MEET CHAMP (20 WEEKS)

Dear Sophia,

This week I want to introduce you to your new foster brother, Champ:

He’s actually been living with us for the last 4 weeks!  And I hope you don’t mind, but he’s sleeping in your nursery.  In fact, we’ve been able to use lots of your things for Champ.  He uses your car seat and stroller and changing table and baby monitor.  But don’t worry, we don’t make him wear your cute pink dresses.

It’s been great having him in our house, but I’d be lying if I said I sometimes wished that he was you.

And it’s great that all of the wonderful gifts that our friends gave us while I was pregnant are being used, but I wish they were being used by you.

Having Champ here is so bittersweet.  It’s so wonderful to have a baby to care for and a little one to hold in my arms.  But it’s heartbreaking that that baby isn’t you.  It’s hard to not question why God couldn’t have allowed you to come home from the hospital.

There are a lot of similarities between him and you.  He was born the day before your due date.   You both were born with a cleft lip and palate and you both had some very “special” needs.  He was without oxygen after he was born and because of that has problems with seizures.  We spend each night holding him and walking him back and forth to try and calm him down when the seizures wake him up.

I know that he needs us, and I know that we need him.  And I know that if it hadn’t been for your life, Champ would not be in our lives right now.  So thank you, Sophia, for helping to give Champ a better life.  Thank you, Sophia, for preparing our hearts to love babies with special needs and circumstances.  Thank you, Sophia for allowing us to look pass diagnoses to see the God-made creation behind it.

Once again your influence and legacy lives on.  Wow, I am so proud that you are my daughter.

I love you to the moon and back,

Mommy