Tag: PTSD

Hidden ADHD

So today’s topic came up because of this question – My brother, also an adoptee, had ADHD that was very obvious and came out behaviorally/externally. Therefore I was never tested/thought of having it because mine didn’t match my brothers. For years I lived thinking that my symptoms or experiences were just how the world works, but as I study more, I am seeing many ADHD symptoms that are just too hard to ignore. And maybe it isn’t ADHD, maybe it is related to dopamine levels that were affected through adoptee trauma and being born “addicted” to what my mother was using at the time. But I am wondering if other people have uncovered this or have experienced this, and how they went about handling it!

One adoptee shares –  I have PTSD. The symptoms are similar. Adoption is trauma. I do less. I learned how to practice self care and regulate my nervous system. It got easier when I got away from the people who raised me. Therapy when needed.

Another adoptee writes – I suspect I have ADHD, and like you have a lot of symptoms. I’m working up the courage to get tested. I struggle with feeling safe with doctors, so haven’t gotten tested yet. The way I present is far different from my husband who was tested for ADHD as a child. She was asked – could you share some of your symptoms and how they are different than your husbands? She answers – he’s hyperactive and has no concept of time. I’m more of the zone out and dissociate. He’s a list guy and helps him focus. lists bore me. He forgets to text and call people whereas I lose things all the time.

Another adoptee notes – Women often go misdiagnosed or undiagnosed with ADHD (and autism). I wasn’t diagnosed until my 20’s with ADHD and suspect I’m autistic, too. A very ignorant doctor tried to tell me that if I got good grades in school, then I couldn’t have ADHD. That’s untrue. You can also have ADHD and not be the hyperactive type. There’s a hyperactive, an inattentive, and a mixed subtype. Typically, if your symptoms were not enough to aggravate/inconvenience others, especially in childhood, then you went undiagnosed.

Yet another adoptee shares –  I used to just think that I had CPTSD from my adoption (which I very likely do have still), but after reconnecting with my birth family, found out that ADHD and autism are family traits (there is a genetic link to both of those). After doing a TON of research and taking the RAADS-R, it looks like I’m very likely AuDHD with a side of CPTSD/Adoption Trauma.

One more adoptee writes – Yes, diagnosed with ADHD at 38 and once I started meds, my autistic traits became more clear! And I do now know that I’ve always been this way, the two kinda cover for each other. My son is 6 and my mini-me, he hasn’t experienced any trauma in his life. We’re both neurodivergent.

Going Backwards

Reaching out to anyone who has dealt with trauma and PTSD. I adopted my son a while ago and we have had very good and open conversations.

Recently, he stated he felt like he was going backwards. He’s reliving some trauma in his head, going back to some old habits, and as we were talking about it, he said he wanted to do therapy with me. I said I would get us back into family therapy and he said no, that was good but he wants it to just be between us, having “therapy” together. I told him I would see what I could do and from what I’ve gathered is he wants to have deeper conversations in a safe place but sometimes we don’t know where to start.

Suggestions:

One adoptee finds “adoptee” only groups very cathartic.

Barely Surviving

Heartbreaking. From the National Institutes of Health – The odds of a reported suicide attempt were ∼4 times greater in adoptees compared with non-adoptees.

An adoptive mother writes – My daughter intentionally overdosed last Friday. This is her 3rd attempt which started at age 12. I have zero ideas what to do. She was adopted with her sisters 8 years ago, after being in foster care 2 years starting at age 5. She has had experiences that have caused pretty significant trauma beyond with the actual removal. We have tried to keep family ties as open as possible but she wants zero to do with her natural mom, at the moment. How do we help support her ? What can actually help? I love this girl with all my heart and I don’t know how to make things easier for her.

The obvious question, with an important suggestion, when it comes to any adoptee – Is she in therapy with a therapist who is adoption trauma informed (and NOT an adoptive parent, ideally an adoptee) ? If she’s not in therapy, she needs to be TODAY !

