Who’s Child Is This ?

A woman asks – Do you have to hand over your baby to a potential adoptive couple shortly after birth ? There is a prospective adoptive couple who is extremely obsessed with taking my baby shortly after birth in the hospital. It’s my baby. Why can’t I take some time to make a decision ?

One response was this – Although it is typical for adoption agencies to push for this, it is NOT necessary and does NOT have to happen. You can take as much time as you want. There is no time limit for how long you can take, it can be a couple days, weeks, months. . . how ever long you need. To which someone else added – or never.

Someone else said bluntly – Do not hand over your baby, do not allow any hopeful adoptive parents at the hospital.

Another woman speaking from experience said – Don’t do it. I didn’t, and I’m so glad. I was still debating keeping or giving away my baby until the day he was born. And I had a couple lined up. Thank god for the Coronavirus because the hospital didn’t allow them in. After he was born, I said I’m gonna keep him. Then the adoption counselor kept bugging me. but it didn’t matter because I didn’t break any rules by changing my mind.

Someone else admitted – This is part of classic coercive tactics, trying to make sure you don’t change your mind. Once the baby is in their hands, it would be so much harder to get the baby back, if you had second thoughts. Take your time. Trust your instincts. Someone who is railroading and coercing you right from the start will not be a good partner if you seek an open adoption.

The truth is a baby is just as adoptable at 6 months or a year, as it is at birth. There are tons of people who want to adopt. If you are contemplating surrender, take all the time you need. This is YOUR baby and every day you spend with them is precious regardless of whatever decision you eventually arrive at.

This is a choice that is 100% up to you. You are able to take your baby home and make a decision later. Any potential adoptive parents that try to push your choice should be grounds enough for you to reconsider them. If this is how they are, when YOU have control, how will they be towards you after the have your baby ?

After Terror, Come Babies

I’m not certain what this image conveys about what we teach our children. Like many people on this date, my thoughts return to 19 years ago and a photo we took of our 6-1/2 month old oldest son sitting next to a TV with the image of the Twin Towers burning real time. One of those iconic things one does in an attempt to capture a moment in history, which we instinctively knew it was.

So my thoughts turned this morning to the orphans of that event. These children are what comes after 9/11. Gabriel was born six days after the death of his father. They are the joy, the salve, the ointment. They’re the love.

“I could only imagine how much courage someone could have to go into a situation like that,” says Lauren, who was born less than three months after 9/11. Her father died after running into the South Tower to save others.

Ronald lost his dad at the Pentagon while his mother, Jacqueline, was five months pregnant with him. (She was working on the other side of the building during the attack.) A high school basketball player, today Ronald Jr. wears the number 33 on his jersey, the age his father was when he died. “I feel like my dad is watching me,” he says. “Every move I make, he’s here.”

Robyn was born seven weeks after her father died. She says the loss has given her a different perspective from her peers. “I’ve always been aware of the world. The world should be a place where it’s okay to be who you are, and to love whom you love and believe what you believe. Underneath, what we’re made up of is the same.”

Allison’s father was on Flight 11, traveling to be home for his daughter’s imminent birth – has learned that her sadness is also coupled with happiness. “There’s always an empty spot.”

Sadly, death is a part of life, no matter how that death happens. At this time, there is a lot of death all over the planet and the terror of never being certain if one will be infected with this virus and lose their own life to it.

Income Inequality and the Pandemic

There are hopeful adoptive parents who are so self-absorbed that they view the economic hardships brought on by the shutdown of the country to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus as a silver lining potential blessing.

They are hoping that financially distressed single pregnant women may be more likely to chose to surrender their babies to adoption under the current circumstances. This is a sad truth of our often selfish times that such people would be thinking this way but apparently this is the truth.

Instead of feeling compassion for women in those situations, they are hoping and praying it leads to something they want. This is always the case with domestic infant adoption which is generally 100% selfish.

