made a
clay model of a pregnant woman with no baby in her womb anymore; it was kind of
depressing, but very expressive as to what I was feeling. I also did a cross-stitching
project with the help of my mom. I’ve always been a fan and I’ve been quite
fast at it too. I designed it myself on Excel and added a quote from one of my
favorite children’s stories. I made one for me, and one for the
nursery of sweet baby.
I also tried losing myself in the pregnancy. Some women read
books and magazines, I just used an app on my phone and then researched
everything it was telling me. I thought that if I learned everything I could
about growing a baby, I could forget that I wouldn’t need to learn about caring
for a newborn, or nursing or about being a new mom. I never signed up for
birthing classes because they all included things about being a mom, and every
other woman in there would get to be a mom, everyone but me. I’d go to all my
doctor’s appointments and know exactly what she was talking about.
At one point in my third trimester, I stopped gaining weight
which is a no-no, and I was also measuring small, like three weeks too small.
So she scheduled me for an ultrasound to measure sweet baby. And at that
appointment I got to see my little love again for the first time in 15 weeks.
But his stomach was measuring three weeks too small while the rest of his body
was measuring correctly, which means he wasn’t getting the nutrition he should
be getting. Also, the fluids around him were pretty low. The doctor said there
was nothing I could do (because I was already eating correctly) so she was
going to have me take a nonstress test twice a week. This test measures baby’s
heart rate compared to his movements (if baby moves, his heart rate should
increase) and also measures contractions. I looked up NST’s and everything said
that they’re usually only done in high-risk pregnancies, so that kind of
freaked me out. But my baby moves all the time, like all the time. And he was
testing well, but still measuring small even after a month, so the tests had to
continue just to make sure he was still moving and doing well. Then there was a
little hope when I was seen again and I was actually measuring closer to the
average. By my 38th week, he was looking perfect on the sonogram.
And so the waiting continued.
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| 38 weeks |
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| 40 weeks |
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| 40 weeks- day before the big day |
Did you know only 5% of babies are born on their due date?
Which makes sense since it’s a very rough guess. Well my baby is punctual.
During my last week of pregnancy, I could feel that the baby had dropped lower
because I had to go to the bathroom many more times a day than I’d like to
admit, including in the middle of the night. On my due date, I woke up at 4:20
am thinking I had to go to the bathroom like normal when I realized that my
water had broken. Mind you, I was quite groggy so my clumsiness was apparent
when it took me forever to get my big belly out of bed and run to the bathroom.
I’m surprised I didn’t wake up the whole house because I may have ran into a
few walls. I confirmed I did indeed break my waters so I sat on a towel and
called my mother to find out what to do next. Did you know only 10-15% of
labors start by the water breaking? So I had no warning that I was going into
labor, no contractions to say “hey your baby might come today.” Maybe if I was
more awake and not freaking out I would’ve remembered everything I had learned
but my mother wasn’t answering her phone so I became hysterical. Andrew woke up
to me balling my eyes out and was more confused than I was. But eventually I
was getting my bags packed at home to bring to the hospital. We got all set up
in my room and waited. The few contractions I was having weren’t painful. My
mom couldn’t even tell I was having them. The doctor came by and told me to be
in pain by the time she came back from a surgery. It took 8 hours after labor
started to be in serious pain, and then it got ridiculous. I told myself I
wouldn’t be that girl from the movies that was screaming, and I wouldn’t
classify what I did as screaming necessarily, but there were some loud high
pitch noises going on. I finally got an epidural at 4:30pm. So 12 hours of
labor so far, I had gone from 4cm to 6cm dilated which made me so angry because
if I was going to be in pain for so long, I wanted there to be more progress.
Then the epidural didn’t work on my left side and I was 10cm so quickly that it
barely even worked on the right side. 20 minutes of pushing later I had a baby
on my stomach. My sweet baby!
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| Benjamin Andrew February 17th, 2015 5:37 pm 6 lbs. 13 oz. 18" long |
I was in so much pain that I didn’t realize it
for a few seconds. I was crying because of the pain, my eyes were glued shut
pretty much, then when I finally comprehended what happened, I was crying
because of my sweet baby. He was so perfect and little. It was such a surreal
moment because for nine months there was a baby inside me, but it didn’t really
make sense to me how real it all was when he was outside in the world now. We
got to cuddle for hours together and I even got to nurse him. As the nurse was helping me, baby got his
shots and Andrew got to hold him. My heart melted.
Our baby’s parents came in and visited for a few hours that night, and again in the morning. After we got the all clear for discharge, I got dressed in real people clothing and we put sweet baby in his going home outfit and took some pictures. We texted the parents to come back to our room, and I broke down.
This whole time at the
hospital I was focused on baby and how perfect he is, but now the focus was on
placing him in his parents’ hands, and that hurt so much. I kept telling myself
that I chose this couple specifically and that I loved them, so everything
would be okay, but turning my back on that little baby went against everything
inside of me. I cried that whole night. And every night since. And during the
day too. And always really. I’ve received so much love, and so many cookies
(which I ate before I could even take pictures of how cute they were), from
some women I’m close to; people even heart-attacked my front door with candy
and messages. The parents of baby Ben spoiled me too. And it was all just so
overwhelming because my heart hurt but there was so much love at the same time.
“I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I
could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.” Haruki Murakami
I know I would have been an amazing mother to my baby, and
Andrew would’ve been a very capable, loving father. We would have done anything
to give our baby the world. We could have worked it all out and our baby would
be comfortable and happy with both of his parents. I don’t want people to think
badly of me and Andrew. People have come to me and said, “You made a mistake,
and you’re dealing with it in a wonderful way.” Maybe you think having sex
outside of marriage is a mistake, but getting pregnant wasn’t a mistake. That
was a miracle. I had already repented for the whole having sex thing, but I’m
not sorry I got pregnant. That’s been the best thing ever, for me and for my
couple. And this decision is so scary to me because I know it’s going to put me
into a depression worse than what I’ve already been through that I don’t know
if I’ll come out of whole.
“Instead of
wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I have cherished every moment and
realized that the wonderment growing inside of me was the only chance in life
to assist God in a miracle.” Erma Bombeck
But I also know that this was meant to be, a trial and a
blessing. This sweet baby has blessed our life immensely, and he has two sets
of parents who love him completely. I knew from the moment I saw this couples’
names that they were supposed to be Ben’s parents, and they are truly wonderful
people who have become our dear friends throughout this process. So as much as
it hurts, and as much as I want to hold my little baby and squish his cheeks, I
know he is right where he is supposed to be. I love his parents and I love him
with all my heart.
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“My love for him was the only thing that could enable me to break my
own heart”
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“I fell in love with you when you
were forming in my womb. Now I carry you in my heart instead of my arms”
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“He is mine in a way he will never
be hers, yet he is hers in a way he will never be mine, and so together, we are
motherhood.”
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Adoption is a beautiful, tender thing.
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“A child born to another woman calls me mommy. The magnitude
of that tragedy and the depth of that privilege are not lost on me.” Jody
Landers
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This is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing your story Becca.
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