To emphasize the point, one adoptee shares – I am 52 years old but was forcibly taken, at under a year old by my maternal grandmother and put into adoption against the wishes of my parents. Mom was a minor. Dad sued my grandmother but she and the adoptive parents had more money. After 4 years of fighting for custody, my Dad lost. At that point, I was adopted and my name changed when I was already 4 years old. I started self harming behavior by age 12. I have done therapy. I had my DNA analyzed and now have a relationship with my genetic Dad and my mother’s sister (sadly, my Mom had died, before I found her, which hurts). I now have siblings. I was raised an only kid. Which sucked. Reuniting helps but even so, it brings up so much more pain. I’d advise you to find a therapist that works with adopted child’s trauma. “Adoption is Violence”. This is a said by many adopted kids in safe adoption groups. My adopted Mom was great but it doesn’t fix the PTSD trauma of being taken from your birth family and losing your DNA. In elementary school, they have you do a family tree report on your ancestors. You can’t. When you go to a doctor, they need a family medical history but you have none.

Another adoptee can relate – it’s all horrible. They steal us, then expect us to be a blank slate for them. I’ve never heard adoption is violence but I always say adoption is trauma. If you’re adopted, you have some sort of trauma – even if an adoptee thinks their adoption was good, deep down there’s trauma. My adopters had a biological daughter who was 8 years older than me and she was horrific to me – tortured me. My adoptive parents were very abusive and neglectful.

Emphasized – No matter how good your adopted parents/guardians are, most adoptees feel abandoned, unwanted, thrown away, more worth less than kids whose family kept them. A kid raised by their grandmother or aunt at least still has a DNA connection and family history. Without that, you feel afloat with out a paddle. Being taken from a birth parent is traumatic. Especially so for an infant or small child who will have PTSD even before they can verbalize their feelings.

Finally, some actual suggestions –  a youth group of other adoptees would be wonderful. She likely feels very alone in these emotions and it can be very isolating. She could also be very over stimulated in addition to navigating her current emotions. Does she enjoy outside activities like hiking or is there an animal sanctuary she can go to decompress? Therapy is great, but also it’s nice to have a safe place to feel the feelings without feeling anybody else’s. Horse therapy is a great option as well. She can learn to ride and care for the horses. She may find that horses provide emotional support and understanding that people don’t. She needs to have an outlet to dig deep into herself. I would inquire with her previous social worker about about other resources and groups too. I always found it comforting to be around other kids who were going through similar experiences because it can be very triggering to see traditional families not having to deal with the same type of emotional turmoil.

An adoptee with a similar background (adopted from foster care at age 12 w her 2 younger half sisters) suggested looking into the Safe and Sound music listening protocol for the girl’s emotional regulation and nervous system. She had found this helpful in her own struggle w PTSD and an Attachment Disorder. She said this was for her an amazing life changing resource. 

Another adoptee shared her own history and resources – As an adult, I have done the following in conjunction with regular talk therapy: inpatient at a psychiatric hospital, outpatient therapy at the same hospital, 18 week program as an outpatient for 4 hours a day, group therapy program for people with severe mental health issues, online zoom group for suicide attempt survivors. She suggested this adoptive mother ask her doctors, therapists, honestly anyone who will listen, for community resources.

Disconnected by Fear

An adoptee writes –

I was adopted soon after birth in a very closed adoption. Through DNA testing and Facebook stalking, I found my biological mother in 2021. Though reserved, she agreed to meet in July 2021. I flew to her state (11 hours driving distance) and spent 4 hours with her in a restaurant, and then we went our separate ways. She was nice but said she had “memory issues” and couldn’t remember a lot of that time in her life. She has no pictures on social media and I didn’t take one when I met her.

In June this year, she said she wanted to drive the 11 hours with her husband and their camper to see me and my family. I was both ecstatic and very anxious, but made plans with her anyway. I checked in a few times between June and this weekend, because I knew she might change her mind. She frequently “likes” my posts on Facebook but we don’t talk much outside of that. She drove 10 hours in my direction and camped overnight on Friday in a town 1 hour away.

