Finally, 14 years and one week ago, Pt 2

On to the end, no really the beginning of Isaac's story but the end of my time as
his mother and how I became his birth mother instead.

So I had said my goodbyes to Isaac, handed him to his adoptive dad, and I just felt ready to leave. I couldn't think too hard about what I was about to do, and so I was holding onto this peaceful, calm feeling inside of me. This moment was what I had been preparing for and praying about for months.
It was time for me to walk out the door with my parents and leave my baby with his new parents.

I remember glimpsing him one last time in his dad's arms as I walked out the doors of the LDS Family Services office. It seemed odd to see his dad in there talking and smiling as if what I was doing was perfectly normal, leaving my baby with strangers who would become his parents.

I sat quietly in the car and buckled myself in. It was quiet on the ride home. I don't remember the radio being on or anyone talking at all. I know I didn't have much to say. I was just thinking and holding onto that feeling of comfort.

It was a quick 10 minute drive home. I walked into the house and took myself downstairs to my room where I had been living for months. I didn't even make it 12 feet before the strongest yearning came over me, a yearning for my baby. And I started to cry as my heart finally took in what I had just done. I HAD JUST LEFT MY BABY WITH STRANGERS AND HE NEEDED ME. I was his mother! I knew instinctively what he needed, I knew his smell, his sounds, his cries. I knew the feel of his grasp on my finger. I decided then and there that there was no way, in spite of all my promises to myself that I wouldn't go back on my word, that I could do this to my baby. It felt so unnatural and hurt so deeply. I went upstairs to my mom and I informed her, through my torrent of tears, that we had to go back and we had to get my baby. That I was sorry but I wanted Isaac. This hurt too much.

And my mother told me "Alysa, you are just tired. You need to get some sleep. You have hardly slept in days."  I knew what  my mom was saying, that she wouldn't help me go back and that I couldn't change what had already happened. It was for the best and I knew it.  She told me to lay on the couch and she would get me a blanket so I could take a nap. And that's what I did. I stupidly laid on the couch because what else could I do.

I think my mother must have been the one to grab the little bear Isaac's adoptive parents gave to me. When she handed me the blanket, the bear was in my hands. It was just the size of Isaac but without his added weight and without his special to me smell. I lay there holding it to my chest, crying silently as my tired body betrayed me by relaxing until I could no longer think of him, except in my dreams. This was the moment when my heart really and truly broke. I think of this moment very similarly as to when the Savior allowed himself to be killed. He allowed others to hurt him because he knew it was what he needed to do. I do not compare myself to Jesus, but the sacrifice in allowing myself to be hurt to help others is very real. I do not know how I had the strength to continue on from this point because it was such a low and humble place. I was truly broken. My heart, my spirit, my hope.

I slept for a few hours, exhausted. I woke up to early evening and my parents quietly preparing and eating dinner. I went in and rather dejectedly ate. I had little appetite and didn't want to eat. I just wanted to be in my sorrow. I think my parents sensed my mood and quickly printed out all the pictures we had taken in the hospital. And there my baby was, alive again to me. Those moments all too real again, in color. His little eyes, his nose, his fingers, his feet. I could smell him again almost. Those pictures saved me. My sister had taken a video of Isaac while we were in the hospital and I watched it again and again that night. He was real. He had been mine. But he wasn't mine anymore. I didn't do a lot of talking that night, I just looked and looked at pictures and video that confirmed over and over that he had been mine, that he was real.

And later that night, I took my pictures to bed with me. The last thing I saw before my eyes closed, the first thing I could see when my eyes opened. I talked to those pictures, the same that I had when he'd been inside of me. It was soothing to my soul, to still feel that he cared and wanted the best for me. I knew that he knew he was going to have a new life away from me. I prayed constantly that he was okay, that he was being comforted.

And when I woke up to a new morning, my new life started. Because I would never be the same person that I had been before.

I found out a few days after placement that they had named my son Nicolas and kept the name Isaac as his middle name in honor of me since that was the name Carlos and I had decided on. I do feel that was special and something I'm grateful for.