The issues are arising

One of my good friends had a baby a few weeks ago. Her pregancy, followed by her baby's birth, has raised some issues for Sergeant. She knows that she didn't grow in my tummy, but in her birth mother's, and she also knows that she spent her first nine months in an orphanage and was cared for by nannies. I swear she was "bothered" by my friend's pregancy and by seeing her tiny baby. I think she has some sort of three-year-old concept of herself as a tiny baby, without a mother. I can already see that a time is coming when she's gonna be pissed about the situation (arising out of hurt, of course). I'm not sure exactly how to handle it all. So far, I've tried to be matter-of-fact, while empathizing with her loss. I can honestly say that I don't wish I had given birth to Sergeant, because then she wouldn't be Sergeant - she'd be someone else. I know that many of the wonderful qualities I love about Sergeant come from her birth parents.

When we began the adoption process, I really believed that the child we would be matched with was meant to be our child. Since then, I've struggled with that belief. Sergeant fits in with our family like she was destined to be our daughter, but to say she was "meant to be ours" means that another family was meant to suffer. And, more importantly, it means that Sergeant was meant to suffer the loss of her birth family, her birth country, and the experience of growing up with people who "look like her." I think I was a fairly prepared and realistic adoptive parent. I read the books, I considered the issues, but in the glow of impending motherhood, I don't think I really felt the issues. Or maybe I'm feeling them now because they pertain to a person for whom I would step in front of a train.