Saturday morning, she was supposed to come over to my house to meet my kids and husband and have breakfast. I scrubbed the whole house, bought a fruit and cheese tray, croissants, donuts, etc. At 8am, she texts me and says they need to bail and go back to their home state, because “storms” were in the forecast that night (storms were forecasted about 15 hours after she texted me, so not imminent.)

I’m struggling so much with feelings of abandonment and rejection resurfacing. I want to totally shut down and block her from my Facebook (where she gets daily insights into my life and my family, and I get nothing in return because she never posts and has no pictures on hers). How could she drive 10 hours in my direction and turn around with only 1 hour to go? I’m really having a hard time knowing how to navigate this. She hasn’t texted me since and I just told her I hope she has a safe drive home, because I don’t want to admit how much this hurts. Is it futile to try to have a relationship with someone so closed off and inaccessible?

One direct response was – She is afraid. She feels bad and she doesn’t want to hurt you more that she already has.

Blogger’s thought – it really is difficult to build a relationship, even with the advantage of genetic familial connection, when there is no physically shared family experiences and there has been no real relationship for so many years, decades even. This has been my experience in connecting with biological, genetic relatives as the child of parents who were both adoptees. It is awkward and so much is lacking due to the passage of time between people with no daily, monthly, yearly history together.

To make the point, another person commented – I’ve been in similar situation with my “biological father” and he never makes any effort. It hurts. I drove half way across the country to meet him and don’t hear from him unless I reach out. I’ve spoken to him maybe 2 times since 2017. My biological mother isn’t any different really, except she’s much closer.

Another person reaffirmed the earlier comments – I read your story. What I infer from it is that she is struggling mentally / emotionally with how to navigate a relationship with you, and unfortunately that has an impact on you, causing more harm. For her to want to make such a long trek and to get 10 hours into an 11 hour journey tells me that a motivation / desire is there, but stopping one hour away and bailing with a pitiful excuse indicates to me that she is overwhelmed or afraid, she doesn’t know how to handle the emotional toll and show up for you, so she ran away. Fight / flight / freeze; she chose flight.

A mother who surrendered a child to adoption wrote – She panicked. Maybe even had a anxiety or panic attack. She might also have PTSD from this whole situation and from being that close to you. I went up to DC so my husband could meet my family. It was the closest I’d been to my baby since his adoption finalized. I was on edge for two hours as we were leaving and even cried, while holding my second child.. It is truly so hard to navigate those feelings. Nothing can replace you and nothing can help that pain except for time. Give her time.

Kid Grows Up, Adopters Never Do

An adoptee writes – She said something about people adopting, then the kid grows up, but the adopters never do. How many of you felt like the “Grown up” in a house, having to care for your adoptive parents? I remember as young as 4, thinking “I’ve got to get out of here.” I think in the 60’s, they were so happy for kids to be adopted, they gave them to anyone. I was supposed to make my adoptive mom “well”. She was seeing all her friends with babies. The hope was, if she got one, she wouldn’t be so crazy.

Another adoptee replied – Most of us were forced to deal with the mental and emotional malfunctions of the infertile people who had purchased us. No big surprise that little children are totally incapable of coping with and fixing adult problems, although we continually were blamed for this failure.

An individual not involved directly in any adoption aspect still notes – parenthood is NOT therapy. Basically treating a child as an emotional support animal. That would mess with anyone, even when it’s your birth mother. To adopt a child, just to do that to them… just terrible.

Another adoptee says – I remember at age – like 5? Writing a letter to my adoptive uncle saying “can I live with you. I understand if you don’t love me, nobody does”. My adoptive parents “bought us a house and furniture” but “if you play by the rules the furniture is yours”. It’s a control game with them. Needless to say I haven’t spoken to them since Christmas, when I finally learned to stand up for myself and gave them a chance to change, sadly realizing they don’t see anything wrong with their actions or playing victim.