It’s not about finding a baby a home. These babies have families. 9 out of every 10 placements occur because of financial pressures. Hopeful/adoptive parents often like to believe every birth mom just didn’t want her kid. That’s rarely the case. It’s almost always as simple as a lack of money.

The truth is that these babies are highly in demand and sought after. That’s why it costs so much to adopt domestically, supply vs demand. It’s exactly why it often takes years for someone to adopt. There’s a shortage of these babies vs waiting hopeful adoptive parents.

During a global pandemic, hopeful adoptive parents are still begging for money via GoFundMe, YouCaring, and hitting their friends up to buy ridiculously overpriced t-shirts.

Domestic infant adoption is almost always a baby going from a poor family to a middle/upper class one. The foundation of adoption centers around privilege, and the lack of it. The haves vs the have nots.

These are facts. Hopeful adoptive parents and their WANTS drive the billion dollar a year adoption industry. It drives the manipulative and coercive tactics used in adoption. All for $$$. It’s all about money.

Exactly How Is It PRO Life ?

The latest manifestation of “caring” among some conservative people is that we should allow massive amounts of death among the old or immune compromised and just get back to work and crowding public places.

When it comes to MONEY it is clear that Pro-Lifers are really only pro birth. Once that baby is born, they could care less about the quality of life. And for some, even better, please surrender that baby to us. We will BUY your baby through adoption and we could care less about the pain and trauma that you and that baby go through due to our selfishness.

I know this sounds harsh. I’m not in a generous mood at the moment. With the Coronavirus, the new trajectory for these Pro-Life people is – let’s sacrifice the old folks on the altar of pandemic and get this over as quickly as possible – so we can go back to living like we want to.

Yesterday, the United States set a new record – the highest single day death count on the planet since this virus began spreading. And still, they support this president – who lied to us about how lethal this disease was going to be and who did NOTHING to prepare for it. Even now, he projects blame everywhere else but accepts NO responsibility for his own failure to take this threat seriously in the earliest stages (or even before it reached our own shores from China).

Forgive my rant. I wonder how many of these people will crowd their churches for Easter ? Maybe this country would be better off without them – though I wish no one to die from this wretched enemy of too many people.

Too many are Pro life unless you are old, poor or in jail. Then, they could care less – really.

Love Is Staying Home

This blog is really NOT as frivolous as it may appear. It really is a matter of life and death. I will admit that this is easier for my family than it is for most people living in this modern world. We live in rural isolation and have always worked from home and our children have been educated at home. In this scary new reality we have been thrust into globally, I see the blessing of what has always been our reality.

True, there have been some changes for us too. My yoga class has been cancelled indefinitely. Some non-essential medical appointments must be cancelled as they come up and re-scheduled though those future dates may have to be yet again postponed and re-scheduled. New rules at the grocery store that limit the number of customers allowed inside at any given time will make the weekly trip to replenish supplies take longer. And of course, there is the mask, googles and gloves needed to protect not only me but the other people I will have some INDIRECT contact with who could become infected if I am asymptomatic.

There are families unlike my own that are not used to so much togetherness time. This is a worry. Stressed parents could become abusive towards their children or married couples separate because they discover they had less in common than they believed when they first married. There are financial difficulties with the sudden cessation of business activities. There is a need to prepare one’s meals at home and some people have lost that skill.

The common good. It may be that this virus has come to unite us. We had become so polarized and divided and terribly tribal. Not that being threatened with death is going to change all of that quickly. Even so, we will come to see that overcoming the current circumstances will require a new perspective going forward. This won’t happen quickly but there are some of us who are beginning the process of holding a vision of a better and brighter tomorrow in our heart’s minds for a trajectory going forward to guide us all.

The Truth Matters

It surprises me that in this time of connectivity telling the truth isn’t simply understood to be the only option. Today, I was reading about a very complicated situation. So, the woman was a single mom who worked multiple jobs most of her adult life. She gave birth to a son at age 18 and he is now 11. Happily, she is now married to a wonderful man who is a high school teacher. Simple and common enough.

