Infertility Grief

Regarding choosing adoption after giving up on conceiving a child, it appears that all the screening in the world isn’t going to heal infertility grief. It isn’t going to magically turn a stranger’s child into the one you couldn’t have. It can’t predict how well you can actually love an adopted kid, even though you *really, really* think you can. It’s not going to account for a genetic mismatch between adoptee and adopter. Most importantly it doesn’t turn the adoptee into a robot, capable of bonding to any old genetic stranger at will. That’s the one thing I find never, ever gets talked about.

My husband and I tried and failed and did consider whether adoption was the way to go. At that time I knew nothing about the wounds associated with adoption. Yet, we felt we would rather begin from scratch than take on the unknowns of a pre-exiting child. So we turned to assisted reproduction.

I will always believe that this was a better choice than adoption. I already had a child that was genetically related to me and grandchildren too. My husband wanted that for his own self and I was sympathetic and understanding to his own need to become a father – even if he really waited way too long.

The advent of inexpensive DNA testing has brought it’s own unique reality to deal with but I am okay with it. My sons seem to be okay with it. They simply would not exist otherwise. Any other children that my husband might have conceived would not be these children. I believe in dealing with realities.

Turning to assisted reproduction meant these children were implanted and grew within my womb. The bonding of mother and child begins in the womb. These children nursed at my own breast for just over a year each. No one can be more their mother than I am.

I do see our donor and her own genetic children mirrored in my sons and we do not withhold access to that family though our sons seem disinterested in pursuing it at this time. Since we are older parents, someday they may reach out to establish a new genetic connection, just as I have in discovering my own.

I remember encountering my own infertility grief when I fully realized the natural method simply was not going to happen for us. I regretted my husband had married such an old woman. Even so, we have a good marriage and it would not have made good sense to simply throw that away to allow him to become a father. He is a good one because he waited until he was actually ready to commit himself to parenting.

Separation Trauma

This subject comes up frequently in adoptee groups. Also mentioned is RAD – Radical Attachment Disability.

Children are seriously harmed when they are separated from their parents. There has been quite a bit of research that proves that harm. When a court becomes involved in a child welfare case, it is important to balance the harm of removing a child with the risk of abuse or neglect that the child faces by remaining in the home.

When that is apparently necessary, it is still important to preserve a child’s relationship with their family of birth. The effects of separation from their original parents on children is always devastating. Such children are at increased risk for
developing heart disease, diabetes, and even certain forms of cancer. Even when children are in the care of parents who may not be able to meet their needs, they still organize their behaviors and thinking around these relationships and go to great lengths to maintain them.

Other ways that separation from their original family can impact children includes developmental regression, difficulty sleeping, depression and generally acute stress.

The younger a child is when they’re exposed to the stress of separation, the more likely it is that they will have negative health outcomes caused by dysregulation of stress hormones and a response to that flood of them. That dysregulated stress response can lead to architectural changes in the brain.

Family separation may also lead to long-term chronic medical conditions like cardiovascular disease, hypertension, obesity and decreased longevity.

Unintended Consequences

The narrative around adoption is often described as Unicorns and Rainbows by adult adoptees. That is because the stories that hopeful adoptive couples buy into are not the reality they are likely to live when they take another woman’s child as their own.

They honestly believe they are doing a good thing and being a beneficial presence in the life of a blank slate baby. It is an uninformed perspective. Every adoption has some degree of trauma at its core. If the adoptee was an infant, newly born when the adoption occurred, that trauma is not even conscious nor can it be verbalized. It is buried deep in the core of that developing fetus during the time it was connected to the original mother. That bonding has only recently begun to be more fully understood but it is at the root of much that later is seen as challenging behavior.

One outcome I didn’t see coming as I uncovered the identities of my original grandparents (both of my own parents were adoptees) was that I would go on to learn about all of the inconvenient truths around the process of adoption as it was practiced at the time my own parents were adopted (both spent 6-8 months with their original mothers before the separation occurred – I can only imagine the upset when they were torn away from her).

I also learned about the time period called the Baby Scoop Era – which began with the end of World War II and continued into the 1970s. From 1945 to 1973, it is estimated that up to 4 million parents in the United States placed children for adoption, with 2 million during the 1960s alone. That is a staggering number of adoptees that have grown into mature adults. Each with some degree of wounding from the process.