Yet another adoptee notes – any “help” from my adoptive dad comes with major strings attached.

And another adoptee says – Yes, parentification is a thing. (Parentification occurs when parents look to their children for emotional and/or practical support, rather than providing it.)

One who considers herself an ex-adoptee notes – I felt a crushing weight to parent them and be their in-home therapist and emotional support for everything, for 10yrs (9-19). Now at this point when I’m out, I can hardly meet my own emotional needs.

Another adoptee shares – recently, I fractured my arm. I’m out of work for 4 weeks because of this. I need both arms to work and I only have 1 at the moment. I don’t know how I’ll make ends meet, after my savings run dry, if my short term disability doesn’t get approved. Recent conversation with my adoptive mother –

Her: “How are you doing financially?”

Me: “not good, I don’t think I’ll be able to pay all my bills”

*context is my adoptive parents have a lot of money*

Her: “That’s too bad. Not my problem though, can’t help you out there.”

Then she hangs up on me. If I didn’t have my fiancé to help support me, I don’t think I’d be here, I’d have already given up.

Yet another adoptee – This is my life with my adoptive mother. If you weren’t letting her groom you, you were the problem and she used either circumstance to dump all her unprocessed shït on us. She kept me from therapy as a child because the counselors believed me over her. Just a reminder – abusers are just as good at grooming allies as they are at grooming victims – I could never understand why Child Protective Services didn’t see through all the BS. She used my anxiety, depression and PTSD against me and to shame me – in childhood and adulthood. She wants authority. Not to be a parent. And refuses to understand the difference. Even her biological son (16 years older than me) was very low contact (or outright no contact) with her when I was in grade school because of her behavior. But then of course, her having me in her grasp since I was 3months old, still left her enough room to blame my biological parents for my everything. Unless it was something good, that I actually I inherited from my biological parents, then my adoptive mother claimed it was from her and retroactively tried to claim it was her traits, that she passed on to me. (We were often forced to sit and listen to her and her biological family literally uplift and embrace their shared genetics in front of each other) When my own kids were born, who are the first biological relatives I’ve been able to know, one of the first things she conditioned my adoptive father to say to me, upon meeting them, was how much they’d be like her.

One confirms – There was emotional surrogacy in the home where I grew up. My adoptive father expected me to protect my adoptive mother’s feelings, during her wildly fluctuating emotional states, but didn’t protect me from the emotional abuse. He never expected her to seek mental help. I first felt it around age 8-9. But the stark reality of it hit home at 14, when I asked him for comfort after one of her unreasonable outbursts. He told me quite plainly to “behave” because I “know how she is.”

Even one with a “good” adoptive home notes – I love my adoptive parents, but I was always the adult in the house. ALWAYS.

Another one says, My adoptive mom likely has Dependent Personality Disorder. She’s a chronic child and it’s like she she wanted me to mother her. She struggles to do basic things that adults should be able to handle. I learned to cook at 5/6 because this was the best way to make sure I had food to eat that wasn’t rotten and wouldn’t make me sick. At 7, she starts telling me details about her sex life, like young women share with close female friends. At 10, I started cooking Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner myself – so we could have Thanksgiving without having to find a restaurant open. At 12, I was regularly being woken up past midnight on a school night because my adoptive parent’s got into a fight and my adoptive mother needed reassurance that everything was going to be ok. By 13, I started to realize this wasn’t normal.

Finally, an adoptee says, My boyfriend is adopted and his parents absolutely didn’t pay for an adult child. Just a baby. And tried to keep him that way. My adoptive parents tried with me. And it worked for a while. But I was very resistant. My brother, also adopted, same story. They treat him as a perpetual baby.

Better Than Punishment

From an editorial by Dr Ruchi Fitzgerald in LINK>The Hill – It is unimaginable to think that seeking medical care could lead to losing custody of their children, yet this devastating predicament is all too real for pregnant women with addiction in the United States.