Here’s where it gets complicated. She is now sharing custody of her best friend’s child with the child’s mother, while the mom sorts out some things going on in her life. Her friend is pushing this woman to adopt her son but to her credit, this woman isn’t certain that is what the woman really wants. So they agreed on a temporary custody situation with generous visitation for twelve months. The plan is to revisit the situation then. The little boy will be one year old in two weeks.

Another complication is that due to the Coronavirus, the woman is currently quarantined. Therefore, the little boy is in the custody of his mom at the moment. That could be a good thing.

From there, the situation becomes even more unusual. There is yet another child in her life. He is two months old, and the youngest. She has had custody of him since he was born and the couple is in process of adopting him.

However – his original parents live with her. They have unrestricted access to the boy and can see him whenever they want. They are for some reason very clear that they just don’t want to be his parents. To that end, they also want her to pretend that she birthed him. Again, to her credit, she isn’t okay with this. The parents do want to remain in his life as family. They don’t want her to tell him they are his parents.

It is the reality that secrets rarely remain secret. They have this nasty tendency to out themselves at some point. Every adoptee will tell you one of the worst things about adoption is being expected to live a lie. To not know who your parents are or important details about your life. To have your name and birth certificate changed.

I would have thought society was moving beyond that but apparently not.

Attacked Once Again

This always feels personal to me because my sons have ALWAYS been educated at home. Mostly we have tried to fly under the radar so that we can continue to do what we believe is best for our own family. It came to pass that my daughter became frustrated with the school options for my granddaughter in Florida and chose to avail herself of their virtual school offer. She has since acknowledged that she understands the appeal of control and flexibility that homeschooling offers. I would be the first to acknowledge that it is not for everyone. If the parents have to go to work outside their home (we have a home-based business), then it is going to be a real challenge to implement.

One of the more disturbing aspects of educating my children at home has been when a case of child abuse becomes linked to the fact that the parents hid behind homeschooling in order to hide their abuse. This often brings calls from those who’s attachment is to public schooling for more oversight and regulation of those of us who have made a personal choice. I am fortunate that the state of Missouri has good supports for homeschooling choice due to a large population of conservative Christians. I am grateful to them though we are not homeschooling for the same reasons they do.

So today, I read yet again an allegation that everyone dislikes homeschooling because it is a front for abuse as the Coronavirus has forced schools to close and children to stay at home.

Can it really be true that abusers have to wait for an official sanction of homeschooling to cover their abuse of their children ? Or that many people homeschool simply so that they can abuse their children ?

More than once, I have encountered arguments for the advantages of school as required for the socialization of children. It is not the blind leading the blind (children of a single age group influencing their peers to bad behavior) for my sons. They have been socialized to the entire spectrum of humanity – from babies to the elderly. We have often been complimented about how well behaved they are in places where some parents’ children are running around like wild heathens.

In this time of Coronavirus, maybe it isn’t so much about socializing as it is that parents are stressed from being home all day cooped up with their children. We have always valued every single minute of time that we spend with our sons.

One could ask whether schools in the US just “holding cells” for the dependents of people who have to work or so that they can have their days off free to do as they please, until their children are released to come home from school ?

As long as society is so “intertwined” with our government that people become upset that those who chose to do so can school their own children or judge those that do as doing so to hide abuse or that well intentioned people must protect other people’s children from being schooled at home, nothing will ever change for the better in a society of free people.

Bear Hunt

It may seem a bit off topic but really not. Whether an adoptee or a foster child, all children seem to bond with inanimate stuffed animals that seem very much alive to the child that loves them. My daughter once had an enormous bear she named Mellisica. My older son had a red fox that we once lost on the way home from a long journey. We tried to replace it with an identical one but he was never deceived. The youngest one had a white tiger he named Lazha.

In this time of physical distancing as children are no longer crowded into the schools a new effort to bring smiles and something more sweetly novel than the virus has begun. Many people are putting teddy bears in their windows and families who go out to walk together (keeping their distance from other people) or get in their cars to drive around kept distant by the encompassing form of their metallic vehicle are playing a game with one another – a new way of connecting with the rest of the human race.

