Save Lives This Easter

Short on time and Easter is coming (and therefore on my mind). I do celebrate not the usual Christian reasons for the holiday but the renewal of Life that is Springtime – eggs, baby leaves, baby chicks, baby bunnies. Off topic, I know, but just a quick PSA today from the House Rabbit Society.

You can read all the reasons why at the LINK below. What you need to consider before you bring home a live rabbit and alternatives if your heart is wanting one. We have a house rabbit – Walnut – and he approved this message.

LINK>Save Lives This Easter.

Back to our regular child and family oriented blogs tomorrow.

Understanding To Do Better

From a Foster/Adoptive Mother – though here is one adoptee’s comment – This must be satirical. You’re joking, right ?, you must be. You cannot really be this ignorant, while still “collecting” your trophies. Disgusting. So with that in mind, here goes –

I have one biological child. Friends of mine adopted 2 unrelated children at birth. When my friends passed away, I first took guardianship of their children (ages 14 & 11) and adopted them two years later. They are now adults and struggle with the many traumas of their childhood. My daughter’s first adoption was open and she has positive contact with her birth family. My son’s first adoption was closed. Upon reaching adulthood, he found another family to call his own and is pursuing adult adoption.

I am also a foster parent to babies age 0 to 2. I went into this thinking that I would provide love to a child in need, until they could return to their family. If a child is reunified but then comes back into care, they return to me. If they cannot be reunified with parents or extended family, or if they are placed with someone who has one of their siblings, there is always the option for them to make the choice to instead stay with me. No child who comes through my doors will ever lack for permanency.

Fostering is not all sunshine and light. Most of my placements were born addicted. Two children each came to me with multiple fractures (skull, arm, leg, ribs). I can more easily advocate for reunification with addicts in treatment than for physical abusers. I most recently adopted the infant placed with me at three days. The termination of parental rights was heartbreaking. Even so, I celebrated this adoption.

I know that adoption is not all happily ever after. I will continue to make the effort to better understand the harsher realities of adoption.

Personally, I think this is better than not trying at all. At the beginning of today’s blog – I indicated that some of the comments were not kind nor gentle. There is certainly more than a hint of saviorism. Here’s another one – you shouldn’t be allowed to care for anyone’s children. You are clearly toxic and think you own them and the right to decide the narratives of their lives. I’m so sad and so angry on behalf of the children who have to call someone “mom” who is so unwilling to honestly learn.

Different Not Better

Valid response from a former foster kid –

Stop saying better. Start saying different. When the adoptee is rehomed, abused or killed then it’s not our problem. We can’t guarantee better. Right now adoption is based on what people want. It was based on this way ever since the government and agencies took over. It’s not about helping kids but helping yourself to kids. People don’t adopt to help kids. They adopt to become parents. To be mommy and daddy – not play mommy and daddy.

It also upsets me – the kids who aren’t seen as worthy, don’t get adopted. So again, who is adoption for ? People are waiting for a non-existent baby to be created or a baby to lose their family in foster care, so they can grow their family.

What was this in response to ?

I am a social worker by education, been out of the field for about 6 years, I worked for about 1 year in foster care/adoptions. I left the field because I felt it was difficult to make a difference/help due to all red tape and bureaucracy.

Anyway, one thing I took from my experience, was that I want to adopt. I just thought I would be loving a child, adding to the family, teaching them, helping them grow, etc.

I did believe/was taught (or something) that adopting children from foster care, etc was… making a difference, that it was in a way, giving them another chance. A chance to give them a good home, better opportunity and away from abuse, neglect, exploitation etc. Or that parents who give up their children for adoption are brave, because it’s really hard to give up a child, but they do it out of love, because at that moment they can’t provide a good life for them, etc.

Unbelievable But True

Trying to find a word for it, I think, sort of like having your own orphanage, but the children are not orphans. Certainly, the babies are cared for but one really wonders if this is a healthy situation to grow up in. Let us be considerate and call it an experimental family.

24 yr old, Kristina Ozturk and her millionaire husband Galip, who is 57, live in Batumi, Georgia (the former Soviet country, not the state in America) and have in effect created this situation intentionally by paying surrogates to carry through pregnancy and deliver through birth 21 babies for them. Their babies are Mustafa, 19 months; Mariam, 18 months; Ayrin, 18 months; Alisa, 18 months; Hasan, 17 months; Judi, 17 months; Harper, 16 months; Teresa, 16 months; Huseyin, 16 months and Anna, 15 months. The youngest kids are Isabella, 15 months; Ismail, 14 months; Mehmet, 14 months; Ahmet, 14 months; Ali, 13 months; Kristina, 13 months; Sara, one; Lokman, one; Galip, 11 months; Olivia, nine months and Judy, three months.

