On February 8th, two days before my projected delivery date, the adoption agent called. Our carefully chosen family had backed out. They had decided, for financial and other reasons, that the timing wasn’t right. I tired desperately to remain calm, but all I could feel was anger. Timing? You want to talk about bad timing? Fuck you! Let’s talk about deserting our daughter at the last possible second!! I called my doctor. Shaking with fear and sorrow, I told her the news. Knowing that the time to find a family was running out, I asked if I could stay on the Brethine. She said that if I felt it was necessary, I could continue the meds for another week. “But,” she added, “even once you stop, it’ll probably be at least another week or two before you go into labor.” My gut didn’t believe her. I’d been having contractions for a solid month, and could feel that the Brethine was all I had to buy me time.
      Looking back, I’m glad that the family backed out. Obviously that wasn’t where our daughter was supposed to be. Fate stepped in, and her new family appeared. By the 11th of February, we knew where she was meant to go. Eerily similar to the first family, the Torsets lived outside of Seattle. They had the love for and means to travel, and appreciated animals and art. Todd worked for Microsoft, and Shelly was an interior designer before becoming an at-home mom for their then three-year-old-adopted son.
      I swallowed the final tablet of Brethine on the afternoon of February 17th. Twelve hours later, my water broke.

      Once I was dilated to four centimeters, the anesthesiologist entered the room with his tray of pain-reducing agents. I was experiencing enough emotional pain as it was, and was therefore willing to allow the physical aspect to be lessened through drugs. I was told to sit on the edge of the bed and to stretch my spine so that he could insert the needle in the space between my vertebrae. Several minutes into the procedure, a contraction came on, so the staff allowed me to lie back down. Once the contraction passed, the attempt was made again to insert the catheter. This pattern continued until, after the sixth attempt at insertion, the anesthesiologist said, “Hmmm, did you know that you have scoliosis?”
      It was all I could do not to scream at him. I calmly, through heavy breathing, asked, “What exactly does that mean to in my current situation?”
      He replied, “Well, it means that I can’t get the catheter in!” I was stabbed a total of nine times before the insertion was successful. For the last twenty minutes of his attempts, I wasn’t permitted to lie down during the contractions. I had to stay sitting with extended spine, without moving, through the pain. Once the drugs were running through my system, my body relaxed. By 2:00 PM, the crucial width of 10 cm was reached.

      Push. Breathe. Rest. Push. Breathe. Rest. Push. Breathe. Push. Breathe. Push. Push. Push. By 3:45, I was exhausted. Two hours of pushing. 120 minutes of dissolving stamina. 7,200 seconds of not feeling ready. And no physical change from 2:00 PM. Her head was too large to pass through my pelvis. By 4:00 PM, it was decided that a C-section was necessary.
The doctors wheeled me into surgery, and upped my drugs until I was numb from my mid-back down. Chaz held my hand and stroked my hair as the pressure increased. At 4:19 PM, our daughter left my body. I held her, murmured “I Love You”. I was asleep before she left the room.
A birth certificate was issued with our names listed as the parents. We named her Emily Isabella. When I woke up, we were given the option to have Emily stay in the room with us. Chaz fed her that evening; the image will always remain in my mind. He was so gentle and loving with her; it made me understand yet another piece of what we were giving up. She stayed in my room for the next five days of recovery. We fed her, changed her, and loved her more than anything either of us had ever known before.
      At night, Chaz would go home, and Emily and I would be alone. On our third night in the hospital, Emily slept next to me in my bed. I held her, told her all the reasons why we had to be separated, and changed my mind. I felt so young, so irresponsible, so selfish for wanting to take her home with me, and so very depressed. I told her how much I loved her and felt her relax in my arms. I cried and cried, told her how much I loved her, and tried to stop feeling horrible, tried to suppress the guilt. What kind of mother could give away her child? How terrible of a person was I? I sobbed silently as she slept in my arms, I told her how much I loved her, and changed my mind again. I felt myself rip in two. All of the reasons that had led us to decide on adoption dissolved. It wasn’t until these moments that I understood what a book on adoption had talked about at great length— how, as a birth mother, the decision to adopt would have to be made again in the hospital, but that it would be ten times harder when the child was in your arms rather than your uterus. An internal war was raging. I couldn’t stop staring at her: at her eyes, her perfect fingers and toes. I cried, holding her, feeling her existence in my soul. I had never thought that I wanted children, but all I wanted was her. I didn’t want to ever let her go.