In our nation, the systems that aim to protect children from the negative effects of parental substance use often prioritize punitive approaches over proven public health strategies. Fear of being imprisoned, stigmatized, or having their children removed makes many pregnant women with substance use disorder (SUD) afraid to seek medical care, contributing to poor maternal health outcomes. Some state laws, including the law in Illinois where I practice medicine, even mandate that health care professionals report cases of detected controlled substances in a newborn infant as evidence of child neglect. While the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) has no such requirement, CAPTA’s overall approach has led to significant variation in how states, counties, and health care institutions implement its reporting requirements when substance use is involved during pregnancy.

Threatening child removal from a birthing parent with SUD without a risk assessment or evidence of danger to the child is not ultimately improving outcomes for children. Research has long shown that children affected by the trauma of family separation tend to experience worse long-term outcomes on a wide variety of indicators, including education, health, housing, employment, substance use, and involvement with the criminal legal system. With over 400,000 children in foster care across the US, the trauma of separation is widespread.

Forced separation also brings unimaginable pain to new families – triggering in some parents such despair that it deters them from seeking or continuing medical care, including treatment for their SUD. Study after study shows child removal is associated with parental overdose, mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and return to substance use. Public health-oriented policies that can result in better outcomes for families are part of the solution.

As an addiction specialist physician, I am involved with the medical care of pregnant people with SUD, and I have seen counterproductive child welfare and criminal investigations launched after a newborn infant tests positive for a controlled substance. Too often, parents become hopeless about recovery once their children are gone.

Current policies and practices related to substance use during pregnancy also result in serious health inequities. Pregnant and parenting people of color are much more likely to be impacted by forced separation than their white counterparts. Black parents are more likely than white parents to be reported for substance use to the child protection system at their child’s delivery despite similar rates of drug use, while Black and Native American children are overrepresented in foster care relative to white children in the setting of parental substance use.

Meanwhile, health outcomes are unnecessarily worse for mothers of color. Since 80% of maternal deaths are due to overdose or suicide, we can save lives with policies and practices that encourage treatment, not punish pregnant women with SUD for seeking it. Policymakers need to remove controlled substance reporting requirements that overreach and contribute to the current punitive approach.

The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) encourages child protective services agencies not to use evidence of substance use, alone, to sanction parents—especially with child removal; supports eliminating in-utero substance exposure language in child abuse and neglect statutes, and supports policies that extend social services benefits and financial support to families in need.

The US Senate will contemplate reauthorizing and reforming CAPTA this year. Health care professionals who treat pregnant people with medications for addiction, like methadone or buprenorphine for opioid use disorder, do not need to involve child protective services for that reason.

Recovery is possible with the right medical care and support. A pregnant person with addiction seeking medical care deserves a chance to heal and recover with her children. If we want pregnant and parenting people with addiction to access the evidence-based treatment they need, our decision-makers must embrace public health over punitive policies.

ADHD And Struggling

Design and Illustrations by Maya Chastain

I found much of this discussion helpful and so I am sharing it for today’s blog.

The original comment –

My 17 year old son adopted from foster care at 15, after 8 years in care. 2 failed adoptive placements before and he was living in residential treatment for 15 months before he transitioned to my home. He’s been with me for 2 years in total. He has not had contact with any biological family in 5+ years and did not have consistent care givers for the first 7 years of his life. He expresses hate towards his biological family and will not discuss with me.

He’s dealing with depression, anxiety, and ADHD. Although I believe the depression is very long term, today is the first day he has ever said it out loud. He had actively denied it previously. I also deal with depression and the sentiment he described of feeling like nothing even matters is something I’m very familiar with. He’s been let down so many times and I often tell him he’s had a very normal reaction to abnormal circumstances. He is so afraid to hope. He is in weekly therapy and working with psychiatrist. I feel like tonight him acknowledging his depression was a really big step forward. I am trying to help him navigate depression and be more hopeful. He is incredibly intelligent and capable and could really pursue so many opportunities and be well supported in whatever he chooses. He’s sabotaging himself instead. He is an older teenager navigating the transition to adulthood. Thank you for sharing any thoughts.

