I have suffered an adoption miscarriage.
I am grieving the loss of dreams for my child, time invested in the planning of our future and am realizing that I will never hold my son in my arms and share a name with him.
Terms like paper pregnant are cute and hopeful.
Miscarriage, on the other hand, is anything but.
Can we "try again?"
Sure.
But that doesn't take away the pain of realization that the child I cherish as my son will not know the joy or the love of a forever family.
I will never be his Mama.
He won't wear the clothes hanging in his closet or see the books I've made him documenting our relationship thus far.
I understand protecting the children and the families and the process of adoption internationally.
I get the importance of the Hague Convention and what it's membership can mean for a country as poverty-ravished and torn apart as Haiti.
I do not understand setting laws that are so strict and binding that literally thousands of children will be deemed unadoptable.
What a horrible, hideous word.
How can any child be banned from having someone love them and call them their own forever.
How can it be alright for any child to grow up in an orphanage?
Even the very best orphanage?
I am not naive.
Abandonment, extreme poverty, illness, starvation and being orphaned are not new crises.
Why can we send explorers to Mars
(for something ridiculous like 2.2 billion dollars),
but not free children from prisons in Africa, slavery in the Caribbean and institutions world wide?
Why do babies die of malaria, malnourishment and hepatitis when these things are curable and, worse yet, preventable?
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| Photos courtesy of Google Images |
How do you grieve something that you've worked so long for?
dreamed about?
prayed over?
sacrificed for?
hoped for?
and loved . . .
but that really was never even yours at all?
Although I know it doesn't help, I can relate. I first had a little boy and girl coming home from the Congo. A flu epidemic hit the orphanage and they were gone. Then a referral for a baby girl. Four months later, word came that the agency in the Congo had decided to send her home with another family!
ReplyDeleteAfter a year 'off'(and an extensive amount of research) I restarted the adoption process with a different agency, and a new country.
While I didn't get the opportunity to personally meet them, I will always grieve the loss of my children that didn't make it home.