The Importance Of Names

A mum-to-be has sparked an interesting debate online, after confessing she’d found herself in a bitter row with the biological family of her soon-to-be adopted twins.

The woman and her husband are due to become parents to a gorgeous pair of twins when they are born next year – but while everything had been going smoothly between the two families, they’ve recently come to a huge road block over names.

“My husband and I are in the process of adopting two cute little twins that will be born in January,” the 25-year-old explained on Reddit’s Am I The A**hole forum.

“The biological mother is a 15-year-old girl, G, who doesn’t want to keep them. She’s the daughter of a friend of a friend of ours and somehow it got through that we wanted to adopt so her family called us as soon as they knew that G was pregnant.”

The couple have been with G all throughout her pregnancy and have assured her that even though she doesn’t wish to be a mother to the twins, she can still be a part of their life and visit them whenever she wants, as they’ll all be living in the same city – despite the fact the teen has shown no interest in having a relationship with them at all so far.

“As soon as we found out about the baby, we began looking for names and when it was confirmed that it were going to be twins, a girl and a boy, we decided on the names Ellie and Evan,” the woman continued.

“Last week however, we were informed that G had chosen names herself; Walter and Agnes. She didn’t choose them because of a relative, just because she thought they sounded cool. I don’t think I have to mention how outdated the names are and my husband and I simply don’t like them.”

The mum-to-be added that even if the name chosen by G were great, they’re still hers and her husband’s children and they will be raising them, therefore it’s their place to choose the names.

“They will also get our last name and legally be our children, which was decided and agreed on five months ago,” she continued. “G’s family is upset with us for not accepting their ‘real’ names and is threatening to look for new parents.”

The mum explained that while she was considering naming the girl Ellie Agnes to appease the family, there was no way she would ever name the boy Evan Walter.

Although it appears to be empty threats from G’s family, the woman turned to Reddit to question whether she was justified in putting her foot down when it comes to naming their adopted babies.

“I think you need to look at it from the bio moms perspective. She is giving you a really big gift. Regardless of practicality, opportunities etc, these are her babies. Naturally she would want to give them a name, it’s practically the only thing she will ever be able to give them,” one suggested.

“You will be the ones to comfort them, you will be the ones to cuddle them, you will be the ones there for every milestone. I understand hating the names, but I would try to either keep them as middle names or talk to her and see if you can come up with better names together.”

In my all things adoption group, the comment was –

To me it basically comes down to whose names are they?…The baby boy and the baby girls. It’s as simple as that. It’s not the adopter’s names nor the birth mother’s names…it’s the names she chooses and gives them. So it’s their names. Their name is their property, belonging to each of them. To take that away is identity theft, as happens in the majority of adoptions. It kinda happened in my adoption, as my adoptive parents didn’t know/weren’t told my name so chose what I was to be called. I was 38 before I learned my original name…MY name. I usually liken it to me calling someone by their wrong name eg Barbara, but I call her Bernice. She’d put me straight pretty damn quick, yet Adoptees live a life by the wrong name and are expected to put up and shut up! Adoption should be about the child’s needs and about their rights, respect and
autonomy, not ownership, imbalance or superiority. When will people get that?

My own experience –

My adoptee dad used to tease my adoptee mom by using her name at birth. It turns out that both of them had names relevant to their genetic heritage – for my dad, his middle name was the name of the man who fathered him. for my mom, her middle name was her grandmother’s middle name – my grandmother had lost her mom at the tender age of 7 and was seeking to honor her. I am against adoptive parents changing adoptee’s names. The change in the last name may be a governmental requirement as regards financial responsibility but then again, these days, with remarriage so common, does it really matter what the last name
of the child is ?

The Pain of Family Feuds

I’ll let this story from my all things adoption group speak for itself.

I’m an adoptee that was adopted by my maternal grandparents at birth, my birth mom has always been in my life at different times and in different ways, our relationship now is very rocky, and I never saw much of my dad growing up.

When I was 6, my grandparents cut off all contact with my dad’s family. For years they told me that it wasn’t safe, or that they had no interest in seeing me, which wasn’t true – my grandparents actively threw out letters and cards from them.

