That Pesky Uncertainty Thing

Many hopeful adoptive parents experience the uncertainty of whether that unwed young mother they have matched up with to take her newborn after birth will back out. And some do experience that outcome after spending tons of money on baby stuff in anticipation. Many of these are angry. Why are your family’s hopes so high that another family must fail to satisfy their hopes ? Me. Me. Me. My family. My family.

Because newborns are a scarce commodity bringing in huge profits for adoption agencies and lawyers, the field is competitive and the effort expensive. Here’s one example of the perspective of a whole family of hopeful adopters.

First comment on the above – Your family needs to change their expectations, and their expectations are not your responsibility. Its NOT your baby. Even if you get the placement. If Dad steps up that would be the BEST thing for that baby ♡ if dad can’t and you get the placement then that’s great that you are so well prepared and your heart and your families hearts are so open for that baby! ♡

It should be the reality that the father has to be PROVEN UNFIT before that child is taken into care. The father should NOT have to prove he is FIT to get his own child back! The child shouldn’t be with the woman complaining AT ALL, if there is a dad coming forward. I don’t care what his legal record is, as long as he isn’t a child abuser.

The hopeful adoptive mother is already feeling this way, before she has the baby ? What about the father ? He has to get a lawyer to even get this child back-during FORMATIVE BONDING MOMENTS that no amount of money can bring back. She gets those moments – but why? WHY!?

If there are concerns the father can’t parent, then society should support him with the resources they would have sent the foster parents – parenting classes, therapy, any assistance for supplies/etc. There should be no need for him to have to fight for HIS baby, the fact this is even a thing is appalling, and sadly, this is not a one off circumstance.

One adoptee shared this sad story – My poor sister had her 3rd child stolen out of her arms in the hospital and had to go to court postpartum (like that is on any woman’s to do list after delivering a baby and should be bonding) to get her baby back. The effects of this on her mental and emotional health was awful to watch-and triggering (cuz you know, she didn’t have the support she needed already). I was an adult by this time and had been removed/adopted into another states system and seeing them steal my nieces and nephew and have our family have to deal with all the lies of the courts again, well it just sent many of us into dark holes for many years.

Another comment – Personally, I don’t believe that anybody should get into fostering with the sole intention of potentially adopting a child. From everything that I learned in my classes and have read, the goal should always be to have a child return to their biological family if possible. In the event that is not a reality, then bringing a child into your life is the most beautiful thing that you can do for them. I’m a little concerned that this person may have been one of those people who is only interested in fostering newborns/babies…because they hope to adopt one.

Sharing the attitudes, language and culture surrounding the adoption industry are a primary purpose of my own in conveying information like this.

The Exploitation Problem

What could be wrong with a couple who has experienced infertility and has the financial means adopting the baby of an unwed mother ? Many people would see nothing wrong with this.

The problem is that behind this happily ever after scenario is a great deal of exploitation. In both of my parents’ adoptions, this was a definite factor, even though my mom’s parents were married. There is a great deal of money changing hands in the domestic infant adoption industry.

So, let’s consider domestic infant adoption. Only a newborn baby will do for these adoptive parents. They desire to only adopt a newborn baby. Let us judge this as selfishness. Maybe you as the hopeful adoptive parent just want to have the baby “experience.” Maybe you believe you’re getting a “blank slate” (that was what Georgia Tann who was involved in my mom’s adoption would tell her prospective parents). The truth is babies are NOT blank slates. Maybe you want the “as if born to” parenting experience (being there at the very beginning and you as parents being the only ones the child will ever know). Maybe you think this is as close as you can get to having your “own” child.

Some reality checks –

1. You are NOT needed. There are over 100 hopeful adoptive parents/singles/couples for every ONE newborn baby that is available to adopt. These babies are in high demand and sought after. They won’t age out of foster care, if you don’t adopt them. Furthermore, they have biological genetic families. Contrary to popular belief, there are very few women who just don’t want their kids. Imagine the desperation, fear and poverty you must live in to give away your own child. Adoption rates have gone down drastically over the last year. Why? Because families have received so much more financial help and resources due to COVID. With help and support, even more mothers are parenting their own children.

2. If you’re a hopeful adoptive parent glad that “support” from the government is stopping to increase your odds of getting a baby – you are not adopting because you are a good person.

3. If you’re praying for a woman to feel desperate enough to give you her baby – you are not adopting because you are a good person.

4. If you match pre-birth with a pregnant woman and coerce and manipulate her during her pregnancy – your desperation is showing and you are not adopting because you are a good person.

