Short and sweet today because I don’t have much time. From an original mother in reunion.
She has yet to figure out the shortest way to self ID for she IS the adoption triad –
-International infant adoptee
-Former foster youth
-Former kinship guardian
-Adoptive parent of adult who was placed with me for kinship guardianship but asked to be legally adopted at the age of 20
-Natural mother and sole guardian of a child formerly in the system
The picture was posted with the child’s permission – from a mother and son reunion and reunification a week ago. They are still well inside their “honeymoon” period, but so far, everything is great. The child so happy to be back with his mom again and she feels whole again for the first time in years.
What happens to an expectant Mom, who’s coerced into relinquishing her children for adoption ?
Simple answer… They are kicked to the curb !
If the vultures are nice, the expectant mother lives out her last month of pregnancy in a room or apartment that was rented for her.
If the poor woman was living with the hopeful adoptive parents, now that they are adoptive parents, the original mom is not allowed back into the home. Maybe, they will moved her somewhere else, but only if they are nice adoptive parents and then, only until the end of the month.
Maybe, she will be given a bus ticket, when leaving the hospital – or given $500.00 bucks to begin a new life going forward.
If an agency is involved, she may be told she can see an agency therapist or counselor for a couple months. Beware, the only reason why that is offered, is to make certain the natural mother doesn’t change her mind and ask for her own child back.
Why do some people find this so damn shocking ?
The natural mother has served her purpose ! Private couples and private agencies have NO use for the original mother after the paperwork is signed. Is this wrong, abusive, selfish, and self serving ? Absolutely and this is how expectant mothers who chose adoption are treated every day!!! Natural mother’s are promised the world and are then shit on. In foster care cases, they will receive even less consideration.
One true story example – my brother’s mom lived with us. I was 6 and loved her. As soon as she gave birth, I never saw her again (on purpose, I did run into her a few times as an adult) and even at that young age, I was heartbroken for her and couldn’t understand how they could separate them. I was sure she was always going to live with us.
Another true story with a very unusual twist – the children of the family I lived with, asked if the baby they were now seeing was mine. Kids know. I actually babysat them afterwards. It’s how I found out when she was 18 months old, that my daughter was in the ICU.
Yet another example – I lived with a friend of the adoptive parents until my baby was born. Then she (the friend) picked us up at the hospital, dropped me off at my mother’s and took my baby away. It was the last time I ever saw and held her.
Lastly, one adoptee discovered – I just realized the words “natural mother” are very triggering for me. I literally got sick reading those words, not because of what was said related to what I was reading but because my abusive adoptive parent would say “you’ll turn out just like your natural mother.” and “Your natural mother was a bad person.” etc.
Unwed expectant mothers considering adoption need to be aware that promises made to them pre-birth may not be honored after the child is born and relinquished to the adopting parents.
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.
In a discussion about a same-sex couple (two females) who wanted a family and were seeking perspectives on donor conceived vs adoption, a woman who gave up her baby at birth was strongly defending her choice as best for the child. This kind of denial is not uncommon. Truth is that many women who surrender their child at birth spend the rest of their lifetime in sorrow. Not even getting into the trauma that EVERY baby suffers at a preverbal, subconscious level due to that separation. Today’s story is from a woman who surrendered her child.
I’m a Birth mother. When I placed my daughter for adoption I lost the only good thing in my life. She was my joy. My reason for living.
I spent the next decade deeply suicidal and one of the things I heard a lot from people was that “suicide is selfish because it takes one person’s pain and passes it on to ten others.” These days I can’t help but think how much this statement applies to adoption too.
When I hear hopeful adoptive parents talk about the anguish infertility caused them and how they’re pursuing adoption now because they NEED to be a mother, I wonder if they realize they’re doing exactly this. They are trying to take away their pain of not having a baby by passing that pain onto the birth mother, father, child, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins instead.
I have spent years in agony over the loss of my daughter, crying and begging god to change what happened. I’ve watched others get pregnant and wondered why they were worthy of motherhood and I wasn’t. I’ve felt the need to be a mother because I was a mother. But I am a mother without a child now.
The future which hopeful adoptive parents were unwilling to live (a life without children) has become my reality instead. Do hopeful adoptive parents or those who have already adopted realize – they are transferring their pain onto others, when they accept somebody else’s baby to fulfill their dreams ? What makes the pain spread through suicide so obviously selfish but the pain spread through adoption so widely acceptable ?
