It didn't seem like very long until Moira gave birth to a baby girl and as she held her baby with blurry eyes, she wondered if she was doing the right thing in giving her up for adoption. Was her daughter going to go to a good home; was she going ever going to see her daughter again? The questions made it tough to even let go of her daughter but she knew she had to compartmentalize if she was going to ever go through with trying to make a life for herself and Cearbhall. At least her daughter would have the opportunity to grow up in a stable and secure family environment. She wouldn't have to know the struggles that Cearbhall and she were going to have to go through to even get financially solvent, if even two teenagers could manage to get jobs.
It was with wary caution that she sat down, her daughter in her arms in front of the adoption center social worker, Anna and told their story of why they couldn't keep their daughter. The fact that they were barely solvent and unable to feed her without resorting to methods that would run them afoul of the law. They needed to make sure that their daughter would be fine while they tried to survive. But even rationalizing that didn't make it any easier to give up someone who she carried around in her belly for so long and had an emotional bond towards. Even saying to herself that This is the best for her did not meet with a rational response. After all this was visceral, emotionally raw pain.
She hoped her voice was steady when she spoke, because it felt in her heart like she was going to fall to pieces.
Cearbhall came to sit down to offer support as well, but he was in the same shape as she was. He was just as attached to their daughter as she was and they were ripping big chunks out of their hearts.
You are aware that you can choose to have visitation or not?" Anna mentioned. "It is a stressful time for both of you so you don't have to decide immediately, but I noted that in your records during intake that you are on the cusp of aging up to young adult. Are you sure that this is something that you still want to do? Give her up, that is."
"I understand..." Moira said as she took a deep breath before speaking further, "But I know that Cearbhall and I are going to go through some rough times together and I don't want her to have to suffer alongside us...it's better if she has a stable family and we can't provide that for her right now." She stopped before she choked on a lump in her throat..."...as much...as we want to hang on to her..." she said softly, barely audible.
"OK...then, we'll start the paperwork process. Do you have any preference for a type of family that she would go to?"
Cearbhall looked at Anna, "My father has a friend at work, but it appears that they have their own child on the way...we would have taken her in, but my da and my ma have o'er three brothers and two sisters, we cannot fit another child in...especially not my child." He looked at Moira silencing her objections with a shake of his head, "He would have, sweetheart, even if he didn't like it, the chid is our family...it's just that I didn't want to put our daughter through emotional trauma because of the circumstances of her arrival. If there's one thing we O'Briens are good at; it's laying guilt-trips on each other..." he snorted, "Me da's been doing that for years an' I"ll no longer hear it. I'll not put her in a place where there's such going on."
He paused for a long moment, "His name is Yoshinobu and..." He rattled off a phone number which Anna noted down on her pad of paper.
"We'll see if he can come down and be supportive of you two at least." Anna stated, hoping that the family friend that the young teen was talking about was a supportive type and wouldn't go and cause problems for the young couple who were trying to do the right thing, "Trying to raise multiples of the same age is bound to be very taxing on parents so we do hesitate to agree to home a child with another infant already in place and such a young child at that."
Moira could only hope that was the case. Her family was also tied in with the O'Briens and the family friend was one that she was familiar with. He was much younger than her father who was getting on in years and she had hoped that he and his pregnant wife could potentially raise her daughter together, but now she wasn't so certain. She wanted to keep her baby but it was impossible at this point in time.
There was a long moment of contemplation as they both wondered what would become of their daughter and once they let her go into someone else's hands, if they would ever be able to see her again. The only thing the two of them could do was to compartmentalize their feelings or end up breaking down.
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