Response from an Adoptee with Depression and ADHD –

Just to translate some of what you’re saying here and how it may come across. You may not say these things out loud but “could really pursue so many opportunities and be well supported” tells me you probably imply these things:

“You could do so much more if you’d just apply yourself.”

*I’m never going to be good enough*

“Why are you struggling with something this basic”

*I’m stupid and can’t do basic things*

“You self-sabotage a lot”

*Push past burnout and ignore self-care*

My support network lets me move at my own pace. Also learning that I can’t brute force my way past ADHD by being “Intelligent” has helped.

No one really figures shit out until their 20s. Heck – I didn’t figure out anything until my 30s. Gen Z just has more pressure because you can’t live off the salary from an entry level job anymore.

The original commenter replied –

I definitely think this is something I’m struggling with and I appreciate your translation. I think what’s hard for me is that he is 17 but in many way operating as someone much younger. However he has the expectation the he be treated like every other 17 year old. We are fighting regularly because I won’t let him get a driver’s permit or I set structures around bedtime and Internet and he wants freedom. I’m very comfortable trying to meet him where he is and help him grow at whatever rate he grows. But he wants adult freedom and responsibility – he’s simply not ready for and it feels negligent on my part to just give him that because of his age. So I’m trying to help him set meaningful goals for himself, so that he can work towards the things he says he wants but it seems that his depression is a major barrier to working towards those goals.

I’m not rushing him to figure it out or trying to prescribe specific goals. I’m trying to support him in doing what he says he wants to do and having the freedom he wants to have. As a single parent, I’d love for him to have a driver’s license, just as much as he wants it. But how do I help him be ready for that, when the depression he’s experiencing seems to suck any motivation to do the work ?

Response from an Adoptee with Depression and ADHD –

Why can’t he have a learner’s, if you don’t mind me asking ?

People with ADHD (and often undiagnosed co-morbidities) struggle with being infantilized.

You’re talking about controlling bed time when ADHD can come with delayed circadian rhythm and insomnia.

Yes – ADHD often means you have issues keeping up with organizational skills, goal management, emotional regulation and peer relationships. That doesn’t mean you treat that person like a young child. In an environment where controlled exploration is allowed, you develop coping skills.

ADHD – ESPECIALLY as a teenager – means you’re fighting yourself for control of a brain that seems constantly against you. Emotions are hard to regulate. Your rewards system is fucked. Object permanence is a myth. Time is an abstract concept I’ve yet to grasp.

How can you expect a 17 year old to be motivated to control things that are hard and wield an intangible reward like “opportunities,” if he can’t have any control over what’s in front of him that matters.

“Opportunities” offers no tangible reward. My ADHD/PTSD/Depression brain looks at basic chores and goes, “I don’t get why that matters.”

I’m an adult. With therapy and support, I’ve found ways around that. But I also found it after I started having my own boundaries and stopped infantilizing myself.

Meaningful goals don’t work with ADHD. They just put things behind a glass wall you’ll never break. You get frustrated and give up easier.

You need to give him simple goals he can succeed at to build self confidence.

Don’t make freedom a “reward”. It breeds resentment. Work with him to set personal boundaries and schedules. Those won’t look like what works for a neurotypical.

I like “How to ADHD” for life hacks. I also really recommend Domestic Blisters but she’s more aimed at 20 somethings. Catieosaurus is great. She does talk about sexual health on occasion but nothing a 17 year old with Google hasn’t seen.

Always The Question

From The Huffington Post – I Was Adopted Before Roe v. Wade. I Wish My Mother Had Been Given A Choice by Andrea Ross.

“Would you rather have been aborted?” This is the question some people asked me when I publicly expressed horror at the June 24 overturning of Roe v. Wade.

This question is not only mean-spirited and presumptuous, it’s a logical fallacy. The notion that adopted people should not or cannot be pro-choice simply because we were born ignores the possibility that we can value being alive at the same time we value the right to make decisions about our bodies, our lives and our futures.

