Somebody Loved Him...

His head is downy soft. I brush my hand over the tiny little fuzz, looking so much like a little mini-crew cut. It tickles my palm and my heart skips a little. His round round cheeks are faintly pink and his mouth is like the petals of some exotic dew drenched flower. When I brush my own lips over his satin cheek, he swivels his head toward me and his little bird mouth opens wide. His eyes are blue. Not baby blue, not cloudy muted grey like all newborns, but a startling pure sky blue that stands out against the olive hints in his baby skin. His head is completely flat in the back and I feel so sad, knowing that this is from being constantly on his back, likely strapped into his carseat for hours on end. I wonder how much he cried and cried, hot tears pouring down his little fat cheeks while someone ignored him, maybe yelled at him, maybe just left him alone. He is all of 10 weeks old and came into foster care when he was just 6 weeks new.

This baby, this tiny helpless infant who cannot yet roll over, who still jerks and bobs with an immature nervous system, who's little walnut fists still accidently smack himself in the face, has been taken from his mamma. I stand corrected, he was not taken, he was rescued.

I hold him in my arms and talk to him. My children stroke his hair and his cheeks. We all rub his round little belly and squeeze the rolls on his thighs. When he cries, we bounce him and rock him and pat him. We love him. Somebody loves him. I hope that all the love we can give his little soul will stay with him somehow. I don't know what his life will hold - a loving adoptive parent or a string of foster homes, but I do know that we can soak him in our care and saturate him with our love and pray that his little spirit will absorb it all and hold onto it all and someday when he is older he will have that satisfied feeling that somebody loved him when he needed it most.

I don't know if his mamma wanted him. I don't know if she rubbed her round pregnant belly and sang to him or if she dreamed of his softness and his sweetness. Maybe she did... and maybe the reality of babyness just overwhelmed her. I know he is not her first baby, nor the first one she's had to relinquish. Maybe she thought this time would be different. I like to think she did love him, did want him, and did dream of him. How else can I think of her without feeling such hatred for the very person who brought this precious gift into the world. I like to think that even before he was born, somebody loved him.