Some of you may know that my best friend is pregnant with her first baby. I am so excited for her and happy that she is finally getting the family she has wanted for so long so please don’t take this post the wrong way. When I see how happy she is I wish I could have felt that happiness when I was pregnant. From the moment I found out I was pregnant I knew that she wasn’t meant for me and that I was going to place her for adoption. I never got to be excited that I was pregnant. I see women that are so excited and I wish that my pregnancy could have been like that. I was so sad the whole time because I knew what the end out come as going to be. It is hard to explain what it is like being pregnant and knowing that after you give birth that you are going to walk away and place your child with another family. I also wonder if it would be harder to place a child for adoption if you didn’t know from the start that is what you were going to do. I don’t regret placing her for adoption but I wish things were different while I was pregnant.
I have been thinking about volunteering to help out other birth moms that have placed their children or are going to be placing them. While I was pregnant I attended a support group that was held at the agency I went through. I went through a agency that is run by a church and I think there need to be more groups for birth moms to go. I know that some people wouldn’t be comfortable attending the group I did because of the ties to the church. I just see such a need for birth moms to have a place to go and take to others who know how they feel.
People see how I am now and get frustrated because they aren’t were I am. What they don’t understand is my daughter is now 6 years old and I have had people to talk to about it all. Now that being said people don’t know that I can’t look at her baby pictures because they make me cry. I have her pictures when she is older framed and on my walls but I can’t bring out her baby pictures because they make me sad. I am sorry this post is all over but I have been thinking a lot about adoption lately and I hope I can find a way to help other birth moms.
This weeks quote as you can see is by Albert Einstein. I love this quote right now because it is saying everything that I am trying to do right now. I miss Melissa so much but I also know that she would want me to keep living my life so that is what I am going to do! I am going to keep living at like I said in my last post I am going to be living life for the both of us now.
As you all know one of my best friends passed away on Sunday. I have tried many times to write this post and I have never been able to get words down on the screen. I have really struggled with this because it was such a shock to me. I was orginally going to write about what I love about her but I have decided that I am going to write a letter to her so that I can tell her everything that I never got a chance to do while she was alive.
* I am not going to get into what happened and other things that are going on as a result. I know Melissa would want me to keep living and let go of anger and hate.
Dear Melissa,
I miss you more and more everyday. I wish that you would have called me and let me know you were so down so that I could have helped you. I am writing this because I want to tell you and all my readers what I learned from you in the short time I knew you.
I learned how to be a better writer. You wrote posts that made people think and I hope that one day I can become as good as a writer as you were. Every post you wrote for my blog and even your own blog made me think and contemplate things in my own life. It takes an amazing writer to make people realize that they need to make changes in their lives just because of something you wrote.
I learned not to ever let people treat me bad. I saw what happened to you and I refused to let people do that to me. I show the toll it took on her and I don’t ever want people to control me.
I also learned that admitting you have a mental illness is nothing you need to hide. It was great to see that I can blog about things and there are people out there that won’t judge me and will understand. You are part of the reason I wrote my adoption story and started to post things that make me vulnerable. I guess I hope one day I have people come to my blog like you had going to yours!
I learned to look for join in the little things in life and how to deal with what life throws at me.
I will never forget you and everything you taught me. I promise that I will live the rest of my life for the both of us! I know I will see you again and I can’t wait til that day comes.
So I finally made the jump to a WordPress self hosted site for both my blog and business. I was scared to make the jump because I didn’t know if I would be able to figure it out and it was so overwhelming thinking about everything that would have to be changed. All of you should know about Jacqui by now if you don’t you will be glad that you do now. She owns Wacky Jacqui Designs & Transfer To WordPress she is also the designer that got me started in blog design. I ordered the transfer last week on like Thursday she started the transfer Monday and it had it all finished yesterday afternoon. She was transferring the designs I had and all the content on both of my blogs. I was so excited that it was done so quick and she is great about answering questions. I am so glad that I made the move and I know most of you will as well. Her button to her to transfer site is above so that will get to her site also she is under the partners tab on the top as well!
Please go check her out for all your transfers!!!!!
I was only fifteen going on sixteen when I met my baby’s father. I had a troubling childhood and was failing high school. Nick had a troubled childhood with his mom and dad never being there, dropping out of high school when he was only sixteen. When he walked into my life I felt everything was gonna be better, due to us having a similar pasts. We were “dating” for about three months when his mom left him for some guy she had met on the Internet and left Nick with his step-dad and to fend for himself. I begged my mom for him to move in with us due to him really not having a home. She really didn’t like the idea at all but made rules and regulations that I guess she assumed we would follow. We were young and in “love” and never followed my mothers rules that she had set when he did move in. He would sneak into my room late at night (he was supposed to sleep on the couch) and we always snuck out together even though it was against my mothers rules.