I used to beg to see my family, when I was a young teen I started sneaking out to see my aunt, then my grandparents found out. I was grounded and stopped from leaving the house. I grew up remembering and loving these people who lived literally two miles away but missing out on a childhood with them.

I grew up with no racial mirrors and felt like I did something wrong to these people that I had fun memories with as a kid. One time I saw my aunt across a store and begged my grandma to say hi, but my grandma dragged me out of the store and said it wasn’t safe.

4 years ago, I reunified with my dad’s family locally and have an amazing relationship with them, and flew to California to see my uncle and meet my cousins for the first time, and eventually flew to New York. I was greeted with open arms, but it doesn’t make up for the 20 year gap of not having these people in my life. These are people I should’ve grown up with!

My aunt lives close to me and we talk, but I feel like a stranger in her house. I feel like I don’t belong here. My uncle is in town to visit with his kids, and I’ve been here all day, and decided to stay the night…for the first time at 28 years old, I’m spending the night with my aunt – something that most kids did growing up.

It’s 3 AM and I’m laying on her couch, unable to sleep because I don’t feel like I belong here, even though they treat me like we were never apart. I don’t know what the point of this post is…it’s just complicated, not many people understand my complex adoption trauma or seem to think that it’s somehow “less” because I was adopted by my grandparents, I should just shut up and be grateful for that.

I still feel like I’m in the fog. My grandparents have both died, and I have a hard time wrapping my thoughts and emotions around the trauma that two people I loved very much even so caused. I’m just trying to live with it.

Mirabai Starr in Wild Mercy

I am in the midst of reading Mirabai Starr‘s book – Wild Mercy – and today learned she adopted her children. Hers is a multiracial family. She had made the decision in her youth due to a concern about overpopulation (a concern I shared at one point in my own life). The looming shadow of the climate crisis was another motivation.

Between them, Mirabai and her husband, Jeff, have four grown daughters and six grandchildren. Mirabai’s youngest daughter, Jenny, was killed in a car accident in 2001 at the age of fourteen. On that same day, Mirabai’s first book, a translation of Dark Night of the Soul, was released.

Mirabai writes – I am a mother who has lost her child, Jenny Starr. In the midst of terrible beautiful unbridled mothering I am suddenly childless. I cannot find my way through a world that does not have my girl at its center. I do not understand. I don’t get why you did not make it through the hurricane season of adolescence, why the vessel of our love, of our ferociously devoted love, did not carry you safely back to me.

Her book Caravan of No Despair is the story of her journey through the grief of this tragedy. She has written in an essay Why Mother’s Day Is Still Special To Me that she found her daughter on her thirtieth birthday. “It was early May and we drove to Albuquerque from our home in the mountains of northern New Mexico to meet Jenny at her foster home in the South Valley. I had been prepped for the encounter, and had cultivated a degree of reserve so that I would neither overwhelm the child nor give her false hope in case it was not a good fit and we wouldn’t be following through.”

She continues, “Most children in the adoption system have been abused, neglected, abandoned, and have serious trust issues. I envisioned Jenny as a wild bird landing for a moment in my hand. I must not scare her off. We pulled up to the dilapidated adobe and parked at the curb—my soon-to-be ex-husband, my older daughter, Daniela, whom we had adopted two years earlier on her eleventh birthday, and me. I stepped out of the car and there she was, a toddler on a tricycle, peddling toward us with a shy smile. Look, Mommy, her face said to me, I can ride my bike.

A week later, on Mother’s Day, we brought her home. Jenny’s social worker met us halfway, at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Santa Fe. Jenny clutched the paper bag containing all of her possessions—a couple of pairs of pants that were too small and a flowered blouse that was too big (the new jacket conspicuously missing). She had a “memory book” put together by the staff at her foster home. It contained a picture of a little black baby cut from an ad in a magazine because Jenny did not have any real baby pictures and the Gerber child looked a little, but not very much, like her (and not a thing like me).

Jenny herself dubbed Mother’s Day as our “anniversary.” Every year on that day we celebrated with cake, mostly on our own, as the man who was supposed to be her father never was, and her sister became a teenage mother early on and left home.

The year I turned forty, Jenny turned fourteen. One night in a fit of teenage rebellion, Jenny took my car for a joy ride and never returned. She crashed on the downward slope of a steep mountain pass and died alone under a full moon. It never crossed my consciousness that I would outlive my child or that Mother’s Day would become an unbearable reminder that the daughter into whom I poured the full cup of my love would leave this world, and that I would shatter.

