Against The Odds

A little over 20 years ago, after 10 years of marriage, my husband decided he wanted to become a father after all. True, he had been glad I had already given birth to a daughter, so there was no pressure on him because I had already been there, done that. Imagine my surprise when over a couple of Margaritas at a Mexican restaurant, he told me “I’ve been thinking” and my mouth actually dropped open in utter amazement. When I recovered from my own shock, I said OK.

We had seen a news clip that women who conceive at an older age live longer. I was 44 years old at the time. My GPs nurse practitioner during a counseling session over my cholesterol levels learned I was trying to conceive (we’d been doing all the usual things – timing intercourse, ovulation predictors and pregnancy tests – to no avail). She said to me, “I’m not saying you are infertile but at your age, you have no time to waste” and referred me to her own fertility specialist who was also an OB.

The night before our appointment, we saw another news clip that indicated my chances of conceiving were technically zero due to my age. I remember going to the place alongside the perennial stream that flows past our house to the gravel bar where I married my husband. Hugging our witness tree, I cried because my husband married a woman too old to give him what he was now wanting.

At the doctor’s office, we saw the very last egg in my ovary on ultrasound. The doctor gave us some kind of shot to give it a boost but it failed to produce a pregnancy. While we were there, he said to us – there is another way – and described donor egg technology to us. We utilized a website for matching couples with women volunteering to donate their fertile eggs. We selected one that my husband noted, one of her answers matched my own philosophies in life. She turned out to be a good choice. A mother with 3 children already of her own. She has donated to at least one other couple we know of but we do not know the outcome of that effort for not all assisted reproductive technology efforts succeed. In my online cycle group, only about 50% did.

The doctor in the town our donor was living in at that time did 4 procedures that year with only one success – ours.

Having now learned about the way an infant bonds with its mother in the womb, I’m grateful we rejected adoption as our means to becoming parents. Our donor subsequently donated a second time to help us conceive our second son. Therefore, our two sons are fully genetically and biologically the same – and yet very different people. They have their natural father as a mirror as well. Each of them is some part but not wholly the same as their dad. I marvel that I must love my husband a lot to want 3 of him – though of course, as I just acknowledged that is not 100% the truth.

At some point I became aware of a woman in my Mothers Via Egg Donation online support community who was researching a book. It is titled Creating Life Against The Odds – The Journey From Infertility To Parenthood. The author is Ilona Laszlo Higgins MD FACOG. For contributing our experience to her research, I was given a signed copy of her book. She wrote in the title page – “To Deborah and Stephen who undertook this special journey to bring Simeon and Treston into their lives! With love, Lonny”

Today, my oldest son celebrates his 20th birthday. I have referred to him as my savior because it was in trying to conceive him that I discovered I was positive for hepatitis C. Otherwise, I may have destroyed my liver without ever knowing this virus was there by drinking too many alcoholic based drinks. I haven’t had a drop of alcohol since learning about it.

I had to fight with the doctors at the hospital where my c-section took place 20 years ago today to be allowed to breastfeed my son. The lactation consultants there came to my defense. I nursed him for over a year (and at 18 months, each boy tested negative for the hepC virus). When he was about 3 months old, we embarked on a long journey that eventually caused us to traverse through about half of these United States in the Eastern part of the continent. I nursed him in public everywhere we went and to be honest, I had the right kind of clothes to do so with subtlety.

I share all of this to encourage women struggling with any kind of infertility to consider this method. Your baby will be born to the woman in who’s womb the baby grew, who’s heartbeat and internal processes has been the background noise of its development, who’s voice the baby has always known. This is all every baby that is born desires in life – to be with its natural mother. My sons do not have my genes but in every other way, no other person is more their mother than I am.

Not long ago, I read an essay by a woman with a great attitude. She was donor conceived. She accepts that she would simply not be who and how she is any other way. It is my hope that my sons will also understand their origins with that clarity of acceptance. It isn’t all that different than my own self understanding that if both of my parents had not been given up for adoption, I would not exist.