5. Agencies are a for profit business and often are not at all ethical. Know this, if you’re paying thousands of dollars to adopt through an agency – you are not adopting because you are a good person. You are adopting because you have the money to do so (or have raised the money through a Go Fund Me or other such platform).

6. A standard adoption practice is for the hopeful adoptive parents to be present in the delivery or hospital room. The agencies tell the birth mother that “this is just how it’s done.” Know this – it’s done to make it harder for the mom to change her mind, when she sees her child. If you’re there breathing down her neck while she is giving birth and in that moment when she first meets HER child – you are attempting rob her of the only precious moment with her baby that she may ever have. And maybe she WILL change her mind and her baby will be glad that she did.

7. If you make her feel guilty for wanting to keep her baby, the same way the agency will – you are exploiting her. If you employ an agency to call Child Protective Services on her (mind you, just standard adoption practice) when she wavers regarding giving her baby up to you, just to scare her into going forward – you are exploiting her.

8. So, the mom has changed her mind and is going to keep and parent her baby. Then, you fight against her decision by using the legal system or the agency does it on your behalf – you are exploiting her.

9. If the father is not on board with the adoption and his rights are being completely ignored – you are exploiting the father.

If any of this is true of your circumstances – you are guilty of exploiting a difficult time in someone’s life. A situation that will likely change for the better given time. You will leave a baby with lifelong trauma from sundering that child from its original family.

Prayers Please

This is a TRUE and ONGOING situation and typical of many, many of these kinds of circumstances.

There is a mom who gave birth yesterday to a baby girl at a hospital in Florida. How messed up is this? Mom can’t (now couldn’t) have visitors due to COVID restrictions. She was allowed ONE support person during delivery and guess who it was? Yup, hopeful adoptive mom.

Due to their policy, the person there during delivery is the ONLY person allowed in. Baby was moved to a room with the wannabe mom AND wannabe DAD. (Ya know, they consider the wannabe mom’s desire for a “support person” and so they allowed dad.)

The adoption agency involved in Florida is a major player in the state. The new mom has now told the social worker (employed by hospital) last night that she has decided to parent her child. Of course, the hopeful adoptive parents and adoption agency employee refused to leave the hospital – until the hospital social worker and nursing staff told them they had to.

As they were leaving, the adoption agency employee told the hopeful adoptive parents to “get some sleep and we will regroup tomorrow.”

Happily, the hospital will now allow the new mom’s mom to come and support this morning. The mom has been prepared by members of an all things adoption support group for the antics common in domestic infant adoptions that occur when agencies and hopeful adoptive parents don’t get their way. They often will call Child Protective Services just for spite.

Please keep this new mom and her baby girl in your prayers for continued good outcomes. Thank you.

And just to know – This is STANDARD behavior in the world of domestic infant adoptions. Coercion, manipulation, isolation, preying on vulnerable women at a vulnerable time. If you are a hopeful adoptive mother who signs up to adopt via a domestic infant adoption, you are supporting these kinds of practices.

It doesn’t matter IF the expectant mom was going to allow you to adopt HER child. If she changes her mind after seeing her precious baby – NO means NO. Every new mom has every right to change her mind. In today’s story – these hopeful adoptive parents are not going to get her baby but it is almost certain that eventually they will get someone else’s baby. They always do.

It is never an unwed, expectant mother’s responsibility to provide an infertile couple with a child. And they always speak glowingly of the sacrifice such mothers make to allow them to take her child away from family.

A Disconnect

I’ve been reading about infant development lately in a book titled Healing the Split – Integrating Spirit Into Our Understanding of the Mentally Ill by John E Nelson MD. I often reflect on my own mothering of my daughter at the age of 19. Though the love was never lacking, I was not as good of a mother for her as I might have been, had I know how to be a good mother.

I believe some of that comes of the slight disconnect in my own parents as regards their parenting of us. It is not their fault, they were both adopted. Oh, they were good parents, not abusive, and we knew they loved us but there was something missing in them and it affected their parenting of us.

What was missing in my parents were their natural mothers, who carried them in their wombs and gave birth to them, may have breastfed them. I know that was true with my dad. I don’t have a record of that for my mom. She was taken to an orphanage for temporary care by her own financially desperate mother and put on a formula. My dad was allowed to stay with his mother and continue to nurse for some months as he accompanied her when she was employed by the Salvation Army, through who’s home for unwed mothers she had given birth to him.

I was reflecting on this as I sat out on the deck overlooking the field at my writer’s retreat. I was bundled up in a cozy jacket as the temperature is not more than the mid-30s and drinking warm tea.