My birth mother was 18 years old and partway through her first year of college when she discovered she was pregnant. Her parents arranged for her to go away to a home for unwed mothers once she started showing. My birth mother had limited choices; abortion was illegal, so her options were to keep or to relinquish her baby. And maybe it wasn’t she who decided; perhaps her parents made that decision for her. Maybe she had no choice at all.

Either way, the right to choose to have an abortion has nothing to do with what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention crudely referred to in 2008 as the need to maintain a “domestic supply of infants” available for adoption, a notion that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito referred to in the opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade.

I was born in the home for unwed mothers, whisked away into foster care within a day, then adopted by yet another family three weeks later. I was shuffled between three families in my first three weeks of life.

The logic of the anti-choice, pro-adoption crowd is that I should be grateful for the fact I wasn’t aborted. After all, I didn’t languish in foster care for 18 years. And my birth mother got to finish college and pursue a career, to have kids when she was ready. It was a win-win, right?

Not by a long shot. Psychology research shows that women who relinquish their children frequently exhibit signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. And children who have been relinquished frequently develop relinquishment trauma ― a kind of trauma that “changes an individual’s brain chemistry and functioning … and can elevate adrenaline and cortisol and lower serotonin resulting in adoptees feeling hypervigilant, anxious, and depressed.”

What’s more, the institution of adoption denied me the right to know anything about my heritage, ethnicity or medical history. My birth certificate was whitewashed, amended to say I was born to my adoptive parents, in “Hospital,” delivered by “Doctor.” As a kid, I agonized over what I had done wrong, and worse, how as a baby, I could have been considered so intrinsically deficient as to be unworthy of being kept by my original parents. My life has been marked by self-doubt. I also have a constant and abiding fear of abandonment. I struggle with depression and anxiety. I’ve spent countless hours and many thousands of dollars on psychotherapy.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett argues that “safe haven” laws allowing women to relinquish parental rights after birth are adequate to relieve the burdens of parenthood discussed in Roe v. Wade, implying that providing a ready avenue for adoption substitutes for the need for safe and legal abortion. Her claim is also a logical fallacy. Adoption is not a substitute for choice.

I’m now past childbearing age, and I don’t have daughters, so the overturning of Roe v. Wade will not affect me directly. But I think of my beloved nieces and female students at the large university where I teach. I am furious that they no longer have the constitutional right to bodily sovereignty, and I’m terrified by the possibility their lives might change for the worse if they are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. I do have a young-adult son, and if he impregnated his partner, I would want them both to be able to decide which option made the most sense for them. The circumstances that dictated my birth have no bearing on their rights.

No, I don’t wish I had been aborted, but I do wish that all those years ago, my birth mother had possessed the right to make her own decisions about what to do with her own body, the same right we all deserve.

Is Infertility A Disability ?

Sunshine, Angel, Rainbow

This morning has been a learning experience for me. Infertility is a leading cause of adoption. One adoptee wrote – I find it hard to sympathize with infertility and I’m aware it’s because that was the only reason I was adopted by my adoptive parents. I’m angry because of the abuse I’ve suffered because of that issue. In the adoption community, women are counseled that they must deal with their mental and emotional issues related to infertility before choosing to adopt a child. An adopted child will never be a replacement for a baby you lost or failed to conceive. An adopted child was conceived and birthed by another woman who will always be that child’s first mother.

Is infertility a disability ? – turns out that legally it is.

In 1998, the US Supreme Court found in Bragdon v Abbott that reproduction is a “major life activity.” And the Court held that the risks of passing the disease to offspring constituted a “substantial limitation” on reproduction. Consequently, infertility met the ADA’s criteria as a disability.

According to the World Health Organization – Infertility has significant negative social impacts on the lives of infertile couples and particularly women, who frequently experience violence, divorce, social stigma, emotional stress, depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. A diagnosis of infertility is determined as the inability to get pregnant after a year or more of trying. Infertility can trigger feelings of shame and a sense of failing to live up to traditional gender expectations. Infertility can strain romantic relationships that included the expectation of shared parenthood. (We watched the 2020 movie Ammonite last night which dramatizes that strain.)

