What Really Happens

Upper pic – the minute he was recovered.
The lower pic – Mom is settled and her son latched without an issue!
He knows and missed his MOM!

From LINK>Saving Our Sisters – Here’s the Houston update!!!

Baby was successfully recovered yesterday afternoon and is home in his Momma’s arms, where he is intended to be. Like majority of our other cases, there are MANY things that are wrong with this case.

I won’t lay out everything – but – there is A LOT that is BAD about this case. The most sickening thing is – they wouldn’t allow her to see her baby while in the hospital – even after she asked. She was all alone in her room while the prospective adoptive couple had their own room in this hospital and had her infant with them. Think about the cruelty of this and the impact on this Mom and her innocent baby. Mom wrote she felt ‘as if she was being punished’.

Being a holiday (Memorial Day) – other than to ask Mom to get together to ‘sign the rest of the paperwork’ (i.e. consent) in the morning – the adoption agency owner/director was NON-responsive – when Mom formally requested in writing, signed copies of any and all paperwork. She had no idea what she signed – and here’s why…..

Mom discovered only what she signed, after we told her to go in and review her medical chart. Ready for this?????? Just 3 HOURS & 59 MINUTES after having a Caesarean, a licensed hospital social worker documented Mom signing an “Authorization for Release of Newborn” It was signed and notarized with the original to be given to the “medical team”. This form authorized the hospital to give the infant to the prospective adoptive parents. Mom hardly remembers signing it and was only reminded of having signed something, by reviewing her chart. There was no copy of the paperwork she signed in her chart, even though the note referenced it would be.

Finally, after being ignored Monday, a response came in via text from the adoption agency owner/director Tuesday stating “I didn’t have you sign anything, that was the hospital.” Mom then responded with a clear and concise revocation of any consents that that may have been granted, demanded the immediate return of her son and that she has the resources she needs to not have to be unnecessarily separated from her son.

It is always agonizing waiting for the confirmation and acknowledgement of the revocation. We never know how they are going to react and if, they are going to agree to return the baby. One thing ALWAYS rings true……They never want to follow directions to reply to Mom ONLY IN WRITING. They ALWAYS call her or begin to text her and ask her to call them. This is just another way to put pressure on the Mom. The agency owner/director did (in a roundabout way) acknowledge the Mom’s revocation. She didn’t provide any response about the place or time the Mom’s son would be returned – so we were still on pins and needles waiting to figure out what they were going to do.

Finally a text comes in with an address and “You can come pick him up at this address”. It is puzzling how the prospective adoptive parents didn’t have a car or car seat to transport her son and this Mom, who just had a C-section, was expected to “figure it out” and pick up her son – after the agency owner/director had offered to “get Mom an Uber home,” when she was discharged.

Then Mom gets a puzzling text “I just left there to find you”…. (What? She was told she could pick him up at this address.) Then “What time will you be here?” Then “Do you want to rework an open adoption agreement etc with them?” She restates her revocation and confirms she will be at the address shortly.

They arrive, recovery happens – after some questioning about the paperwork Mom had them sign. For example: “Why there were so many copies?” – so EVERYONE got a copy.
“Why is there was paperwork at all ?” – so Mom can correct the birth certificate – because they had already named him – and vital records will need documentation that she now has her own son.

Our Sister On The Ground handled the exchanges beautifully and with tact. Thank you Faith, for answering the call, thank you to your family for allowing you to give us your time to help this Mom recover her sweet baby, shop for her, capturing the ‘firsts’ of bringing baby home and staying with Mom, setting up the bassinet, washing the new baby items and getting Mom bonding with her son! You are amazing! ❤

The activity described here HAS TO STOP. Everyone is vulnerable in this situation, but especially the Mom, who had NO ONE advocating for her! Pre-birth matching is COERCIVE. Prospective adoptive parents in the hospital is COERCIVE. Licensed social workers having a Mom, just hours after major surgery who is clearly under the influence of heavy drugs, sign legal documents is UNETHICAL, IRRESPONSIBLE, ILLEGAL and a violation of her patient bill of rights and I’m sure there has got to be a violation of the social worker’s responsibilities and oath she took to be granted a license.

We had 20 volunteers register to be a Sister On The Ground in the last 3 days. Believe me when I tell you – this work is all worth it. When you see that Mom in total relief and overcome with emotions, when her baby is back in her arms, and you see her baby so content and becoming connected with their siblings, a baby that will never know what being separated unnecessarily is like – it is worth all the stress, pins and needles and hurry up and wait emotions that we all go through during these recoveries.

Thank you to our long time supporters and brand new ones who have recently found us and learned about what we do. Moms who have lost children to adoption, adopted persons, adoptive/foster parents who believe family preservation is best – we need everyone working towards the same goal – preserving families !

