Pregnant and Afraid

BelovedsAdoptionStoryBegins

July 17, 2014, the day I found out I was pregnant. PREGNANT?! Yes!
I was sitting in a little room waiting for the doctor to tell me the results and as we were waiting she went on to ask a few questions. She asked, "what if you are pregnant, do you have a plan, is the dad in the picture"? etc. I started to get annoyed with her questions and just silently hoped the test would come back negative, because I wasn't ready for a baby. She just kept rambling about pregnancy and babies. When she noticed I was annoyed with what she had to say, she stopped talking for a bit, then she read the test and said "well, Miss Turner, it looks like you're about 5weeks". 

A sudden flood of thoughts came to my mind, mainly worries... How could this be true? I was going to have a human being growing/developing inside of me, moving around, kicking and in just months entering this here world I live in. I couldn't believe my stomach was going to stretch, but most of all, I couldn't believe another person was coming from me. Later I started thinking to myself, "I can't have this child, not by a man who took advantage of me". I couldn't carry this unwanted child, I didn't want to, because so much hate was in my heart about the man who'd raped and gotten me pregnant. Before leaving the doctor, I had only told two people, my boyfriend at the time who I was in a long distance relationship with and one of my bestfriends. I didn't know what to do, I really thought about getting an abortion, but with what money? I wasn't sure if I would tell anyone else, since abortion had crossed my mind, but I did anyway. After telling almost everybody, I felt a small amount of guilt for wanting to abort this child. I decided to give myself a few days to fully gather my thoughts and think everything through. 

After beating myself up about the things that lead up to me becoming pregnant I felt like I wouldn't figure out what to do. A few days later I just went on Google and typed "pregnant now what". I know that sounds kind of funny for googling but I just wanted to see what else was out there! I saw an agency who a couple from my church had gone through for international adopting, so I browsed the agency's website and ended up pm'ing someone who was able to hear my thoughts. I ended up meeting with a pregnancy counselor a few days later. If I'm being truthful, I wasn't sure if I was going to choose adoption for my little beloved at the time, but I thought hearing about adoption wouldn't hurt. After meeting the pregnancy counselor we decided to meet again the following week. On the way home, something in my heart felt this overwhelming peace, and in that moment I decided to continue meeting with the counselor. 

My eyes were finally opened when I put my daughter first. The thought of Adoption was scarey, carrying my baby girl for 9months, giving birth and later placing her in another family's arms. That had to be the very hard part. To shove my wants and needs to the side and put hers first. I continued the adoption process; not because I didn't want to parent, not because I was raped, not because I didn't love my baby. I chose loving the baby growing inside of me, I enjoyed the movements and kicks. As time went by, as my stomach stretched, gained marks, and as I started falling in love with the life to come I knew I had to be apart of this child's life. While my family and some of my friends didn't agree with adoption, their disagreement brought my wants and needs back; but I had to ignore them. Some would say I didn't care or love my baby if I were planning to "give her away", and that I should've just gone with abortion. Little did they know, I was going to be a part of her life, I had to; she would know me and how much I Love her.

 So as the process went on, I was ready to view family profiles. I was only sure that I wanted an open adoption, other wants in family profiles didn't matter to me at the time. As I started reading through some profiles, I kind of gained thoughts of who I wanted baby girl's forever family to be. I remembered that when I was younger I wanted to adopt my first child, but since that weren't going to happen, I decided I wanted little beloved to be somebody's first, adopted child. After looking through more than 5 profile books I narrowed my search down to 2 families, one who had a son and another who was ready to start a family. I battled not knowing which family to choose, though I said I wanted beloved to be their first, there was just something about the one family I liked. While I read their profiles each day, my heart finally leaned toward helping build a family; & there it was, I had found beloveds forever family. After expressing to my pregnancy counselor I had chosen a profile, I then decided to meet with the couple. I was so nervous and anxious to meet who I hoped would be beloved's parents.

 After meeting, asking questions and learning about one another, my counselor asked what I thought, I wanted to shout with excitement they're the two for her, but instead I calmly told her they were what I was looking for. My heart felt this peace it felt when I knew adoption was right and I knew everything would be fine. Time went by so fast, things were going well and soon I would be giving birth.

As my third trimester began to fly past me, I thought I was preparing my heart for the heartache of my life and I tried to put on a brave face and tell myself I would cry for a few days and it'd all be over, but I was wrong. The day came when I would meet this little girl who would steal our hearts. I was in labor for about 13 hours, B and T had come to the hospital, T stayed in the room with me along with a friend of mine. It was time for little beloved to come and I didn't even want to give birth anymore in great fear of having my heart break when it was time for placement. I went on though and I had my friend, T and the doctors cheering me on as I pushed multiple times ready to hear a crying baby. Then it happened, she was here, T cut the umbilical cord, both her and I were excited. I had tons of visitors come visit the days I spent in hospital. Then The last day came, I had to sign papers, prepare to leave without a baby and become broken hearted. While placing her in the arms of her parents and watching them go was hard, I was happy to feel at peace.