Because adoption was experienced as a normal occurrence in my childhood family, both of my sisters would go on to give up their own children to adoption shortly after birth. A pattern of mother/child separations plagued my sisters and I. Beyond adoption, in one way or another, two more of our children were raised by someone other than ourselves.

I have learned so much but if you who are reading this are considering becoming an adoptive parent yourself, please read first The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier and inform yourself honestly about what you are contemplating. She is the mother of two daughters – one adopted and one she birthed. She has a degree in clinical psychology and has a good depth of experience from which to inform your decision.

Not Really Brand New

Too often in our approach to the newborn we deal with him as if he is exactly that – “brand new”. We neglect the fact that the neonate is really the culmination of an amazing experience that has lasted forty weeks. . . . By looking at the neonate as if he had “sprung full blown from the brain of Zeus” we are missing the opportunities that the newborn’s history as a fetus can provide. ~ T B Brazelton

I remember when my husband and I were contemplating becoming parents about 20 years ago, and I didn’t know about all of the issues surrounding adoption at that time, we briefly considered adopting. We were so uninformed that we didn’t even realize that one could adopt a newborn. We didn’t want an unknown back history and decided to have our family in a more natural way, though we did need medical assistance.

What I have learned in only the last year or two is how much bonding takes place within the womb of the mother. I did know that important developments were taking place and I remember my OB telling me that he believed the gestating mother turns on or off the genes that eventually express in the new person. He also said that what I ate, flavored the amniotic fluid, and that was how new babies had already received the food preferences of the family, even before they began to eat solid foods.

So it turns out that adopting a newborn is really not the best outcome for any baby. Their development is a continuum of physiological, psychological and spiritual events which began in utero but continue to further develop throughout the postnatal bonding period and that original mother is crucial to the best development of the infant.

National Infant Adoption Reform Act

There is more than one effort and while none of them have succeeded completely, awareness means that improvements will continue to progress, or so I do want to believe.

One women’s story –

Losing my son to an unnecessary adoption has been devastating. A part of me died, and my children have been traumatized by being unnecessarily separated. It has given me insight into the billion dollar industry of infant adoption. I have been driven to bring awareness to the injustice of coercive persuasion that exists today. There is no accountability and no consequences when an adoption professional participates in coercion of a mother in crisis. Adoption so often is a permanent decision made by a resourceless, overwhelmed mother facing more often than not temporary crisis. This was my situation.

All I needed was someone to tell me to take my son home from the hospital and to really sit down and eliminate and/or break down the obstacles I felt I was facing. If mothers are given support to not feel she has to make a decision before leaving the hospital is imperative to give the mother time to bond with her child and her hormones time to level off. I have done exactly this with over 50 mothers and showed them that what they were facing was temporary and did not warrant a permanent, lifelong, traumatic separation for both herself and her infant. It has been life-changing for all of them, and they are so very grateful.

No mother should be in contact with any adoption professional prior to the birth of her child. Pre-birth anything creates obligation and focus is taken off the mother and her child and the very special experience of childbirth. Money needs to come out of adoption. It will eliminate adoption fraud, it will eliminate coercive persuasion that paying ‘expenses’ for a pregnant mother in crisis creates. No mother should be able to sign any relinquishment papers until she is 6-8 weeks post partum, and has been cleared of post partum depression. A mother is considered ‘disabled’ for weeks by insurance companies after having a child, yet a mother in crisis is expected to make a permanent lifelong decision hours after going through one of the most wonderfully beautiful and traumatic times in her life. This needs to change. Mother’s need support and families need protection.

To read a proposed bill to reform adoption, go here –

http://www.adoptionbirthmothers.com/adoption/niara-national-infant-adoption-reform-act/

Prenatal to Postnatal Life

What the child is missing is the security and serenity of oneness with
the person who gave birth to him – that continuum of bonding from
prenatal to postnatal life. This profound connection is one that the
adoptee will forever yearn for.

That period immediately after birth, when the infant has made the
transition from the warm, fluid, dark security of the womb to the
cold, bright, alien world of postnatal life is a crucial period.

~ The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier

Both of my parents were adoptees but they did have that advantage – they each had months of that transition time with their natural mothers, before they were handed over to strangers.

