So, I’m just going to get right into it. I was adopted when I was just over 8 weeks old (like a puppy- ha!) by two of the most amazing parents a child could ever ask for, who go above and beyond the call of parent duty for me. They spoiled me silly and made sure that I always felt special and loved. I am so so lucky to have been matched up with them.

For my first few weeks of life, I lived with a foster family. They didn’t expect to have me so long and they fell in love with me. It’s easy to do with babies, and apparently I was a pretty cute and happy one. I slept well, I ate well, and didn’t cry too much. My Mom said I was truly a dream baby. Yes, I’m patting myself on the back and praying if I have children they will also be dream babies. A girl can.. dream. 😉

March 11, 1985 is when I met my parents for the first time. My Mom actually said to my Dad on the car ride there, “What if we don’t like her? Can we give her back? What if she doesn’t like us?” Very honest and legitimate questions. It’s scary to bring life into this world, but somehow almost scarier to adopt a child into your life. But are you really any more prepared to be a parent by carrying the baby in your belly? That’s debatable.

I always knew I was adopted. From when I was a little girl, we celebrated my adoption day every year with a small celebration, just the three of us. I remember feeling weird about being adopted for the first time in grade school when one of our projects was to write out the physical traits we had inherited from each parent and I didn’t know how to fill it in. My Mom had to come in and speak with the teacher.

Thoughts of my birth parents come up every so often. I’ve tried to find them, but our adoption is closed and I am only allowed non-identifying information. This includes general health and wellness, physical descriptions of them at the time of the adoption, and traits, hobbies, and achievements. It’s actually very interesting information that I only got when I was 30 years old. I would have to petition the court in order to release their identifying information and even then it’s not a guarantee.

I don’t want to disrupt the life that she rebuilt after she gave me up for adoption. Hopefully she remarried and had more children, which means that I have siblings. That thought is almost to bizarre for me to conceive. I want to meet the people who share my DNA. I just teared up a little bit thinking about that– wow. Oh, and I have been on 23andme and ancestry.com without any luck.

I have questions for her, and more that have come up recently as I consider potentially bringing a child into the world in the next few years. I wonder if my birth mother held me after she birthed me. Did she snuggle me and speak to me softly, telling me everything was going to be okay, and she’d always love me. Or did she look away as the doctors pulled me from her, not wanting to see? I want to know these things, and I can’t even explain why I want to know them. I would understand either way.

My birth mom made an unbelievably selfless choice and I’d really just like to tell her, Thank You. From the bottom of my heart, thank you, thank you, thank you.