DNA

My daughter carries someone else's DNA.

"A" was born in another country to a woman I wonder about every day. I have one slightly blurry photo of this woman holding a our beautiful daughter. I haven't looked at this photo in a while - but I wonder if this is what my daughter will look like in 15 years. I give this woman my never ending thanks for choosing to give us such a special gift.

"A" was cared for by a second woman for 10 long months while our case wound its' way through the court system. I have pictures from this period of my daughter's life too. Random shots of Connie and her family holding and playing with my daughter. She was always a beautiful and happy baby. This is the woman I have to thank for giving "A" all of the love and attention babies need to develop into wonderful children and adults. I couldn't be there to hold and love her but Connie did as good of a job as I could have done myself. Otherwise A wouldn't be as amazing as she is now.

But now - she is here with me, with us - we are a family and have been for 3 1/2 years already. I see myself and my husband in her every day.

I didn't decide to adopt a child because I felt like I would be doing a good deed. I (we) decided to adopt a child because we wanted a family. I selfishly wanted to be a mother and my own body could not provide me with a child. My husband and I knew that we wanted children. This was the route that we chose. We chose it above RE's and IVF because it just felt right for us. We first spoke with and adoption agency in May of 2004. It took us until September to make a final decision. With a lot of hard work and paper chasing we were ready to submit final paperwork to Guatemala in January 2005. We got our first pictures of A less than a month later when she was 8 days old. We brought her home with us 10 long months later.

Since that time our life has taken us down many different paths. Just as we were considering a second adoption we got pregnant on our own. That pregnancy ended in tragedy (and the creation of this blog...). That tragedy lead me on a headstrong battle to fix what went wrong and do it again. If it happened once - it WILL happen again. But honestly I don't know if everything I put myself and my family through in the last 16 months was really neccessary. It seemed like it at the time. But now - thinking everything through with a less clouded mind I wonder. Don't get me wrong - I am overjoyed to be where I am right now. I just wonder if I really needed to push so hard to get here. Or if eventually I would have gone back to being completely OK with infertility and it's lack of concrete answers. Becaus I know deep down in my heart - DNA doesn't mean a thing one way or the other when you love a child.