I was thinking about how my mom took my bottle from me at 13 months to give to my newborn younger sister. My mom intended no harm, she didn’t know better. We can’t do better than we know how.

So, as I was drinking the warm tea, I imagined mothering myself. I imagined being warm and cozy in the soft embrace of my mother, drinking in the warm, nourishing liquid.

In that moment, I forgave my mom and had to extend that forgiveness to myself. I can acknowledge that I might have done better if I had know how to do better and in realizing that, I can acknowledge that my own mother would have done better had she known how to do better.

My late life sons (born when I was 47 and 50 years old) have benefitted from having a better mother in me. Certainly, I did have previous experience when the first boy was born and I had a huge amount of support from my in-laws who came every day for the first 4 months and only stopped when my husband begged me to ask them to back off.

My husband was always a good and nurturing co-parent as he did not become a father until he was personally ready to commit to that responsibility. When the second boy was born, he doubled down on the attention he gave the older boy, that he suffer less from the loss of attention of his mother, due to a newborn in the house.

It was a situation that I had to rectify when the younger boy was about 2 or 3 and the older one about 6 as he was acting out a lot to get my attention. With sufficient attention from me, that behavior quickly ceased and the younger boy benefitted from having more dad time.

Hindsight doesn’t replace ignorance but ignorance is not willful neglect.

Confusing Lust As Love

A less common definition for Lust is a passionate desire for “x”.

A woman in my all things adoption group wrote – To love someone is sometimes a decision you make every day. Between posts from Second Chance Adoptions and adoptive parents in other groups, I’m seeing a lack of unconditional love in adoptive families. How many times have we seen from hopeful adoptive parents “I’m in love with a child I haven’t met yet.” That’s not love, it’s lust. Some people are seriously confused about what it means to “love.”

Another woman notes something I have long know is true of how most people do define love.

Most people sadly place conditions on their love. I love you as long as you love me. I love you as long as you do what I say. I love you as long as you never upset me. I love you but only if you never struggle. I love you until you say you hate me. I love you until you say I’m not your real parent. I love you until you decide to go live with your biological mom. And the ultimate one, “I love you as long as it’s convenient and beneficial for me.”

I am an unconditionally loving person. I can love even the worst scoundrel on some level. But I agree with this remark – unconditionally loving someone, doesn’t mean, I have to do things for him or her that hurt me or my family. This is where I have sadly had to arrive with my youngest sister, who traumatizes me and leaves me obsessed if I have too much interaction with her. I do love her. I wish her well in the most obvious definition of that word but I have to also care about myself and my other family members.

Another woman defined it this way – Real, true unconditional love has no conditions. True unconditional love comes with respect, compassion and understanding. True unconditional love says that no matter how something may make me feel or how it may make my life harder, if you need it, I will do it for you because I love you.

I think the operative word there is “need”. Sometimes what someone needs is very hard for us to do but we do it anyway. Like when I had to ask the court to determine my sister’s competency to manage her own affairs. That was all that was required, that I ask it be looked at. Of course, she didn’t appreciate it but with our parents both dying, it was something she needed and a family member had to ask for it. Then it was the judge, the social worker and the psychologist who made the determine how much assistance she should have. I am glad that wasn’t a determination I had to make. I do value freedom and self-determination and I never wanted those taken from my sister and for the most part, the judge has left her free except in the overall management of her finances. She is still able to spend her budgeted allowance any way she choses.

Another woman stated her honest opinion – Oh, I hate that shit! “We’re so heartbroken that the biological mom decided to keep her baby. We were already in love with her.” Like, baby isn’t even born yet but don’t tell me you wouldn’t take absolutely ANY baby.

To which, another affirmed – Right. They’d just move on to the next. It doesn’t matter what baby, as long as it’s a baby.

Then there is the “I chose you” facade so many adoptive parents perpetrate –

My adoptive mom used to tell me that they got to pick me and that biological parents just get the kid they’re given. It’s bs. They didn’t pick me! They took the first baby available. They would have taken the next baby in line if I’d been given to someone else.

Which comment elicited sympathy – I can’t even begin to imagine how it feels to know that. I’m sure most domestic infant adoption adoptees know that, and I’m sure y’all just wish your adoptive parent would at least be honest.

I found this a good analogy – As I told an ex once, “You weren’t in love with me, just with the *idea* of someone to fit the role you envisioned.” I know it is possible to become deeply attached to what someone represents, without unconditionally loving that person.

A Womb-Wet Infant

I love this image because my youngest son actually had such an unhappy expression as he was pulled out of my womb via c-section. But that really isn’t the topic of my blog today.

