I’ve told the birth stories about all three of my children, but there is still one story I have yet to tell. Many people know this story, but no one knows it so well as me.

A long time ago, but not so very long ago at all, I moved out of my parents home for the first time and through a series of bad decisions I made for myself combined with decisions that had been made for me, I ended up pregnant at the age of 19. My parents took it in stride, being as supportive as they knew how, making suggestions about what I should do while also trying to allow me to make my own decision. At the same time, I was going through a very serious bout of depression, so a lot of that time period was sort of a blur of splotchy memories. The whole time I was trying to figure out what to do with my pregnancy, I was also trying to figure out what to do with myself.

At first, I thought maybe I should keep the baby. He was my child that I created, after all, and that made his welfare my responsibility. But the longer I thought about it, the more I realized that, though that may be the right decision for other people, it would not have worked for me. I still struggled to take care of myself, adding a child into that mix would just be a great disservice to the child. I wanted better for him than I was able to or even capable of giving at that time.

One of the gynecology department nurses talked to me about the possibility of me getting an abortion, but that never really felt like an option to me. I want to say it was because I believed that the child I created deserved to live, and in hindsight, I CAN say that and know that if I had to make the decision over again, I would make the same decision and have that be the reason, but in actuality, with where I was at the time, my true feelings were that the idea of getting an abortion was somehow way more scary to me than actually going through with having the baby. And so I decided to have the baby and give him up for adoption to a family that could give him all the things he would not be able to get from me.

Next came the process of choosing a family. My parents did a lot of the legwork for me, as I was pretty young and they had resources I did not. They found a private adoption agency and took me to meet with them. The agency gave me many brochures created by families who were seeking to adopt children. My mother helped me take these packets of information and turn them into an Excel chart (my mother is the most knowledgeable Excel chart maker I have ever met) which helped me to determine which families aligned most with my own beliefs and values. In the end, I was able to narrow that big number of families down to two. One was a couple from Missouri, the other was an older couple, but they were local.

I ended up going with the local couple because I was able to actually meet them in person and felt like that would make things easier in the long run when it came time to hand off the baby. That ended up being the wrong decision. After talking to a geneticist about the possibility of genetic issues, I found out that the baby would have a 50% chance of being born with something called neurofibromatosis— a condition which can cause benign tumors, possible learning disabilities, and a host of other issues– which his birth father (and uncle) had, and could pass on genetically.

Valuing integrity very highly, I sought to make sure the couple knew of the possibility of this condition, exactly what it was, and the implications for their family so that they could make an informed decision about the baby. Within 24 hours, they backed out of the adoption process, stating that this was too difficult for them to accept. I later learned that this couple was apparently looking for a genetic super-baby, as they had already turned down two or three other adoptions, one simply because the baby was biracial. I guess that knowledge was supposed to make me feel better, but with only a few weeks to my due date, it did not have that effect. This baby would be born and have nowhere to go.

And indeed, he was. On May 12, 2002, the baby was born Christian David Wells. May 12th happened to fall on Mother’s Day that year, but all of the nurses were warned to not tell me, “Happy Mother’s Day,” because I would be giving my baby up for adoption. Looking back, I wish they had. I was still his birth mother, after all. And it’s not like I didn’t want the baby, I just knew that I was not responsible enough to raise him myself. In fact, giving him up for adoption was probably the only truly responsible decision I had ever made up to that point. But of course, there was no way for them to know that.

I was put in contact with the hospital social worker, who sent out word to a few families that there was a baby currently at the hospital who had been born and had no place to go. Each of the three families came to visit me in the hospital and talk with me, but when I told them that the baby may have neurofibromatosis, they all declined. The social worker accused me of secretly plotting to keep the baby. She wondered why I would even tell the potential parents something that would be so likely to cause them to reject my baby. I wondered about the morality of a person who would consider being so dishonest in trying to keep important information from a couple just to make it more likely that they would accept the child. The right family would be fully informed, and they would accept that responsibility. I was not going to have it any other way.

So I took the baby home with me and for two weeks, I raised him myself. Well, not alone. By that time, I had moved back in with my parents and was attending classes at a local community college. I was home with him on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and my mother, who had recently broken her ankle and therefore was told by her doctor that she had to be on partial leave, so she was only working three days a week, watched him on Tuesday and Thursday.

At first, it wasn’t so bad. I did have to get up a few times every night and make formula for the new arrival, but he slept a lot, and he was pretty easy to care for. But things got very hard very quickly. One night, he woke up and he was absolutely inconsolable. I couldn’t get him back to sleep and I was so tired, myself that soon both of us were crying. My parents came in to rescue me and let the baby spend the night in their room. My dad was eventually the one to discover that the baby just did not enjoy the rocking motion of his bassinet, and once they got it pinned into place so that it did not swing to-and-fro, he was able to settle back in and finally go to sleep.

In the meantime, my parents were told of another private adoption company that had different morals than the first. They put us in contact with two couples that were both local and willing to take a baby that may have special needs.

I literally could not have gone wrong with either of these two options. I felt very confident that either of them could have given the baby all the love and support in the world and provided for him in every way that I couldn’t. However, I obviously could not King Solomon the baby in two, so a decision had to be made.

I conferred with my mom and she and I agreed. It felt as though there was a kind of devine intervention telling us to choose one of the couples over the other. On the day of their interview the couple told me that they were thinking of the name Christopher Michael, which was interesting because I had spent that whole day wanting to call him “Christian Michael” instead of “Christian David.” My mom had a similar inkling. We met at a restaurant near their home, and as the woman was holding the baby, an older couple walked by and told her that her baby was beautiful. That also stood out to me. It did feel like the baby fit in with their family really well. And in addition to that, the couple had already adopted another child– a boy. I, myself, had always wanted an older brother and felt like I should jump on the opportunity for my baby to have one.

But the reason that I feel was the most important deciding factor was that they welcomed us into their family. Not only did the baby get a new family, but so did my parents and I, and that is something that I have come to be really thankful for these past several years. They opened up their family to us, so I didn’t lose a son, I gained an entire family, and they have been such a great help to us, for example when my dad passed away, or after my mom had her strokes, and it’s just really hard to imagine my family without them being a part of it.

Even though the process was stressful and there were a lot of twists and bumps along the way, I feel like that’s the way that it had to be so that we could make sure that the baby, now called Kyle David and an adult, himself, ended up with the best family. And they, indeed, are the best.

I am so grateful for them and how much they have added to our family and even though we are not able to spend Thanksgiving together this year, due to COVID, I still think of them on this day of giving thanks and celebrate how much fuller and richer they have made my life and the lives of the rest of my family.