On a personal note – my then teenage daughter once went for a joyride in the middle of the night with a sleep-over friend and they wrecked her step-mother’s car. She called me wanting a plane ticket to Missouri. I knew that her dad and step-mother would look here first and that she needed to face the responsibility for what she had done. It took my parents intervention (who were still in the same city) to keep her from running away (which was my primary concern). I am so grateful upon reading this that she at least survived. It could have turned out tragically.

Fostering Babies Is Difficult

One of the hardest things to do was to let them go home to their natural parents but that’s what we as foster parents have signed up for. It’s what foster families are suppose to do. But the urge to parent and fall in love with babies is a strong one, even if you didn’t birth them.

A foster parent writes – Today’s the day I realized I can’t do this. Most of the 20+ foster kids we have had were teens who stayed with us until they decided otherwise. This is the first time we have fostered babies and today I realized this will be the placement that breaks me.

I went to the hospital and picked the twins up 2 weeks after they were born, my home was their first home. They have had 3 visitations from their biological parents, who are trying to get them back. I have had them for 4 months now and my family is the family they know.

Today the twins had a doctor’s appointment and their biological parents showed up. No one knew they were coming, so it was just me with the parents and the babies. During the appointment the babies cried and reached for me but the biological parent wasn’t having it and would try to soothe them. It was like watching a stranger try to comfort my own child.

Today, I wanted nothing more than to hold these babies and tell them it would all be ok and today I was told I couldn’t. Today was the day it really set it that they won’t stay with me. Today’s the day my heart shattered. Today is the day that being a foster parent sucks.

First things first. This foster parent was immediately given a reality check.

What got to me was her saying “they were reaching for me!” Babies don’t reach at 16 weeks…my daughter can barely control her arm movements yet. It’s so delusional!!

My daughter is 6 months and I didn’t even catch that but yes! She didn’t start reaching for her dad and I until this month.

I was thinking that too! That’s so little to be reaching!

Babies at 16 weeks know who mom is instinctively and recognize caregivers but they don’t even show a preference.

The only one who was ‘reaching’ was the delusional foster parent.

And well . . . I’m sure it must have been a painful experience for their birth mother too. Let’s hope that whatever agency is handling the return of the twins to their parents will help you and the parents to work out a transitioning period during which they can come back to feeling “at home” with their parents again. It takes lots of generosity of spirit by all the adults concerned, but it is possible–and possible to do well, for the twins’ benefit. (Said from experience.)

Our infant fosterlove was crying and crying in her mom’s arms at a social services meeting. So instead of just letting the baby scream I asked the mom if I could help. I showed her how her daughter liked being held like a football and bounced. Then I handed the baby back and had her comfort her. I reminded her that she will figure that all out once she goes home. She thanked me and it led to us having a good relationship while her daughter was with us. We had her until she was 14 months.

Single Moms and Parenting

One of the most important “missions” in my all things adoption group is to support and encourage single moms to attempt to parent their baby rather than reflexively giving the baby up of adoption. Fortunately, that is more acceptable during the last couple of decades for a woman to be a single mom, than it would have been earlier in our collective history.

Several questions were asked of those who had made the choice to keep and parent their baby –

What is/would be/would have been the deciding factor in choosing to parent your child?

Of course, finances are a huge issue. But is money enough?

Better enforcement of revocation periods?

More/better emotional support?

Believing you are worthy enough to deserve your child?

Safe and affordable housing?

Yes, all of this helps. But what is the single factor that would be enough to tip the scales one way or the other?

Some of the responses –

Family and friends helping and being involved and better mental health care.

As someone who parented: A job that paid $15/hr that was full time during daycare hours. Literally that was all I needed. The most basic thing we should be fighting for: the right to be fairly compensated for our work. For me it was a labor rights issue, 100%. Why are jobs like this so hard to come by? The flip side would be: affordable childcare that matched the hours of your job.

Another one shared this was an issue for her as well. My exact problem right now. I’m unemployed, single mom of 4 kids and while I qualify for daycare, I can’t find one near me that has space for all my kids and is open for reasonable hours. 90% of daycares I find close at 5:30pm. My experience is service industry and retail. These jobs usually have varying work schedules and very low pay.

