what it means to be a mom

So here is my baby girl. This ultra sound was taken at five months. I love it, I know this may sound weird but i really hope her nose looks the same! She totally has a button nose in this ultrasound, I love everything you can see her spine and belly and ears, arms and all! I totally geek out every time I look at it :). Today I started reading some pamphlets on open adoption written by a woman who placed herself. I don't know, but it is weird to talk about your feelings on the adoption but it is a completely different thing to read about feelings. It was almost harder reading about separation grief and such than talking about it or thinking about it. I know that it will be hard to be away from my baby, because i love her so much, but I'm only doing this because I love her so much. I don't want to think about the pain. I want to be happy for the life I know I am giving her. A life I know I cant give her.

Earlier in the pregnancy I felt bad that I was placing her, I felt as though it was a failure on my part that I wasn't ready to raise her myself. I felt like i was being a bad mother, and that it wasn't fare. Then I thought of what it meant to me to be a mother. I have all ways felt that first and foremost it is a mothers responsibility to all ways put the welfare of her child above herself. To make sure no matter what she is giving her child all the best she can, the best foot forward, the best happiness, the best chance of success. I feel It is her duty to love and nurture them before herself, to make sure they are comfortable and happy even if that makes her less comfortable and less happy. It is having a pure unconditional love for her child that never wavers in strength even when she may waver in strength. It is to be strong even when you have no strength left for the benefit of your child. I have all ways believed that a bad mom is a selfish mom, and even though I still should not have been a mom till I was ready. I made the choice and have no other choice but to try and make the best posable choice now. I feel by making this choice I am showing all of the qualities that I just listed above. I may not be able to raise her, but choosing not to raise her is the choice that makes me the best mother to her I can be at this moment. It is not because I don't love her, do not want her around or don't like screaming babies (although I will admit screaming children aren't really my thing). It is because I love her to much to doom her to a life were she will have less opportunities, less chances and legs up, less happiness or less security financial and otherwise. A life with out a responsible father or a steady home. It will be hard for me, it is already hard for me. She is a part of me, I have given her my life so she can have life. I have shared my body with her while she grows her own. I felt her first kicks and hiccups. I will all ways remember my first ultra sound with my mom and my second to find out she was a girl. I will all ways think of her and hope for her happiness and the best of everything. I may eventually have other children but she will all ways be just as much of a part of me and mean just as much as they will. When she leaves I know I am losing a part of myself with her. She has taught me a lot in our time together, and keeping her i may learn more, but a child is not a hand bag a teacher or an experiment. I wont put her at risk so I can show her off or play mommy when I am not ready. It hurts that she will never think of me as her real mother or call me mom or talk to me about boys. We will never fight laugh or cry the way a mother and daughter do. But she is my daughter and I am he mother in the only way I know how to be, the best way I can be. Well this one got way longer then I anticipated... thats all for now goodnight.