Months flew by like nothing and I kept falling further behind in school because all my time was with him and I could have cared less about school. I finally told my mom I was going to drop out of high school and just get a full time job, which I did down the street at Dairy Queen. A week later (kinda weird right?) I started not feeling right. I woke up morning and was throwing up, I couldn’t control it and did it all day. My mom knew something wasn’t right and took me straight to the doctor in which they made me pee in a cup then took my blood. When the doctor came in and said ” I got some not so good news for you.” My mom and I both looked at each other with a blank stare. And I said ” what is the news.” The doctor said ” your pregnant.” I flipped out and all I could do was cry. This isn’t at all what I wanted and I was too young. When we got back to our house I told Nick and he didn’t even know what to say. We were sitting on the porch that night and I will never forget that night my mom told me “everything happens for a reason.” Two months had passed by without even thinking what was growing in my stomach, my mom thought that it would be better if we moved closer to our family so that they could help. A month later my brother came down and helped us pack the U Haul to move to South Carolina. Nick and I had talked all about this day, a week before he proposed. The deal was he would stay in Missouri and I would go with my mom and eventually he would move to South Carolina too.
When we moved here my mom looked into homes for young girls that are pregnant and not knowing what they want. The first home I moved into I liked but it had its pros and cons just like everything else. Its pros were it got me into cpcc to get my GED and con it was like a prison. You had to do everything when they said to do it. Just a pretty strict place for girls that are already uncertain about things and uncomfortable about the situation that they are in. So I told my mom about everything that was going on and she looked into other homes mean while looking into adoption agencies (I did not know about this).
My mom called one day and told me she had a surprise for me and that I needed to be ready in thirty minutes, I was all excited till we pulled up in front of an adoption agency. We went in and this girl with a really positive attitude and big red hair greeted us. We went into her office and needless to say I had nothing to say to this woman because this was kinda forced on me. About a week later I met the director of another maturity home even though I was seven months pregnant I still was unsure about what I wanted to do with my unborn child, so they took me in. Once again I was faced with this women with a positive attitude and big red hair. After a couple of weeks sitting there and going through the options I did have I went out to lunch with the big red haired lady. We had a really good conversation and she never forced me into a decision she just told me the pros about adoption and all of its options. I figured out that even if I placed my unborn child with someone that I could have contact, a little, or none at all but the decision was all up to me in which I chose an open adoption because I felt I wanted him to still know that this decision out of love and not because I didn’t love him.
After careful consideration and knowing that I had to think of my unborn child and not myself, went to my moms that weekend and got onto the adoption agencies website and looked at families and chose three that I would look at there scrapbook (what makes them , there family life, just everything about them. ) So I went to the office and looked over all the scrapbooks and the nice positive attitude big red hair lady said I pulled this one for you to. So I had four to choose from and I narrowed it down to two, Ryder’s (my son) family is the first I had a meeting with and after our three hour questions back and forth conversation, I knew they were the ones that would raise my unborn child. Ryder’s mom from there on out was at every doctors appointment. We found out I was getting induced on the 19th and we would all meet at the hospital on the 20th. After one full night of them trying to get me to go into labor, I was tired and really hungry and young I asked my doctor if he could just do a c-section. He really didn’t want to do it because I was so young and he believed it was the medicine talking instead of the real Ericka but he did it anyways. Ryder Hayden was born on December 21,2005 at 4:22 pm 9 lbs 6 oz and 21 inches long. Even though I was in recovery for two and a half hours his mom and dad got to meet him right away because of my mom. I remember the next three days were really getting to know his mom and dad letting them get to know there son which was such a pleasure. Seeing the look on there faces was priceless and I’m so glad still to this day that i was able to give them a gift so priceless.
I remember the night before we all went home which was the hardest night of the whole thing not because I was upset with my decision but because I knew I was giving him the best life he could ever imagine. We all went home on December 24th. He will be six this year and I still cant believe how much time has flown but I would never go back on my decision. I have loved every moment of being able to call and get his updates and being able to talk to him when he wants to. I love getting the new pictures of him just to see how much he has grown and he is actually starting to look like his parents. (Crazy right?) I haven’t seen Ryder in a couple of years because I felt like I should let them live there life and he know because of his parents that he is adopted and I know when the time is right we will be able to see each other again.