Yet another issue – I am a single mom raising my 4 children. The 2 fathers claimed the kids on their taxes and collected all the stimulus money. It took me 2yrs to get my tax return back because I had to file a paper return.. And I don’t know if I will get any of the stimulus money. The child support orders are ridiculously low. $600 a month for all 4 kids, IF I even get the payments. It’s rough.

This one found it a struggle but felt lucky as well – I was extremely lucky that the owner of our daycare knew the father of my child because his mother worked there years ago, so she gave me the toddler rate instead of the infant rate. She knew he wasn’t contributing. I was also extremely lucky to have found a mobile home for under $1,000/mo because the landlord was just an all around good guy who didn’t want to take advantage of single people and seniors. My job was a $24,000/yr salary, which meant that my paychecks were static and not variable, which made it easier to budget. I didn’t have much left over at the end of the month, but I managed to save $25 a month until I felt certain we were not going to be homeless again. Literally the bare minimum, but I spent most of my working life living on or below that and I was amazed by how little it took to change everything. We did great on this. She added – I agree that daycare should be subsidized and paid for by the government the same way school is. It doesn’t make sense to have you starting out paying the equivalent of a college tuition just so you can work.

It’s the myth – that adoption means everyone’s happy and doing well.

One shared why she didn’t go through with adoption and credits our all things adoption group as well – When he was born and that was it for me. I wasn’t letting go. And I would do anything and I mean ANYTHING in the world to make it possible. So for me it was that. However. I had a daughter that was going through cancer treatment, I didn’t feel it was fair to her. Those feelings washed away when I had him, I knew in my heart she needed him too. I definitely needed the support of my family. At the hospital I cried all night, My sister woke up and asked me if I was okay and I said “I cant just give him away, I can’t let him go” she said “then don’t “. And called all my family and they made it possible to bring him home providing all of the necessities we needed. Had I felt I had this support before the hospital in keeping him, I would not considered adoption all the way up to giving birth to him at the hospital. Honestly I still would have kept him after his birth at the hospital. I was definitely in mama bear mode. He’s 3 now and I update about every year in this group. Had I not been here, who knows if I would have gotten talked into letting him go by the hopeful adoptive parents -or not. But she definitely tried. She went on to share that her daughter was completely surprised. She said “you finally got me my very OWN BABY?!” She thought he was for her lol I love seeing them together, they are so cute.

Another woman shared – Not feeling good enough and finances were the primary reasons I placed. Instead of receiving encouragement, my past traumas were used against me as evidence that I wasn’t “ready.” I was made to feel like if I parented I was doomed to ruin my child’s life. The single one thing that would have tipped the scales for me though would have been honest information about the trauma adoption causes adoptees. I was VERY concerned about my daughter’s emotional well being. I was promised that my daughter would be unaffected as long as she was placed by three months. I DIRECTLY asked about the emotional consequences of adoption on my daughter and I was told there are none. I was told adoptees have no more problems than anyone else and most are “grateful” to have been given a “better” life. I really wish that some one would have told me that all first time moms are scared. That it would be hard but it was doable. The one single sentence that could have convinced me to parent though is “Adoptees are 4x times likely to commit suicide than non-adoptees.” I had struggled a lot with suicide before than. If I knew that adoption would could cause my daughter to feel suicidal like I felt, there’s no way I would have placed. I could have never intentionally done that to my daughter.

The response to this by the woman who first asked the questions was this – I didn’t ask this question to feel validated, but your answer has made me feel so validated. Because adoptees are always told to shut up and be grateful, and to stop being bitter and angry. For the most part, I refuse to speak to prospective adopters because they’re so full of themselves that they insult and demean me in order to preserve their fantasies. And how can you know what to believe when the people in power tell convenient lies? They benefit from you believing the lies. You’ve made me grateful (genuinely, not being snarky) that this group has given me the chance to tell expecting moms that if I had had a choice, I would have grown up in poverty with my mom. I would have endured whatever deprivation necessary, just to have my mom. Everyone else acts like I’m living in some stupid fantasy world. Thank you for telling me that what I want and would have wanted has validity, and that it would have aligned with what you wanted.