With both of my sons, they were placed immediately to my breast. This is how nature intended a fetus to become a separate person – incrementally.

No Substitute

Bonding is not easily achieved (except with the natural mother).
The bond with the mother instills in the child a sense of
well-being and wholeness and is necessary to the healthy
emotional development of the child.

There is just a knowing in the natural mother (due to preparation
during gestation) about what the baby needs.

It isn’t just a matter of knowing how to care for a baby, but what
this particular baby needs at this particular time.

~ The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier

Though it may not have been abundantly clear to the general population – over the last year or so I’ve become convinced that those who believe there is no real substitute for the natural mother in any child’s life are correct.

Yes, there are times when a mother is so wounded herself, the child’s well-being is also in danger and that child must be protected by removal.

However, it is also true that as a society we do not try hard enough to support – financially and physically/mentally/emotionally – a struggling mother. The simple solution to allow someone else more financially stable and married to parent another woman’s child is not actually the best for the child’s welfare.

We can do better than that – it only takes the will and the understanding – that how we support these vulnerable persons will pay off in a healthier population overall. There are many today working actively to educate and promote that alternative – keeping mothers and children together.

What A Baby Knows

The author with her daughter in the 1970s

A baby recognizes it’s mother’s face, smell and energy,
feels a wide range of emotions, remembers, learns and
uses all five senses in experiencing life outside the womb.

Being handed over to a stranger is for the baby
a bewildering, even terrifying experience.

The adoptive mother lacks the physical, hormonal, psychological
and emotional preparation to know the needs and to be able
to mirror this particular baby – there is a great deal about which
the “unicorns and rainbows” kool-aid drinkers do not know about adoption.

~ The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier

I have had the most interesting kind of motherhood experience. I had my daughter in the early 1970s and my sons in the early 2000s. So much of the “philosophy” of caring for an infant changed during that time. In the early experience with my daughter, the baby was only brought to the mother for short intervals and kept separated in a nursery most of the time (and bottle fed negating efforts to breastfeed along with no lactation support). A baby was put on its stomach to sleep believing if the baby threw up it wouldn’t aspirate that material.

Then I had my sons and mostly they roomed in with me – the older boy more than the younger one because with the younger one my husband took over care of the older boy and could not stay in the hospital room with me 24/7. So the baby would go to the nursery for its vitals check and I would nap. Always when I was waking up the baby was waking at the same time or so the nurses kindly told me. There was marvelous support from lactation consultants when I had my sons. And then, I was told they should sleep on their backs as it had been determined to be protective somehow.

What I do know with ALL of my babies, they knew me from the first moment. Nature provides the natural mother with 9 months of the most intimate bonding and preparation to be as responsive of a mother possible. It is not possible for someone not thus prepared to equal her.

What Happens in the Womb . . .

Stays in the Child.

One of the most helpful of the books I’ve read in the last year was The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier. She is the mother of two daughters – one who was adopted and one who was not. Her clinical work has been with adoptees and other members of the adoption triad. With these experiences, she has come to believe that even newly born infants, when separated from their mothers, are deeply wounded and that their pre-verbal state of consciousness renders these wounds into a feeling state without the verbal context that memories require.

This has not been well understood until recently. But upon reflection, it makes a lot of sense. The gestating fetus grows inside the mother’s body. This is a very important time in both the mother’s and the infant’s lives because they are bonding and preparing for their lives together, once the child is delivered into independent life.

Any woman who has given birth, upon reflection, will realize that her infant knew her from the first moments of its life. Taking this child away from its mother causes deep anguish and sorrow. When placed in the adoptive family situation, the infant instinctively knows this stranger is not the child’s natural mother.

While in good circumstances, the child will learn to accept it’s placement into an adoptive home, deep inside there are fears of rejection and abandonment. Individual children will deal with these anxieties in one of two ways – either they will be compliant and do their best to live up to their adoptive parents’ expectations (while fearing all along that if they don’t they will be sent anyway, causing a lifelong insecurity in the person) – or they will act out. A defiant adoptee will often disrupt the family they have been placed within, causing biological or other adopted siblings to resent them and causing feelings of rejection in the adoptive parents – if, they don’t understand the source of the challenges they face in trying to parent this child.