I should not have been driving. Not only was the baby fighting to get comfortable, so was I. The fear was grasping me around the throat, heart and head. I have no idea how the two of us made it the 20 miles home through those hills. Obviously there was a greater power driving.
When I made it back to the house, I slipped in quietly through the back door, and down into my room. I laid down on my bed and let loose. The emotions just poured out of me, from anger to confusion, to fear, to the unknown, it was all happening, all at once, and I had no idea what to do or where to turn. Sometime in the night, I woke up and the clarity had come to me. I had to do what was right for the baby, for that was the only thing that mattered.
I knew that there was no way that I could keep this baby. Once my mother said something, it was pretty much a given that she wouldn’t change her mind. I had no one to turn to, no one to help, and I was determined that I got myself into this, I had to get myself out of it. On my way back from a trip to the bathroom, I grabbed the local paper. As I was trying to get lost in something other than my current problem, I saw it. The ad that would haunt me for the rest of my life. Someone was looking to adopt a baby. The ad said something like this….’professional woman looking to adopt healthy newborn, baby will be well provided for, only the best things, please call xxx-xxx-xxxx’. As I sat and pondered this in the middle of the night, I thought to myself, maybe this is it, maybe this is the way to give my baby everything it needs. It was obvious to me that I could not take care of myself, let alone a baby.
The classified ad continued to be in the back of my mind for several days. It took a lot of courage to finally call the number. When I called, I heard the voice of a confident woman. She talked with me for hours about how much she would love the baby, how she was a nurse so she knew how to take care of a little one, how the baby as it grew would have access to the best schools, everything that one could ever hope for their child. As the conversation drew to a close, she thanked me for the call, and promised that if I chose her, she would love and cherish my baby.
After a few days, my sister was asking about what I was going to do, and I told her that I had spoken with a woman about adoption. When I told her about the call, she seemed to think that it sounded too good to be true, so she called the number. Little did I know that those two phone calls would shape a future that I never dreamed of…