In order to care for so many babies, they employ 16 live-in nannies. The nannies work a rolling schedule of four days on, two days off and all live-in, with bedrooms near the kids. They also have their own kitchen where they can order food. During the day, a specific nanny is responsible for a specific child. But during the week the nannies change.

Kristina’s daughter Victoria, age six, from a previous relationship, and one of Galip’s nine older children, also live with the family making it 23 children under one roof.

Doing the math – that’s less than $10,000 paid to each surrogate. The amount paid to her 16 nannies is a living wage for 1 nanny in California. I am thinking that is is exploitation and on more than one level.

You can read the complete story and see some additional photos in I’m a Mom to 21 Babies in the New York Post.

Someone else did some background research. Not a pretty story and possibly a case of sex trafficking.

Christina had her first child at the age of 16 in Russia. Her parents split when she was little, her mother is very poor and had a small apartment that is not well heated, and she does not get along well with her step father figure. When she turned 18, she was flown to Batumi (likely by an agency that works in trafficking women but publicly she has stated that she took herself on this “vacation”).

Within 24 hours of making this trip, she met her now-husband, and the love bombing started hard. On Instagram, this trip was recorded as swimming with dolphins, having elaborate dinners on balconies, having personalized fireworks shows for just her. In actuality: Galip Ozturk is a known criminal and murderer, and was already plotting something far more nefarious. He wants 100 children. He arranged for Christina to go to a fertility clinic within these first few days of meeting her in person. Here they performed invasive tests as well as bloodwork to check her hormones and egg reserves. Within 3 months she started her first IVF cycle to withdraw eggs. Christina has no control of what happens to these eggs. She has gone through 4 cycles (and likely it has been speculated, a 5th) and has created 22-30+ embryos PER CYCLE. For an average family, one cycle with 30 embryos would be more than enough.

Christina has publicly stated she has no part in the surrogacy process. Galip and the agency (or agencies) that he works with arrange for transfer day(s) and choose the number of embryo(s) to be transferred. She has publicly stated that many times she has not known there were more pregnant women until Galip told her to meet them at the hospital at birth. At first, she was told they would have 5 children with surrogates because she told Galip she thought she could only handle 5 at a time.

There are more than 21 children- and at LEAST two that are currently in the NICU that she seemingly is not allowed to post about, as these posts are taken down quickly. It is unclear if they have lost children in the NICU after birth, or if children with disabilities are not included in this count. Many people have theorized that Galip will only allow healthy children home.

Christina’s daughter (prior to having an influx of surrogacy children) was initially allowed to live with them in the house and after hitting 10+ kids, was sent to a boarding school. It seemed to many this was “temporary” for Christina, but that she was lied to (again) and more surrogate children started to appear. Her oldest no longer lives in the same country as her and also has no contact with her family in Russia unless on a vacation with Christina and Galip.

Christina regularly states that Galip is not happy with her sharing the number of children that they have, and she has expressed some confusion as to whether the children are all genetically related to her or if some of these children are infant adoptees to “help friends”. All in all: Christina was trafficked into this situation, and was coerced into this lifestyle without much input of her own. There is likely a LARGE incentive to keep up with this life now as she has very few other alternatives. Not only are these her children- but her oldest child is not in her direct care either and may be being kept from her.

They Always DO Grow Up

A question was asked – when adopting a child, particularly a baby, do the adoptive parents ever think about what will happen when that child is an adult ? And by that I mean after the parents are dead. Will that child have a legacy or a family or a tribe (other than their friends if they are lucky enough to have friends) or partners to last a lifetime ?

The person posing the question goes on to wonder – did you ever think, will your child when they are an adult, get what they need or deserve from family property ? Do you really think that your adult will hold onto a claim to your family ? When everyone is sitting around talking about Aunt Jenny, how will that make your adult child feel ?

One response was this – you adopted a child to love, that does not automatically extend to other people, who may not feel the same way as you, the adoptive parent, when it comes to sharing an inheritance or even in how they actually feel about the adopted kid. Lots of families and other people “play along” with the game of pretending the adopted child is the same as if you had given birth to them for the adoptive parents sake. Sadly, there have been cases of adoptees who have been denied family keepsakes, etc after the adoptive parents’ death specifically because of the adoption. Adoptees told they are not worthy because the charade is over.

