Goodbye Once More, This Time to Aleki

Today, Aleki joined his five siblings and left us after only a short stay in our family. It is hard to write this post, but so many of you have been so loving, supportive and kind we wanted to make sure that you all knew.

In Virginia, a birth mother has 10 days after giving birth to change her mind about placing her baby for adoption. For Aleki that date was today. Last night, about 2100h we received a call from the social worker that said the birth mother had changed her mind and that they would have to come pick up Aleki today at noon.

I cannot begin to tell you the rush of emotions that heaped on Lady Hiva and I. It felt like some sort of horrible nightmare. Deep down I hoped and prayed she would change her mind—again. She hadn’t even wanted to see him after he was born and now she was taking him back.

We spent the few precious hours we had left with Aleki, loving him, reading to him and taking turns holding him. We read him books, something that he loves, kissed his cheeks and told him how much we will miss him.

It was the all too familiar feeling of knowing you were losing your baby and you couldn’t do anything about it. All you can do is love the moments that you have. Since Aleki came to our family, there was a peaceful reverence in our home, last night that reverence shifted to a sad solemnness.

We stayed up holding him, unwilling to miss any time together. When we finally did sleep we put him in our bed with us and Lady curled up on one side and I curled up on the other.

Today we watched the dreadful clock as it crept to show noon. We gave Aleki one last bath and put on a fresh set of clothes.  Then we sat as a family, as close as we could get, and we read stories and sang and waited.

Kissing him one last time as the social worker took him was hard. Watching him walk out the door was even harder. We spent the next few hours filling our once again baby-less home with tears and memories.

We don’t know what the future holds. Nor do we know why this occurred. Hopefully we will understand some day. For now, we will mourn the loss of Aleki and look forward to Tau’aho’s arrival. Hopefully we will take our track record from 0 for 6 to 1 for 7 next month.

--We love you, Aleki. We will miss holding you close enough to smell your fresh skin and listening to you gurgle and coo as you sleep. We will miss your wiggly fingers and toes and how mad you would get when we changed your diaper. Most of all, we will miss the joy you brought into our home during the time we were lucky to be called your parents. Like your siblings, you have a special place in our hearts and we will pray for you each day, our little Sweetheart--