How does a baby express its feelings? The things experienced before birth?  The experiences during those first days, weeks, months after birth?

While a child is being carried it comes to know her voice. Being read to. Listening to those little songs sung just to them. They know their mother before they are even born. They start looking for their person as soon as they take their first breath. 

As time goes on, this experience intensifies. The first time they look for the breast, that touch, her smell, the diaper changes, baths, rocking.

What happens when this suddenly stops? After, say, ten days? What happens when relinquishment papers are signed, and that little baby receives that last special kiss, last special touch? When that smell disappears? But now at least she has a name, Mary Beth – the final gift.

How do you tell a baby that her world has changed forever? How will she ever understand? The day of the relinquishment, the day she officially receives a name, the day she has an official signed birth certificate, thatwould be the day she goes to the orphanage – alone.

Someone or something strange picked her up. It felt different from her mother. Felt different from the nurses. The room was different. The walls were bare and the light was dim. There were rows of cribs in an orderly fashion and it was noisy. This was the new normal for the next six months.

Two lives would never be the same. Hers and mine.