The National Institutes of Health notes that – infertility could be a source of social and psychological suffering for women in particular. In some communities, the childbearing inability is only attributed to women, hence there is a gender related bias when it comes to a couple’s infertility.

Psychologists also must understand that infertility is a kind of trauma, often a complex trauma. Anxiety, depression, grief and loss are part of the psychological impact of infertility. There may even be more to the experience when defined by the individual. At the extreme, the process can be so stressful that a woman who undergoes fertility treatments may develop a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

While defining infertility as a disability may have legal and medical applications, most women do not see their infertility as a disability. When I experienced secondary infertility, I never thought of myself as disabled. I simply had reached an age where my own fertility (I gave birth to a daughter at 19 and had a pregnancy aborted at age 22 or 23) naturally had ended. While it did make me sad that my husband now desired fatherhood after I was too old to gift him with that, I still did not think of myself as disabled. Women in my adoption community who have experienced infertility do not consider themselves disabled either.

Part of my learning experience today was learning about all the “baby” symbolic concepts that I didn’t know before. Angel baby always was understood by my heart. I find it interesting that a mom’s group that I have been part of for over 18 years initially gave our group the name Sunshine Babies because our babies were all born between April and August. Later, we simply changed that to Sunshine Moms. We knew nothing of the use of such words when we chose that concept as our group symbol. We never knew that word “sunshine” had a larger meaning outside of our group.. We all conceived via assisted reproduction. Therefore, a sunshine baby can have different meanings for different families.

My own daughter experienced a still birth prior to giving birth to my grandson and later my granddaughter. It was a sad and traumatic event to be certain. The terms acknowledge the complexity of pregnancy and infant loss as well as any pregnancies that follow such a loss. For those as clueless as I was before this morning – here are some commonly used phrases related to pregnancy outcomes.

The term rainbow baby refers to a baby born to a family after a miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death. The concept of a rainbow baby relates to the concept of a beautiful rainbow appearing after a turbulent storm. The concept symbolizes hope and healing. I always have loved rainbows. After every storm there is a rainbow. A rainbow baby brings an unimaginable amount of joy and a sense of peace, knowing that you now have a beautiful, precious little baby.

The sunshine symbol is often used to refer to calm moments before a storm. Therefore, a sunshine baby is the child who was born before you encountered a loss. Your loss could be the result of a miscarriage which is defined as the loss of a pregnancy in the first 20 to 24 weeks. A sunshine baby represents hope. Their presence allows you to believe that you can conceive a baby successfully. Your sunshine baby is a reminder that you are fully capable of maintaining a pregnancy and delivering a healthy baby.

There are even more terms as well – a Golden baby: a baby born after a rainbow baby, a Sunset baby: a twin who dies in the womb (I did experience a “vanishing” twin in my first son’s pregnancy), a Sunrise baby: the surviving twin of a baby who dies in the womb.

If you have a biological child, you are simply lucky. Some people will never have that chance or will have had the opportunity to parent taken away from them by miscarriage or infant death. When an intractable infertility may become an awareness after a first pregnancy results in a loss. Some women will mourn that loss all the more, realizing that they will never, ever experience having a child of their own genetic biology. This can be extended as well to a birth mother who loses her child to adoption for whatever reason, especially if that mother never experiences a reunion with her child (as happened to both my maternal and paternal original grandmothers).

The truth is, when you lose a baby from any cause, you develop a permanent psychological scar. In some women, it is difficult to imagine that they will ever have another baby. Losing a baby can change a person’s dreams and hopes of any future that includes being a parent. Some people will tell you that you should just “get over it.” This is not helpful advice to extend to a bereaved parent. The overwhelming feelings experienced following a loss are normal. Usually with grief and sorrow, the intensity does lessen as time passes.