We Found Her Birth Mother

I have wanted to do a birth parent search for Sage since we brought her home. We didn't have much to go on but I felt that we owed it to her to try to find her birth parents before the trail (if there was one) went cold. I had several things I wanted to accomplish if we found her:
1. Sage pours over our family albums and scrapbooks often. It is like she is studying them. I wanted to try and get her pictures of herself as a baby or of her earlier childhood. I wanted to give her some history before we met her.
2. She wanted to let her birth mother know she was okay and happy.
3. I wanted to let her birth parents know she was in America. I wanted them know that she had a family that would always love her and care for her.
4. I hoped that we could get some information about her siblings and grandmother. I hoped that we could get pictures of them as well.
5. And like all AP's we hoped for some medical information.

We didn't go into the search thinking the mother did the best thing for Sage by letting her go. We didn't think rosy thoughts about her. We knew the information may be bad if not incomprehensible. We used Gene Sagin. When we first contacted him and sent him all of Sage's documents, he told us that he didn't think we had that great of a chance since Sage was abandoned in a public place and according to the orphanage documents, was never visited. Sage insists that she was visited by her mother and father. The orphanage told us that a woman came to see her once and could not produce the correct paperwork to prove she was the mother. She never came again.

Last Tuesday Gene found Sage's birth mother! I was a bit skeptical because a lot of the information in his report we already knew. In his first email he sent some pictures of the birth mothers boyfriend and mother neither of which Sage recognized. Then he said he was having trouble sending the pictures of the birth mother. Later in the day I checked my email and right when I was downloading the birth mother pictures Sage walked up to me to ask a question. When the picture popped up she said "Dats my moder! Dats her!" Sage had a smile on her face.

The conditions the BM lives in are horrible. I won't go into what the report revealed but to say Sage will have a better life here with us is an understatement. She lives 60 miles from where Sage was found in a small village. Her name is not what we thought it was. She is not married. She was not happy to know Sage is in America. Gene was not able to get any of the information we requested or pictures. But maybe we have the most important thing...a picture of where Sage came from. A picture of her birth mother. A connection to her life before us.

Later in the day Sage and I were in the car and I asked her how she was feeling about seeing her BM's picture. She said "My heart felt so happy and squishy and it was beeping so fast but my heart also felt sad." I asked her what about the picture made her happy and she said that she was able to see her mothers face again. I asked her what about the picture made her sad and she said "Pecost (because) I don't know why my mom left me." Heartbreaking! She told me that she wanted to send her mother food. She wanted to send her my old clothes so she had something better to wear. She did not look anything like what I thought she would. I pictured a tall, skinny woman with long straight dark hair. She was very over weight with curly, short dark hair. I have spent so much time studying these pictures of her looking for resemblences.

We do not plan to tell her about what the condition of her mother is or what she said until much later in life when/if she asks. I do feel some closure though and now we have a picture. It was more than we had before....