Her Birth Story and My Heartache

       As we all know, this blog started with the longest post known to man about my pregnancy and delivery of sweet baby Ben. The whole point was for it to be therapeutic, to write out all my feelings instead of holding them in and bursting. It was not important who read it or how many views the page got, (although that was fascinating.) I sent the link to that post to a couple dozen people I thought would care about me enough to want to know this big event in my life; turns out it spread farther than I thought it would (a good and bad thing, because of people's desire to teach lessons by judging you.) Turns out I know amazing people that truly love and care about me, people I didn't even think noticed me. It's always fun to have people come up to me and tell me they've read my blog and support me.

       For my birthday, Ann sent me a card and her nine-page birth story of the day Ben was born, and the next day when I placed him into their care for eternity. Andrew and I took turns reading each page, but eventually I just made him read because I was balling my eyes out. Hearing how it all played out from point of view just brought back the absolute agony of the experience. I've been working so hard to only see the positive parts of the adoption, like how healthy, chubby, cute and happy he is. But this story just killed me; it was like I hadn't made any progress on my mental health.

       Apparently, a would-be birthmother fell through on their adoption a couple years ago, so Ann had a really hard time trusting me throughout our entire experience because she thought I would bail on her just like this other woman had. She talked about having to wait so long in the waiting room, about how she wished she could have been a bigger part of his birth and hospital time. By the end of reading this story, I felt like the worst birthmother ever because of how much she wished she could have experienced that I prevented, in one way or another. Granted, she got my baby so it's not like she's complaining, but still. It's one of those things where we were both trying to respect each other and ended up both feeling off about how things were happening.


       Another thing that has been breaking me recently and for the last year is when other girls my age get pregnant. Some keep their baby (a win), some get to keep their baby and marry their man (a definite win.) And here I am, losing everything and everyone that actually matters to me. Yeah, I know life isn't fair. But life freaking sucks. One of my friends, a year younger than me who had her baby a month after me, just got married. Someone else I know is getting married soon because she got pregnant. It is agonizing. I envy them. Everyone is telling me to be happy, but that depends on things that I can't control. I can't make him marry me even though that would make me happy. I can't make him let me have another baby (even though I totally did ask.) I know what I want. I know that I can't have what I want. And yet I'm expected to watch other people live my dream while I sit by and watch.