The first response was empathetic – you’re making perfect sense. Except the pain that leads people to suicide and the pain of having a child and losing it are both astronomically greater than any pain felt by never having children. So that makes adoption exceptionally selfish. I’m sorry for the pain you have been through. You did not deserve any of it. Saying a prayer for you.
It is frequently said in my all things adoption group that adoption is a permanent decision to a temporary solution. Society really needs to wake up to the harm of commercializing babies for profit and support struggling mothers and/or families better so children do not need to be taken from the family they were born into.
There are some adoptive mothers who finally realize that their infertility was at least psychologically caused by feeling their own mothers didn’t love them, even though there may have also been a physical component. If a woman is not whole in mind and emotions, any child brought into this life will have flawed parenting. There is also often a religious component to adoption. Some feel that God is punishing them with infertility and though some kind of twisted logic believe that adopting a child will get them back God’s good graces. So many don’t want to heal, they refuse to even admit they need to. And it’s their children and their children’s true mothers who carry the burden of their lack of awareness regarding their true issues.
Regarding a relinquishment of one’s babies and suicide came this comment –
I am an adoptee. My Mom died by suicide because her pain was too much to bear from losing two children to adoption.
I have been saying much of the same thing in regards to suicide. It’s not selfish or cowardly or a crime. I have also been saying that hopeful adoptive parents or those who have already adopted are transferring their pain. Most do not heal before adopting. Adoptive parents are wrongly revered by our society. Nobody thinks to question them or ask them anything. Sadly, adoption is usually option B and adoptive parents do not heal nor research the topic before getting their wallets out.
Fact is – adoption is big business. A for profit business. So if there were no adoptive parents, the money to be made selling babies would decrease. Sadly, adoption is socially acceptable, romanticized, sensationalized and is thought by many to be beautiful, rainbows etc. Adoptive parents are viewed as heroes and altruistic.
Suicide is stigmatized and people are afraid to discuss it and truly do not understand it. Our society has a hard time sitting in discomfort and looking at other people’s pain. That is why suicide is quickly labeled as selfish. In reality, society is selfish for not asking why the pain was so heavy. Even the words used around suicide make it seem like a crime or a choice. (committed suicide, killed oneself, took their own life). We are the selfish ones. We need to be talking about this. Not to mention the high suicide attempt rates and suicides among adoptees, as well as their original moms. Nobody is going to physically die because they can’t have a baby but many adoptees and moms are dying from the grief, trauma and loss that is the truth of adoption and family separation.
Every day, my effort here is to change the narrative about who adoptees are, about their stories, about the importance of keeping families together. Mine is one small voice but those who share my perspectives are legion. So the effort at reform begins with changing the narrative – adoption is NOT a “selfless” act but a “selfish” act. There is so much pain in adoption. I wish more people were aware of (and cared about!!!) the devastating consequences.
Private adoption is illegal in other countries. America has made the buying and selling of children a business; a multi billion dollar industry. Children are the commodity.
A woman writes – “I spent the first 16 years of my adoption experience as a ‘birth’ mother in complete isolation. It was preceded by the nearly 10 months of family-conducted isolation during my pregnancy. Such is the life of a shamed pregnant teenager. I had personally never known either an adopted person or a natural mother. ”
Clearly isolation isn’t simply for a time of a global pandemic. Young women have been isolated for decades in order to relieve them of their baby when it is born.
She goes on to acknowledge – “If I could relive that day (when she gave birth) again, I would run from that hospital with her in my arms and never look back. I would take my chances with being homeless and the foster care system.”
The truth is that “better” life for your child is nothing more than a different life.
Over time, she came to see – that an adoption agent and her very own mother reduced her to a bodily function for total strangers. It has landed her in trauma therapy. She didn’t receive counseling before or after the adoption by the agency. She had secretly held herself together somehow all these years only to discover she had been suffering with PTSD stemming directly from the adoption itself.
There is a world full of adoptees and natural moms in Adoptionland who have found each other in virtual space and are a kind of sisterhood that understands each other’s pain. I belong to a group like that. I have learned so much from reading about the direct experiences and points of view. So much so that I no longer support the commercial practice of adoption.
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.
Missing Mom 