And closing with this one – I never would have considered adoption if I’d had an adult that was willing to help and support me at the time. I got pregnant as a minor and the only people who reacted supportively were other minors, and I was already living on the street, so it didn’t seem like navigating being a parent would be possible for me. I stopped responding to the agency after my school’s social worker started helping me set up appointments and apply for assistance and I found someone with an empty spare bedroom. She helped transfer me to another school nearby that had a parenting program for teen mothers where I was able to catch up and graduate on time. All I really needed was one adult to vaguely care in my direction.

White Tears, Brown Scars

I promised myself that I would not buy any more books this year. However, this book was mentioned in my all things adoption group as merging racial inequality and adoption. My two passions, so how could I resist ?

A reviewer admits – “I am always a bit weary of how I am received when I talk about race in feminist spaces. I fear that I might be “causing a division in the sisterhood” as journalist Ruby Hamad describes in her debut book, White Tears/Brown Scars. I am afraid of being divisive; for calling things out when most people prefer to sweep snarks or discriminations under the veneer of polite conversation. When I bring attention to a remark, I don’t do it to mark a line between me and white women (if I did, I’d be separating myself from 90% of my friends). I loved Hamad’s book for its unapologetic rigor and sharp threading of racial history in both the United States and Australia. Since its release last week, commentators have called it ‘incisive’, ‘courageous’, ‘a work of depth and scholarship,’ and ‘well researched and informative’.”

Still from the review linked above – Racial trauma is a term used to describe the physical and psychological symptoms that people of color experience after exposure to particularly stressful experiences of racism. Similar to survivors of other types of trauma (e.g., sexual assault survivors), people of color may frequently experience fear and hyper-vigilance, self-blame, confusion, memory difficulty, shame, and guilt after experiencing racism.

The woman who posted this in my all things adoption group said – This author touches on orphan trains and adoption throughout history and connects it all back to white feminism & saviorism. It’s a tough read, but worth it.

I’ll write more after I have had a chance to read this one on my Kindle.

Victims of Adoption ?

There is currently some upset about birth mothers on TikTok (which I’m not on). An adoptee frustrated with birth moms who have large social media platforms of 30K+ subscribers. Adoptees whose voices should be elevated above birth moms not getting nearly as many views. These birth moms think they know it all when it comes to adoption, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Adoptees are the experts. Period.

At the same time admitting that it’s great they want to help reform the system, but they are part of the problem. They participated and benefited from the system. They signed on the dotted line. But there are first moms out there that are using their platform to profit. A few advise hopeful adoptive parents about how to attract expectant mothers to choose them, in exchange for a fee. They are dangerous and should not be held in such high regard (for example, being asked to speak at paid events).

Another adoptee writes – First mothers who use social media platforms to center themselves as the victims of adoption. In doing so, they focus the attention on their own self, putting themselves out there as the experts in adoption, when the people who should be receiving the attention for lived experience, the true experts in the post-natal trauma of adoption, are the infant adoptees. I am a domestic infant adoptee. I am also a mother of loss to Child Protective Services. I was given very little choice but to sacrifice my parental rights to the machine. I am not the victim of the system: My *children* are the victims. They are the ones who will live every moment of every day of their lives with the consequences of decisions I made, forced or not. If I was to center myself, I would create a vacuum in which there is no room for my children’s experience, and so, I choose to step back and allow them to be the experts regarding their experience — even when it hurts me. The problem with these “loud” mothers of loss is that they cannot comprehend that it really isn’t about them at all: it’s about the person they gave away. And as much as I feel for Baby Scoop Era moms…. I stand by this perspective, even with those mothers.

Baby Scoop Era. Took place during the period of approximately 1945 thru 1974. A time when single mothers–along with and by US society generally–were brainwashed into believing that single mothers could not raise, on their own, a child, and thus large numbers of white babies (mostly, due to demand) were made available to adoption agencies and through them to adoptive parents to “grab”.