Sometimes the honest truth is the best. We have always been truthful with our sons without making a big issue about their conception. With the advent of inexpensive DNA testing, I’m glad we chose the path often referred to in donor conception support groups as “tell”. Their donor did 23 and Me. Then, I gifted my husband with a kit, then my oldest son with a kit and finally my youngest son with a kit. The youngest one was only slightly disappointed that he didn’t have any of my genes. But I am still “Mom” to him and we remain very close at heart – where it truly does matter.

I’ll Cry If I Want To

It is quite common for an adoptee to be sad on their birthday, even when they can’t understand why. It has been noted by therapists that adoptees often sabotage their own birthday parties, even when they were looking forward to them.

Each of my parents were with their original mothers for months before they were taken away and given to other people to raise through adoption.

Consider what a birthday means to an adoptee.

An adoptee often cannot help but think of the woman who gave birth to them on their birthday. Many hope that the mother is also thinking of them on that date.

A child who was adopted may have a hard time understanding why they are so inconsolably sad at a time when they should be happy. Tears, emptiness, fear and despair might seem a bit over the top to observers. Maybe they could consider the symbolic meaning of that day to an adoptee.

A pre-verbal child will experience bewilderment at the sudden absence of their original mother. They have become attuned to the sound of her voice, the smell of her body and the way she touches them (unless removed from her at birth, when only the sound of being in her womb is left in their deepest memories).

A child adopted as an infant may lack conscious memories of their loss and so can’t make sense of it. A reunion with the original mother can make the birthday triggered emotional wound worse.

If the original mother was unwed, there were no excited visitors or phone calls of congratulations. No one was there taking sweet or silly photos of those first days. All of these an adoptee has lost from their earliest days.

If healing is able to occur, then the hurt and anger that take over an adoptee’s emotions around the time of their birthday may lessen. If not, then it will only be the passing of time that changes the focus and makes possible the ability to move forward again.

My Birthday Is About My Mom Too

These are things I found among my mother’s stuff after she died that I keep. The photo is probably close to how she looked when she conceived me less than 3 years later (I was born in 1954 and turn 65 today). The card and cross remind me that she is as close to me always as my heart’s mind.

It is fitting, I believe, to think of one’s mom on their birthday. This holds true whether or not our mom was able to witness our growing up after leaving her body.

I have learned that the time in utero is a sacred period of total union between a mother and her child soon to be. They share a bodily space that as human beings we will never achieve again in our limited physical lifetimes – though many try through sexual relations.

I believe I remain in contact with my deceased mother. I feel her especially strong today and know she is proud of me – not only how I handled the difficult family responsibilities after she died but also how I have retrieved my family’s origin identity since then (both of my parents were adoptees).

I love you mom. Thank you for gestating my life’s body for me.

Unhappy Birthday

An adoptee may seem to be happy about preparations for a big birthday party and then inexplicably sabotage the event or go into a deep funk and not enjoy themselves.

In The Primal Wound, author and therapist, natural and adoptive mother, Nancy Newton Verrier, explains the phenomena which is more common that people not touched by adoption in their families might suspect. She writes –

There seems to be a memory built into the psyche and cells,
an “anniversary” reaction (often also felt by the natural mother),
that sends many adoptees into despair around their birthdays.

For adoptees, birthdays commemorate an experience of loss and sorrow.

So adoptive parents and other siblings within the family unit need to be sensitive to what an adopted child may be feeling around the event of a birthday – even children who were adopted shortly after birth.

Ms Verrier goes on to note –

It simply is not possible to sever the tie with the natural mother
and replace her with another primary caregiver – no matter how
warm, caring and motivated she may be – without psychological
consequences for the child (and the mother).

Though an infant or child can attached to another caregiver,
the quality of that attachment will be different from that with the
natural mother and bonding with such a caregiver may be difficult
or even impossible for the adoptee.

It is entirely possible that even an adoptee that was adopted within the first three years of their life will not be conscious of this. They may be as mystified as the adoptive parents about their reaction to their birthday celebration.