In 1989, Michael Rosen wrote a children’s book with the title “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”. Our modern day version is a scavenger hunt or kind of I Spy activity for every who who is stuck at home, adults included. In some neighborhoods, kids are in full safari outfits, binoculars included, to get into the role. Some families have turned it into a safari instead of a bear hunt because you see other species of stuffed animals. Or some are putting bear prints on their sidewalks with chalk.

It is really heartwarming. One can get quite emotional looking at all the pictures coming in from every corner of social media. People are seeking to hang onto anything positive, even if it’s a stuffed animal in a window.

From a mental health standpoint, this is more than just a children’s game. It is a way of communicating with other people while staying safe in isolation. It is a silent visual message that families and individuals are sending to each other from their windows that says, “We’re all in this together. I’m experiencing what you’re experiencing.”

So, if your circumstances allow it (we no longer have any stuffed animals in our home having long ago given them away to the regional women and children’s shelter for protection from domestic abuse), do put something cute in your window and share a feeling of connection even though it isn’t currently possible to have direct physical contact with other people.

The Sound of Love

It may be hard to imagine what a joy it is for a mother who once relinquished her child to adoption to finally hear their voice decades later. One such story that reached me today and was conveyed like this –

“I got the call I’ve waited on for almost 31 years. More so the past 2 years.
My Son called me! 💙💗
His voice was like that of someone I’ve always known. He sounded so familiar. Almost a 2 hour phone call. It was more than I ever imagined.💓

It may have taken a pandemic but it finally happened 🥰

And now I embark on this next rail of this roller coaster that has been my life. At least today I woke with a smile.”

Not every attempt at a reunion ends happy. Some mothers are so devastated that they have tried to block out all memories of the unhappy experience. They do not wish to remember what happened.

And in this time of isolating ourselves an in-person meeting may not be possible but I guarantee that someday this will all be in the past and while life may never look like it did before ever again, a new kind of normal will emerge.

An experience like the one I have shared is healing for both the mother and the adoptee when it goes so beautifully even with the complications of our current moment. Advice for entering into such a fragile beginning –

Understand your emotions will be very intense, this is normal.
Journal journal journal.
Cry cry cry.
Yet, try with all your might not to burden your child.
Ask for their permission before you do stuff.

Adoptees had no choice regarding what happened to them. If your relinquished child comes back, be grateful for such a blessing. Always be gentle towards both you and your child.

So Much To Worry About

We are ALL being forced to live through perhaps one of the most extraordinary times in our collective generations history. It will certainly be long remembered and remarked upon. We can not see clearly where all of this disruption will leave our country and the world, much less our families and our selves.

It is crucial that we learn to manage the anxiety. I had to recently make a point to my own husband that his anxiety was not healthy for me. That if I had a heart attack I could end up in the place where I really don’t want to be at this time (though truth be told, I never want to end up there for that reason).

It is a moral and social responsibility incumbent upon each of us to do our best to minimize our own role in and help to curtail the spread of this contagion. We are all having to make adjustments and modifications to the way we would prefer to be living. We are having to give up those things we like to do best in favor of not doing much of anything that we can’t do in our very own homes.

This can be a challenge for anyone with children in their home. It is best to be truthful in an age appropriate manner. I heard a young child at the grocery store yesterday ask their mother, “why can’t I touch things ?” It is definitely a teaching moment and where day care is necessary for those who must continue to work – good hygiene and distancing can even be taught to young children.

So, I want to say to you today – It’s OK to be worried. It’s normal and it isn’t an overreaction. If that is how you feel, it’s your feelings. Feelings can’t be wrong.

It has helped in our family to have a plan. I am the most likely to become infected because I am the supply officer for my family. We are fortunate that we have always lived this way (though there are a few more inconveniences and necessary actions that weren’t necessary before). We have a home-based business and our children have always been educated at home. We have less to adapt to and we also live in sparsely populated rural wilderness. Not always an advantage but at the moment, one we are grateful for.