Also at the end of the day, it is the children who are the victims. They are the ones *most* hurt by being denied access to their parents, and when their parents aren’t helped as much as possible, it is the children’s loss. Nobody gives a shit about the mothers. For most mothers of loss, they are just vessels for the baby the hopeful adoptive parents want. For those of us who lost ours to the machine, we’re the monsters who abused or neglected our children. It doesn’t matter how loudly we advocate for ourselves or one another, there is still a LARGE contingent of society who is going to see us that way. We’re abusers. Neglecters. Terrible people who hurt children. We’re lying because we have a blood in this game. Believe me – NOBODY CARES.

When we flip that narrative and talk about the children, knowing that the system was MADE for them, to protect them. Then, when we point out that the system designed to protect them is failing them, by exposing them to new trauma by removing them in the first place, then placing them with stranger caregivers who are often more abusive than their families were in the first place, now we have people listening. I’ve been in this fight for long enough to know that as a mother of loss, I’m easily dismissed. But the moment I talk about what my loved ones are experiencing in the care of their kinship caregiver, people start to listen. Better services for families is better for the kids. But we have to put the children of loss center stage, if we’re ever going to make a difference. Because it is the adoptees and the foster care youth who are the ones who really matter.

Adoptee – Buffy Sainte-Marie

There is no single story about Buffy Sainte-Marie’s adoption. One finds that her parents died suddenly, or that she was abandoned, or that her adoption was a kinship type. What is known is that she was adopted by Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, a couple of Mi’kmaq descent, in Wakefield Massachusetts.

“In Canada, we had something that, sometimes, a little bit later referred to as the Big Scoop. But it had been going on for generations, where native children were removed from the home for their own good. But what happens to children who are kind of lost in the system like that, they’re assigned a birthday (she doesn’t actually know her exact birthdate). They’re assigned kind of a biography. So, in many cases, adoptive people don’t really know what the true story is.”
~ Buffy Sainte-Marie

She was born in 1941 on the Piapot 75 reserve in the Qu’Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. Sainte-Marie began researching her Indigenous heritage in her teens and making trips back to the Piapot reserve and connecting with her Cree community. In 1964, on a return trip to the Piapot Cree reserve in Canada for a powwow, she was welcomed and (in a Cree Nation context) adopted by the youngest son of Chief Piapot, Emile Piapot and his wife, Clara Starblanket Piapot.

Of her adoptive parents, she says – “For the most part, they were wonderful. There were some terrible predators in the neighborhood, and some bully predators in the house.” When asked if her mother noticed anything, she says – “Well, I thought I was telling her what was going on. But little girls don’t have names for what big boys do to them. We don’t have that language, and we certainly didn’t during the ’40s. My mom would say, has he been teasing you again? So I thought that’s what it was called. It is not something that has become my main story. My story is about getting beyond that.”

As a child from an abusive childhood, as a person who was abused by boyfriends and spouses, there’s another kind of song that she writes which she calls empowerment songs. Sainte-Marie set out to address the problem she saw in Indian country, where Indian kids would graduate from high school, want to go to college, but didn’t know how to negotiate the path to college. They didn’t know how to get a scholarship, they weren’t connected by family and friends. She founded the Nihewan Foundation which gave law school scholarships to Native Americans. She says that her biggest honor was to find out that two of her early scholarship recipients had gone on to found tribal colleges.

Some content comes from an NPR interview and some from 75 Things You Need To Know About Buffy Sainte-Marie.

The Blame Game

Today, I read this story from a woman who gave up her son for adoption –

I just recently got news that my son I placed has been diagnosed with non-verbal autism. His adoptive parent reached out to me, to inform me and low-key blame me. But the point of this post is that not only did I deny my son his natural right to be with his natural parent. He has subsequently been denied the right to (literally) voice his truth. This choice comes with consequences I never imagined. This is not an appeal for sympathy. The only point that is infuriating to me is his adoptive parent has added this fact to the list of things that make her a “hero.” We are both in the wrong! There are no heroes! Just a victim and villains. But her admirers have already heaped some more praise for her “taking a disabled child” as her own “from a mother who probably did drugs and made him that way.” (That’s a quote.) I literally have never, not that it matters but the public victimization of my son will never end. My fault. He lives the consequences of adoption.

So many adoptive parents actually have a savior complex that this sad story does not surprise me. Autism is also something that matters to me personally. My oldest son didn’t talk until he was nearly 4 years old but he did communicate. I remember the unique alphabet he had before he started constructing sentences – like the sound meow for C which some people will say is for cat. Asperger’s runs in my children’s genes and we are fortunate because it is a high functioning kind of quirky intelligence with a great ability to focus.

