She received her birthday present from me the other day. Her Mom let me know that she loved one of the gifts that I included. (Of note: five year old girls love beads.) I was pleased that I picked something that met her approval. I was pleased that she was enjoying something that I sent for her.

I didn’t send a card. The boys did. I helped my oldest son write his name and a message. The letters he writes on his own aren’t quite letters yet. And I helped my youngest son hold the purple marker and scrawl out his name as well. He loves to make marks on paper. Or our chalkboard in the playroom. Until he decides that he wants to eat the chalk. All the same, the boys sent a simple construction paper card.

But I did not.

I buy Munchkin’s cards whenever I find one that says something that I want to say. Years and years ago, you know, five of them, I asked her Mom if it was appropriate for me to buy birthday cards with the word “daughter” on them. She gave me the go ahead and I have been doing that for five years now. I mean, I had the card this year. I had it pulled out when I wrapped up the present. But I didn’t sign it. And I didn’t place it in the package. And I left it sitting on our table for two days after the package was sent before I retired it to the box where I keep all of our cards.

Early on, I suppose, it was important to me to be able to refer to her as daughter. It was important to me for her to know that I was a mother to her in some form or fashion. It is not as if that inner need has magically disappeared exactly. My inability to send the card this year is also not based on the whole alleged confusion factor that those against open adoption want to blame for the faults of the world.

It’s very strange.

Parenting these boys has changed me in so many ways. I see things a bit differently. As an example, I do not need to buy either of them cards with the word “son” plastered all over in order for them to understand who I am to them and what I do for them at any given time. Maybe I’m hoping that the Munchkin views me in the same way. She does know who I am and I hope that, in time, she realizes what I do for her. It is not that I do not feel that she is my daughter or that I do not feel as if I am a mother to her in some form or fashion. Perhaps it is more of a point where I am falling into place with my role in her life. I am finding a comfort level in how she views me, how she responds to me and how she speaks with me. Maybe that fear that she won’t ever recognize me as a mother is dissipating five long years later.

I don’t know the specific reasons. But I didn’t send the card. I willfully made the decision. And, yes, part of me feels guilty even though the rational part of me understands the complex reasonings behind that decision.

All the same, she will always be my one and only daughter. And I’m finding peace in that fact.

A hypothetical question was posed in a community I frequent:

If, hypothetically, Roe v Wade was overturned. You find yourself pregnant, with no desire to keep it.

What would you do?

Oh, the hypothetical! Don’t birth parents live in the “What If” enough without questions like these? Despite wanting to launch into a lengthy debate with people who have little to no knowledge about adoption, I didn’t respond. Instead, I mulled it over for awhile before realizing, “Oooh! Blog fodder!”

And so, what would I do?

First of all, this is hard for me to now imagine. Having been through the placement of a child, knowing that relinquishment is almost always less about a desire to “keep” a child and more about circumstance, I really doubt I would find myself lacking a complete desire to keep my child. I also would move hell and high water to parent my child if I was ever again in a position in which finances or parenting situations were not optimal. So, I’m having trouble jumping into this hypothetical.

All the same, what would I do?

I would not place another child for adoption. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t be able to be the parent I need to be for the two boys living under my roof should I have to relinquish another child. And so, imagining that something has gone entirely wrong in my marriage and with my finances and has left me thinking and acting in crisis mode while pregnant?

I’d parent.

I know everyone was expecting me, Mrs. ProChoice Activist, to say that I’d cross the line into Canada and have an abortion. Or that I’d risk it and have some illegal abortion in the United States. But while I will fiercely protect a woman’s right to choose what she does in this kind of scenario, I don’t think I have it in me to have an abortion. I’m weird like that, perhaps. But unless it was a life or death decision on the table between myself and the child, I don’t think I could have an abortion. (Reason for the previous statement is because I need to be alive for my living children. Of course!)

And so, the naysayers are about to say, “OMG! YOU’D RESENT YOUR CHILD! HE’D RUIN YOUR LIFE! IT WOULD BE HELL! GIVE IT TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS IT!!!111??~~!” Well, all I’ve got to say is: I’ve been a mother. I am a mother. I know that there are good days. There are bad days. There are days when parents who desperately did everything in their power to bring a child into their family find themselves thinking, “OMG! WHAT DID WE DOOOOOOOO?!” And I know that guilt that crosses over you for thinking such a thing that very next time your son walks up to you and says, “Mommy, I love you,” after he’s been a complete heel all day long.

And so, I’d parent. I’d do it umpteen times over. In a crisis pregnancy situation that even had me contemplating such questions and actions, I’d high-tail it to therapy to help me sort through the issues before the child was born. But I’d parent. Hands down. No other option for me.

(And then I commented anyway! Headdesk for me.)