The first thing I see is her hair. Who knew a newborn could have so much of it? As I look through the window into the operating room, I see the doctor hand over to a nurse a wailing, ruddy baby with a head full of dark hair.
I cry.
Will she be my daughter? Will I get to be her mommy?
Her mother has decided to let my husband and I adopt her baby, but this is before the birth. She might change her mind.
I tell myself to stop crying. I may not get to be this baby’s mommy after all.
A nurse sees me looking in and flashes a smile and give me a thumbs up as the baby is placed on a table. She tells me to come on in and meet my daughter.
How could something so tiny wail so loudly?
“Look, tears!” one nurse says. “You don’t see that very often with newborns.”
Sure enough, a fat tear slides down my maybe baby’s cheek.
The umbilical cord needs to be trimmed. The nurse asks me to do the honors. Of course I want to, even though I don’t think I should. Cutting the cord is an intimate act, usually reserved for fathers. This baby’s father isn’t at the hospital. He isn’t involved in her birth.
I take the scissors and cut. The cord is thick, and the blood that splatters out is a deep, rich red.
Next to the baby’s table is the woman who gave birth to her, still under anesthesia. I hear the nurses counting sponges to make sure they got them all. They are about to close her up after performing a Cesarean and—at her insistence—tying her tubes.
Three-Year Journey for a Baby
Seven months earlier, my husband, Jason, and I start down this rocky road of domestic adoption. A year before that—after two years of negative pregnancy tests and inconclusive infertility testing—we gathered up stacks of documents required to adopt a baby from China.
But that process slowed, and we ache to be parents. So we hire an attorney. We attend domestic adoption seminars. We make up a booklet about our life together.