One commenter wrote this – I’m autistic and this is infuriating. Finding out this early can be a blessing, so that early on your son’s more individual needs can be recognized and properly addressed. I didn’t find out until my 22 or so, and like so many others, I wish I’d known earlier. I love that I am autistic and my best friends are autistic, it’s something to be celebrated, not something to shame ANYONE about. This woman is beyond ignorant and she’s probably going to become an autism mom. You son should be given alternative ways of communication, I’m not sure how you use it in a sentence but AAC, augmentive and alternative communication, is what he should have available to him. I worry that the adoptive mother will push for him to speak, which he should not be forced to do. I doubt she’d use them, but perhaps you could offer some resources ? https://autisticadvocacy.org/ is the first website I was recommended.

Another offered this perspective – I’m sure it’s been said a million times but you literally can not control autism. You can have never touched drugs, smoked, hell even used caffeine, you could’ve ate all natural and organic, and he could’ve remained with you and he still probably would have been a non-verbal autistic. Also, that person must not be that knowledgeable because even when kiddos are nonverbal, they can still communicate. Just because he may end up communicating differently doesn’t mean he’s flawed or someone to be fixed.

And there was this too – The adoption you can take blame for, but in no way can you blame yourself for his disability. My mother blamed herself for years because my brother is non verbal autistic too, but this is just something that happens. Now I will add just because he’s currently non verbal doesn’t mean that he will be unable to express himself. Quite the opposite actually, these kids let you know how they feel if you pay attention. The adoptive parent has no right blaming you for his diagnosis or playing the hero role. If you adopt a child then you adopt all their needs too.

So here’s the truth from another commenter – It’s genetic. Point blank. Ugh, I can just see her becoming the stereotypical “Autism Warrior Mom” and blaming his first mother in the process—which trust me, as an autistic adult, is the absolute worst on top of worst. She’s going to get torn apart by the autistic community (rofl, just watch). Plus, a child is not a product and cannot be custom made; no one gets to choose whether a child is disabled or not. So no, it’s not your fault… I just hope they treat the kiddo okay, because typically these types of people will put them in quack therapies that are harmful to their mental health, or worse because they don’t understand science and don’t value the humanity of autistic people. Knowledge is power. And it’s not your fault; I can’t believe she blamed you…

And this dose of reality – Autism is not caused by drugs. The more autism is studied, the more clear it is that some people just have neurological differences. It’s nothing you did, and there’s surely nothing heroic about adopting a child who later turns out to have a difference or disability. Any child, born to you or adopted, may have a disability at birth or become disabled at any point in life. Accepting that is part of the parenting deal.

On a lighter note – My son’s APs said that I caused his autism by letting him watch too many science documentaries instead of making him watch more cartoons like a normal kid.

Actually Birth Mother Fits

I’ve been thinking about writing on this topic recently and having learned that today is National Sons Day, I decided it was appropriate for me to just go ahead and write about my thoughts.

In adoption circles, “birth mother” is no longer the preferred term for a woman who gives up her child to be adopted by strangers never to see that child again. These women increasingly prefer first or natural mother for their role in their birthed children’s lives. For many, some kind of reunion takes place after the child has reached an age of maturity. Such reunions are becoming common place. Some are happy and others are heart-breaking.

When I embarked on my journey to discover my own genetic roots back in 2017, I really didn’t know much about adoption. In fact, it was the most natural thing in the world for me and my sisters because both of our parents were adopted. They really had almost no idea of where they came from and varied from one to the other regarding how they felt about the situation. Now I know what my parents didn’t know the day they died, I know who their parents were and a bit about each one of them.

Back in 1998, when my husband and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary, he surprised me with the announcement that he wanted to become a father after all. I had become a mother in 1973 within my first marriage. He had always been glad I had been there, done that, no pressure on him. Now he was instigating the unthinkable and it proved to be almost undoable as well. We tried all of the advice and used ovulation predictors but could not achieve success. A nurse practitioner in my GPs office referred me to her own OBGYN who delivered the good and bad news to us. I had an egg developing that would prove to be my very last. He gave me a shot of something or other to give it a boost but to no avail. At that same initial meeting he told us there was another way for us to become parents – donor eggs.

