Crazy and Too Old ?

A personal story in The Huffington Post got my attention this morning – LINK>I Never Wanted Children. Then I Got Pregnant With Twins At 53 by Anne Bockman Hansen. The link mentions “advanced maternal age”. I’m totally familiar with that !! I conceived my oldest son at 47 and my youngest son at 50. When we told my dad we were going to try and conceive the older one, he said “I question your sanity.” And I do understand but really we have been fine being older parents. Occasionally, it has been suggested I am my sons “grandmother”. I also have a grown daughter and 2 grandchildren, so I can easily and honestly say, “I understand why you would think that because I AM a grandmother.”

We knew we didn’t want multiples and so, because we had to use assisted reproduction, it was always a possibility. We relied on the experts’ advice on how many embryos to transfer with a good potential for success, without trending into a greater likelihood for twins, and it gave us the single births we preferred. Many of the mothers who cycled along with me at the same time did have twins and even one had triplets – they were all happy with their results and somehow managed the challenges. Glad it was NOT my own challenge. Having a baby and then toddler in one’s life is challenging enough for me !!

Anne Hansen shares – “Still, the thought of having children did not interest me until I was 52 and had taken time away from my job to re-evaluate what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. When I finally knew that I wanted to do it, the realization hit me with incredible force. I felt certain that I wanted to raise kids — and raise them the way I wished I had been raised. I wanted to bring them up with unconditional love, compassion, a love for learning, a sense of adventure and amazement at the miraculous small things in life.” blogger’s note – Sounds like what happened with my husband after we had been married 10 years.

And even before I had learned all of the issues I share in this blog, I also knew that, as the author says – “. . . I wanted to carry them. I never considered surrogacy or adoption.” and that “I was not ovulating,” plus she shares yet another complication – her 58-year-old husband had a vasectomy in his 30s. blogger’s note – in our case, my husband was able to provide his own sperm and I love seeing how some of his traits have turned up in our sons and that he can be a genetic mirror for them.

Yet, when they saw a reproductive endocrinologist, he told them that sperm could still be retrieved from her husband. Like what happened to me when my husband decided he wanted to have children after all (he had been grateful, I had already done that in my own life, no pressure on him), she was told that she could still get pregnant using an egg donor. For me as well, that was a major breakthrough.

And she mentions the “age related” comments, which I have heard as well. She says – “A member of my church said, ‘A lot of people will think you are selfish for bringing children into this world at your age’.” My perspective is – no one knows how long their parents will continue to be alive while they are maturing – I know many examples where parents died young. Though I remember clearly one day, while checking out groceries, realizing that when my youngest turned 20, I would be 70 – oh my. That day arrived this year.

The same as what the author shares, “My pregnancy was a breeze. I felt the best I had ever felt.” I loved being pregnant. And yes from me too – “the babies were precious and I felt so blessed to have them. The love I had for them was beyond measure.” Ours also changed our lives in so many beautiful ways. Our lives became immensely richer. We have never regretted our decision to become parents, even at our “advanced” ages.

Of course, she had the same experiences that I have had. She shares, “Invariably, everywhere we went, people would think I was their grandmother. Sometimes I corrected them and they were embarrassed and surprised, but many times I just let it go. It didn’t bother me and, incredibly, it didn’t bother the kids. It still doesn’t.”

She follows up at the end with this thought – “I’m now 67 years old with a 73-year-old husband. Despite the difficult and amazing journey we’ve been on — and despite my worries that we could be gone before the twins reach adulthood — I would not have done anything differently. Parents at any age can and do get sick and leave their kids parentless, but not many parents have the free time to devote to their children as we have had and do.”

Regardless Of How

Whether you sought out adoption or it dropped in your lap, you STILL adopted and that makes you complicit in separating a family.

Stop using phrases like:

We didn’t know better
We didn’t buy a baby, the baby was offered to us
The birthmother decided, not us

After your initial involvement, if your first thought everyday when you woke up or every night when you went to sleep or every moment in between, was that a mother was separated from her child or vice versa, and that it was a heart wrenching thing that should never happen – guess what, you are still complicit. It does not matter what the natural mother said to you or her family or anyone else involved said that caused it to happen. The simple FACT is that anyone separating these 2 people, that only knew each other throughout the pregnancy, is NOT NORMAL. You honestly should have known that instinctively. If you didn’t, that is on you for not looking deeper before doing it. And if you did research it but pushed it down, you are selfish.

An adoptee writes – Know what my adoptive mom always said to me ? “I had 3 boys and I wanted a girl.” She makes no apologies. It’s selfish AF and she knows it. She fully admits how selfish she was. Times were different then. People truly did not know about adoption trauma. It matters not to her though. She knows she should have known – because logically, it makes perfect sense that a mother and child should not be separated. She fully admits she was thinking only of herself and not of my natural mom. At the very least, as selfish as that is, at least she owns it all without BS excuses.

They Just Won’t Stop

Today’s story describes what some expectant mothers go through after they decide to keep and parent their baby –

What can I do to make the guilt of keeping my baby go away? I’m not in a position to keep her really but I am going to anyways. The hopeful adoptive parents have called me selfish, and have made it clear they’ll do whatever they have to do to get my baby away from me.

I’ve already dealt with a wellness check as well as Div of Children and Families/Child Protective Services/Dept of Social Services workers coming to my home after a call to them from the hopeful adoptive parents. In the report, they said they’re worried about my unborn baby’s well being and that they know she isn’t safe with me.

I’ve sent letters formally withdrawing all consent for medical releases and stating I’m choosing to parent.

But they wont stop. They have gotten me so low, I feel like I’m ruining my baby’s life. I’m close to just saying “fine, take her”, only to make them stop. It’s overwhelming. They never stop, it’s emails, calls, voicemails, texts – all stating that I need to rethink what I’m doing.

They said they’re willing to do an open adoption, but I know they’re only saying what I want to hear. blogger’s note – the reality is that most “open adoptions” eventually fail to honor the agreements that adoptive parents will make simply to coerce the mother to let them have her baby.

This is too much.

A Lifetime Of Regret

The Maiden of Sorrow painting by Tyler Robbins

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.