So many hopeful adoptive parents only want what those in the adoptee community call “womb-wet”. I remember when my husband decided he wanted to become a father after 10 years of marriage, we once discussed adoption. His uncle had adopted a son. My parents were both adopted. Yet, not even knowing what I know now, we felt that adoption was not a good choice. So glad we didn’t go that route. The route we went was complicated enough but the results are generally satisfying.

So in my adoption community (which includes all variations from original parents who surrendered to adoption, to adoptees, to former foster care youth, to adoptive parents, to expectant single mothers and to hopeful adoptive parents) came this woman’s comment –

We are attempting to foster kiddos 0-2. We were basically told that we will most likely not receive an infant placement and that school age kiddos are where the need is. As a family, 0-2 fits our needs for many reasons. I guess I don’t understand. With as many kids in the system, wouldn’t they rather have a home ready for placement when the news arrives instead of fishing around when the need arises and there isn’t a home available? Please no hateful responses. Looking for advice as we are beginners.

The truth is that adoptees and former foster youth are given priority to express even their raw and unfiltered feelings in this group, hence the plea for “no hateful responses”. That doesn’t guarantee there will be none. For some members, it takes a bit of getting used to but I have learned so much being a part of this group.

The first response went something like this – “Am I wrong in saying she’s contradicted herself? When she says that there’s so many kids in the system wouldn’t you rather have a home ready….right after saying how the need is for home age kids…..? Also am I correct when I say fostering isn’t about your needs but the needs of the children?”

Another reply was – “Age 0-2 fits their family’s needs better…yeah right. I think the term they are looking for is blank(er) slate”.

There are MANY older children in foster care. Therefore, one person commenting rightfully noted – “Wouldn’t they rather have a home ready for placement? Translation – doesn’t want to be ready for children already in need.”

Another wrote – “I will literally never understand the baby thing. How do you decide to become a foster parent because babies are cute? I mean really . . . can “fit in/meet needs” or whatever weird phrase you want to use WAY easier than a baby who you can’t even begin to try and explain the situation to and therefore can’t even start to comfort or calm completely for weeks after they are placed.”

Another said – “Really sounds like a spoiled, entitled brat, who’s stomping her feet, pissed off that she’s not getting what she ordered, the moment she ordered it.”

I really urge all of you thinking about becoming foster parents or hoping to adopt someone else’s newborn baby to consider how you could use your resources most effectively and your passion to help families by focusing directly on helping families stay together. Sadly, fighting for reunification as a foster parent really isn’t enough. Sadly, for kids in foster care, the damage is already done.

What It Costs

A few days ago, the New York Times had an article titled What I Spent To Adopt My Child. Sharing some statistics, facts and excerpts today.

Each adoption process shares the same ultimate purpose: to unite children who need families with those that want children. Yet, despite this common goal, the price tag of adoption in the United States varies widely.

The cost depends on what path you choose: If adopting through the public foster care system, your total out-of-pocket expenses can be next to nothing. If you hope to adopt a newborn, however, the cost can reach $45,000 or sometimes higher if you’re adopting from outside the country.

There are two main paths to adopt an infant in the United States: through a lawyer, often referred to as an “independent adoption,” or through an agency. An independent adoption can cost $15,000 to $40,000. My youngest sister chose through a lawyer. Some of her living and medical expenses were covered by the adoptive parents. Prospective parents are responsible for finding a birth mother. My sister received several packets from hopeful adoptive parents and shared them with me for my own impressions about her choice. Her choice was always her own and she always knew she was going to surrender her baby from early on in her pregnancy.

My other sister’s surrender went through an agency. When adopting through an agency, costs can vary by state, ranging from $20,000 to $45,000. The cost covers organizational, legal and medical expenses. And all agencies operate differently. It is up to the prospective parents to carefully review what is and is not covered in their rate prior to signing with any agency.

One same sex male couple in this article who adopted a 9 year boy out of Foster Care comes the closest to one of the better outcomes. Older children in Foster Care need loving and stable homes more than most of the infant adoptions (which are primarily due to financially unsupported mothers). This couple recently celebrated 14 years of marriage. Seems stable enough to me. One of the partners in this relationship is an adult adoptee. When asked to total the out-of-pocket expenses this couple allocated toward their adoption, one said, “At the risk of sounding glib — gas money. Otherwise, nothing. No processing fees, or surprise $1,000 bills here and there, and that’s very typical of the foster care experience.”

You can search the NY Times for this article. I’ll even give you the link – What I Spent To Adopt My Child.

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.