We found our donor and everything was simply agreements between the three of us. The first son was the only successful pregnancy out of 4 that the doctor tried to assist that year. We had no idea he had so little experience. We also never anticipated that inexpensive DNA testing would come along or prove so popular and accessible. While still in the maternity ward, recovering from a necessary c-section due to me being positive for hepC to prevent transmission to my baby, my husband was already saying – “Let’s do it again.” We had some leftover embryos and tried that but it failed.

We weren’t certain our previous donor would agree to “do it again” but to our undying gratitude she did and we were by then at a very experienced clinic in Las Vegas with a doctor who’s reputation for success was very reassuring and we did – succeed. We now have two sons that are fully genetic and biological siblings and they are wonderfully close and appreciative of each other. Each one has some of my husband’s traits but each one is also very individualistic. The older one has an artist’s soul and has gifted us with many dvds starring himself and his brother as reminders of their childhood days. The younger one turns out to have a genius IQ and a natural aptitude for composing music and takes to all things computer oriented like a fish in water.

Thankfully, we never hid the boys method of conception from them but we never made a big deal about it either. We have visited with the donor on more than one occasion but distance and financial constraints have prevented us from getting together for quite a few years now. Enter Facebook. Thanks to social media I remain in contact with her and the events that take place with her and my son’s half siblings born to her. I show my sons photos of them when appropriate.

One day, I discovered she was doing 23 and Me. I had also done that DNA testing as had my daughter and my nephew and assorted relatives from my original grandparents that I have since made contact with. So that year, I gifted my husband with a 23 and Me kit. Then with the older son turning 18, I gifted him with a kit and decided to go ahead and gift the younger one as well, so that all was reconnected on a genetic basis. This also allowed us to reiterate the boy’s conception stories to them now that they were mature enough to understand them fully.

So, this brings a unique circumstance into all of our lives. At 23 and Me, the egg donor is shown as the boys “mother”. Neither myself nor my daughter nor any other genetic relatives of mine are shown as related to my sons. Only the younger one has expressed any sadness that we are not genetically related but the truth is, they simply would not exist nor be who they are any other way and they have a happy life as near as I am able to judge that. We have a happy family as well. Generally, I’m not very public about this because I don’t want people to be cruel to my sons but it is the truth and I am able and willing to face that. The egg donor is available now to each boy privately via the messaging system at 23 and Me, if the boys want that, and I’ve told them both she is willing to receive any contact they wish to initiate. She has always shown a caring perspective about them, while understanding with phenomenal clarity about her limited role in their lives.

So where does that leave me as their mother ? Birth mother fits pretty well because by golly I carried each boy in my womb for 9 months and they each nursed at my breast for just over a year. We have never been separated as mother and child such as occurs in adoption. I am the only “mother” they have ever known and I love hearing them refer to me as “mom”. We are very close, I do believe, though the older one is now 20 and forging a bit of independence. We did not fully foresee all of the ramifications of our decision to conceive them at the time we made that decision – we were not inclined to adopt someone else’s baby – and so, we used the only method available to us and I am grateful we were successful because from what I know only about half of all couples who try this method are successful.

While I may not have been fully aware of all the effects of our decision, having these two boys has been a tremendous gift. When my genetic, biological daughter was only 3 years old, I was forced by financial hardship to allow her to be raised by her dad, who subsequently remarried a woman with a daughter and together they had yet another daughter. My daughter has half and step siblings in a yours mine and ours family. I was unable to give her a family life during her childhood and by the time I married this husband she was well along into high school. Never-the-less we are as close as most mothers and daughters may be but without very much childhood history, which I recognize I have lost and can never regain.

I considered myself a failure as a mother and though I’ve done a lot of soul searching over the years, I still do feel that way in regard to my lack of mothering her. I failed her and the effects have been somewhat similar to what adoptees experience within her own life. I am grateful she doesn’t hate me for it. She seems to understand the situation I found myself in at the time. What these boys have given me is proof that I am not a failure as a mother and for that I will always be grateful. It is my hope my sons will always be grateful for the life they have. Some donor conceived persons struggle with their reality. I understand this now, though I didn’t know then what I know now about so many of the messy complications of life.