Why It Happens

Birthmom here – I am looking for a little encouragement from anyone who has experienced open adoption and that had a good experience. I unfortunately did not join any groups like this one where adoptee voices are prioritized while pregnant and did move forward with the adoption, and I grieve every single day.

I had a small handful of friends encourage me to keep my baby with me, but the majority of friends and family told me that they thought adoption was the right thing to do and that I was making a good choice. It sounded nice, but it was so hurtful to feel like I wasn’t good enough for my baby. And I love him so much, I didn’t want to make a “selfish” choice and keep him with me when there was another family that would be better for him.

Now that I read all of these posts from mature adoptees and I’m heartbroken that I didn’t believe in myself and that I gave him away. When I was pregnant and in financial hardship, feeling alone and emotional – I only wanted to do the right thing. And I felt so little confidence in myself, and hearing those other voices saying that “adoption is love” and “adoption is selfless”, made me feel like I’d be selfish for wanting to keep my baby because I’d put him into a life of struggle and financial insecurity.

So I broke my own heart and put myself last. I live with a deep pain and a regret that will last the rest of my days. I love my mom, and I’ve told her how hurtful it was when I was pregnant to hear her tell me that she thought I did the right thing by choosing adoption. She says she would have supported me either way – but I know that if I kept my baby with me, it would have been with minimal support to prove her point – that I am not enough and to punish me for getting pregnant when I couldn’t support myself and my 17 year old son.

My 17 year old (who was 15 during the time I was pregnant) encouraged me to go through with adoption because he said that life was hard with it being just the 2 of us. And that the baby deserved more and deserved to have both a mom and a dad. Having my son tell me these things was also hurtful because I feel like I’m a great mom to him, but if he thinks these things, then he added on to those feelings like I wasn’t good enough.

My baby is now 10 months old and we have an open adoption. I’m hoping that he grows up feeling loved and secure. I have a great relationship with his adoptive parents and I really love who and how they are, but I do miss him everyday. I can’t change the past or the decision I made, though I wish I could. My true wish is that he was still with me. I wish I stumbled across a group like this one before I made that permanent decision. But I didn’t. The only thing I can do now is move forward with life as it is and hope that everything will turn out ok.

Generational Trauma

I became aware of generational trauma (inherited trauma) as I began to learn about the impacts of adoption on the adoptee as well as on members of their family. Both of my parents were adopted and I do believe that the trauma they were either only vaguely aware of or totally unconscious of did impact us as their children. As to spanking, I remember my mom said she stopped spanking me when she dreamed she was hitting me harder and harder and I was laughing at her. Thanking all that is good. I only spanked my daughter once, in a grocery store, she was very young and it was just a light slap on her little hiney to get her attention. At the time, I had been told that punishment must come close to the action that provokes it but I never spanked her again.

Today, I read this piece in my adoption group –

My parents beat me as a child and I am not traumatized, said the man whose ex-partner reported him for physical violence.

When I was a child they left me crying alone until I fell asleep and it was so bad I did not go out, said the man who spends long hours in social networks, affecting his sleep.

They punished me as a child and I’m fine, said the man who, every time he makes a mistake, says to himself words of contempt, as a form of self-punishment.

As a child, they put a heavy hand on me and I suffer from a trauma called ‘education’, said the woman who still does not understand why all of her partners end up being aggressive.

When I became capricious as a child, my father locked me in a room alone to learn and today I appreciate it, said the woman who has suffered anxiety attacks and can not explain why she is so afraid of being locked in small spaces .

My parents told me they were going to leave me alone or give me to a stranger when I did my tantrums and I do not have traumas, said the woman who has prayed for love and has forgiven repeated infidelities so as not to feel abandoned.

My parents controlled me with just the look and see how well I came out, said the woman who can not maintain eye contact with figures of ‘authority’ without feeling intimidated.

As a child, I got even with the iron cable and today I am a good man, even professional, said the man who his neighbors have accused him of hitting objects while drunk and yelling at his wife.

My parents forced me to study a career that would make me money, and see how well off I am, said the man who dreams of Friday every day because he is desperate in his work doing something every day that is not what he always wanted.

When I was little they forced me to sit down until all the food was finished and they even force fed me, not like those permissive parents, affirmed the woman who does not understand why she could not have a healthy relationship with food and in her adolescence came to develop an eating disorder.

My mother taught me to respect her good chancletazos (Spanish meaning strike with a sandal) to the point, said the woman who smokes 5 cigarettes a day to control her anxiety.

I thank my mom and my dad for every blow and every punishment, because, if not, who knows what would happen to me, said the man who has never been able to have a healthy relationship, and whose son constantly lies to him because he has fear.

And so we go through life, listening to people claiming to be good people without trauma, but paradoxically, in a society full of violence and wounded people. It’s time to break generational trauma cycles.

