It's been stuck in Wolayta, Ethiopia.
It's been meditating on a little boy, Creedence's age, who was spending his first couple nights in an orphanage, a little over two and a half years ago.
Creedence isn't a big boy. I should rephrase. He's tall...just very skinny. But the weight he is at currently surpasses the weight that Million was at when he was six months old....
The doctors in the orphanage hypothesized that Million was a preemie, because of his chronic lung conditions and small size. But I realized this morning, that we have no birth weight for Million. I mean, I realized it before...but it really sat in today. Million will never know how tall he was when he was born or how much he weighed.
The cuddles that I give to Creedence are reminders that when Million was his age, he wasn't getting individualized cuddles from his mama. He didn't have someone who was overjoyed at each milestone...as if the stars and the moon were hung just for him.
So it's been a sad few days. But a happy few days too. I realize just how far Million has come with love, water, and a little sunshine. And I hug both boys a little tighter.
I'll never be able to make up for the 13 months that Million didn't have a mother. That's something that we'll have to work through with him. And hopefully he'll come out of it relatively unscathed. But I can pray that God will allow me to fill in any gaps that are existing with a reasonable amount of mother love. And I can pray that God would help me to be the kind of mother that both boys need.
I struggle with these emotions too, and I will never be a birthmother so I will never actually experience firsthand having a teeny newborn. But I think my kids' missing 'fourth trimesters' all the time...and the other months they missed out on much individual attention. The losses are simply tremendous and so much so that sometimes my brain just shuts down when I try to process it.
ReplyDeleteI just wrote this post about getting my feelings hurt about someone else intimating that "biology is best" but I think I didn't articulate well, because I will always be aware that biology is preferred, that adoption should never have to happen, and so I'm struggling to write a follow-up post and have saved multiple drafts and eventually hope to hit 'publish.' It's so complicated, on so many levels.