Adoption in most cases is very much about the baby. The savior/hero thought process of most adoptive parents focuses on the baby/child. It’s such a short term view of a real person and their entire life.

I found this story very interesting – So I’m adopted: my grandfather left me a trust fund and none of the biological grandchildren have one. They all contested his will. They didn’t understand why I received a trust fund. However, they did all receive some money from his estate. I was the one who saw my grandfather weekly and never asked for money or anything. He would take me out for dinner and always slip me a $20.00 for gas. I was always grateful. I loved my grandfather best because he was like me – his parents died and he was abandoned with his brother. So we both had that hole in our souls. When he was dying, I made sure I was there with him. I was the product of a forced adoption and I have an adopted son (from foster care). He will receive a portion of the trust from my grandfather and the trust will be split with my husband. I made certain to set it up for everyone five ways. My adoptive parents are still alive and the will they have created is so stupid that I just cannot. However, I will get some amount monthly until I die, then my remaining money goes to their own blood relatives and is divided up among them. My kids will receive nothing. When I’ve shared the will with a few close friends, they are all like WTF ! The way my adoptive parents hold money over my head, even at this stage and age, is so annoying and uncalled for ! I wish people realized you cannot be buried with your money.

This really spoke to me on more than one level. I don’t know what the laws are now but when my mom’s adoptive parents created a generation skipping trust, my mom told me that it was against the law for adoptive parents to disinherit adopted children. So, my mom and her also adopted brother, received income from the trust but cannot cash it out. However, my mom also struggled with the way her wealthy adoptive mother held money over her head. I also experienced that when I went to England with my adoptive grandmother. I had very little in the way of spending money. She was like – I paid for this trip, be grateful (as I watched her spend freely on her self). It’s not like she had to directly earn that money with hard work. My grandparents got in on the ground floor of Circle K when it first started. It made them wealthy as the stock appreciated. My grandfather retired as a vice president of a bank. He died at a relatively young age – in his 60s. My grandmother lived 3 decades longer on those funds and traveled the world and was always giving money away in philanthropy. I think she did it to earn respect. She actually grew up poor.

One more story and I have to end this for today – my son was placed at 4 days with his adoptive family. He is now 33. Typical closed domestic infant adoption. He lived with and cared for his maternal adoptive grandparents for the last five years. They both passed on either side of Christmas. His grandmother’s literal last words were “don’t kick him to the curb”. She must have sensed what was coming. The family gave him to the end of March (about 3 months) to move out. Once he was out of his grandparents house, he will continue to get paid $500/month but only for a year. They want to basically be done with him. That’s how his adoption ended. Thankfully, he has moved “home” with me and I am happy to have all of my kids back. We’re planting fruit trees now. I changed my own final documents years ago to provide for all four of my children equally.

Desperation Revealed ?

I did not know this kind of public revelation was a thing until this morning. At least they are honest that it is an adoption. Still, this method of sharing the reality reveals some desperation underneath the celebratory joy. I have dealt with infertility myself. I have tried and tried to get pregnant naturally only to face the truth that my body had become too old to do that anymore (I did give birth to a daughter when I was 19 years old).

This phrase, “No Bump, Still Pumped”, seems to be the response of someone who has not fully faced their infertility. The problem with this is in making a pregnancy reference, when you’re not doing anything like pregnancy. It could be that the grief involved with not being able to conceive hasn’t been fully dealt with. From a kinder perspective, maybe it is an attempt to honestly alert friends and family that the baby they will see soon came from someone else, and not this couple’s own parentage. Really, it all depends on the couple’s true perspective on the matter. Some couples that are adopting may make an announcement that says something like “Paper Pregnant”.

In publicly saying such things, a prospective adoptive couple is celebrating someone else’s trauma, though they may not be willing to fully acknowledge that reality. And it also indicates that they only want babies, not older children at risk of aging out of foster care without any further supports. Such concepts are celebrating the tearing apart of a family. Celebrating without any awareness, the trauma the children will experience.

Such public pronouncements make the adopted child sound like a second choice. They were not the first choice for the couple, which would have been to conceive naturally. I understand this and it is the truth. So, the couple only wants to adopt because they couldn’t have children out of their own natural biological processes. Many adoptees struggle with the knowledge that they were the runner up choice.

Most adopted children will crave their biological families and their mothers generally regret not keeping and raising their children. It took some time and exposure to honest adoptees and their original mothers for me to join the “non-rainbows/unicorns non-rah rah version” of the adoptive narrative. Yet, I have become convinced that no matter how hard it is to accept, adoption is a painful reality for most of those directly affected by its promotion and acceptance.