~ David Bradbury, from A little Hippie, A little Hood

Not Always Sunshine and Rainbows

From a foster youth’s perspective –

Hello all! I’m a 22 year old female that started my journey in foster care at the tender age of 4 years old. My parents were addicts which seems to be the case for most kids in care. Most children are set up to fail and they assume where they may end up will be much better then where they come from and thus sadly wasn’t my truth.

I luckily only ended up in two foster homes but one became long term until I was essentially kicked out at 17 because my foster mother no longer was getting benefits for me.. she will not admit that but it’s the truth.

She took in me and my bio brother, she had two golden children of her own and always made it a point at any given time to segregate us. Her children could do no wrong and me and my bio brother often got the brunt of things. Punishments often included cold showers, forced to eat food we didn’t like, public humiliation, physical and emotional abuse.. I remember a lot of name calling, threatening behaviors and often time ignoring my need for love and attention. I was often berated over my weight even though now looking back I was an average child along with my brother.

I was told around 9-10 that they would love to adopt us and make us “part of the family” only to turn around a week later and say “we decided we won’t be adopting you because the financial burden would be to much and we get money for you now”.

That always weighed heavy on my heart as a child, I felt like a pay check to them and never truly wanted.

Fast forward to my teens I began to search for my bio parents, with a failed attempt on bio moms side.. but found my father and started building a decent relationship.. it strange how I felt an instant connection even though I hadn’t seen him since I was 6-7. He passed away this past November and we were finally at a peaceful place in our relationship and I’m now dealing with another wave of grief and abandonment even though this time I know it’s not by choice.

My bio mother still remains a mystery to me that I hope some day I can figure out and fill that empty place in my heart. I just wanted to write this to let people know adoption and foster care is not always the sunshine and rainbows you see on tv and often times can leave children with scars that last way into adulthood.

Please protect us, protect the little girl I was, protect us at all cost and try to understand our hurt.

It Is NOT God’s Plan

Many Christian couples who struggle with infertility begin to believe somehow that this signals God’s desire that they adopt someone else’s newborn baby. This baby is not a blank slate. Newborn or infant adoption is not mostly trauma-free simply because this human being is pre-verbal.

I don’t believe for a minute that God is deliberately punishing you by causing you to become pregnant under difficult circumstances only to hand your baby over to complete strangers and then more or less throw you away (forget you ever existed or mattered).

What is actually selfish ? Saying that giving a child up for adoption is the most selfless thing someone can do is flawed logic. Does that mean biological mothers who keep their infants are selfish for keeping them ? It is selfish not to give your precious baby to the more privileged minority of people who have much better financial resources to parent with ? If that logic were true, then all biological parents would give their children to someone else to parent, since it is selfless towards the child to keep them when someone else has greater resources.

Using God to take away someone else’s baby is exploiting a vulnerable person and trying to use any belief in God they might have to coerce them to YOUR will. This is not God’s will, this is you trying to use God for your own purposes.

I will never be able to get behind the idea that God got the wombs mixed up when he gave a baby to their mother. God didn’t give a little baby to one mother for her and her baby to go through the rest of their lives with trauma simply to “heal the infertile wounds” of another couple.

It just doesn’t work that way but Christian couples are very prone to use their religion to justify taking a baby away from a vulnerable mother.

Stress Responses

Some adoptive parents mistake their adopted child’s compliance with the situation as a good outcome adjustment. What I have learned from adoptees that there is an even more intense reaction that is called fawning. Think of the kidnap victim that eventually identifies with their captors – like Patty Hearst did.

Every adoptee is an individual and each responds differently to the circumstances of their relinquishment and their placement in a new home.

Fawning is best understood as “people-pleasing.” Both of my parents were adoptees and I saw this kind of behavior in my mom and learned it from her. This kind of behavior can endear one to other people but it is not always healthy to be this way.

People with the fawn response are so accommodating of other people’s needs that they often find themselves in codependent relationships. Fortunately, when that has happened to me, I’ve found a way out – even if it took some time to get there.

Fawn types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others. They act as if they unconsciously believe that the price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences and boundaries. It takes some maturity to take one’s power back.

Sadly, fawn types are more vulnerable to emotional abuse and exploitation. Abusers may suppress a survivor’s fight or flight responses by threatening punishment. The appease response, also known as ‘please’ or ‘fawn’, is a survival response which occurs [when] survivors read danger signals and aim to comply and minimize the confrontation in an attempt to protect themselves. I’ve been there, done that and I’ve seen my mom do likewise.

If you are an adoption survivor (adoption is definitely a form of trauma to a child), you are not alone in using this for safety. There is no shame in struggling with fawning. Fawning, like the other stress responses, is a self-protective armor. It has helped many adoption survivors live through being placed in a family that does not fit their nature naturally.