Societal Challenges

Today’s story – I’m a trans man, I gave birth to my daughter, I am her father. she was taken away from me and my partner at 6 weeks and put in temporary placement with my parents. She’s now 8 months old.

A few things, questions, concerns –

1. We are expecting my daughter to come home to us. We are in a transitional period now. Our trial is on the 21st, I’ve been told over and over there’s no way anyone will dispute her coming home, but I am so worried.

2. My mom wants to throw us a baby shower/celebration of our daughter coming home. It would be a reason for family to come together to support us as well as buy us gifts. This gives me anxiety, but I’m not sure why.

3. My partner feels this…disconnect from our daughter. (She is a trans woman) She feels that one baby was taken away, and another is being given back. I worry about this so much. How can I support her in this? Is this normal?

4. Through this whole experience, I want to help others in the future, when we are much more settled. Including the kids and the parents who are experiencing this and worse. I truly have no idea how to start this. Does anyone have any suggestions?

5. Does anyone know much about supervision orders?

Some thoughts in response.

From an adoptee regarding point #3 – They may feel this way because of the lost bonding time with the child in between. Did either of you have occasion to visit with the child while they were in temporary placement? It may help to fill the gap if you can view photographs and videos of the child from that missing period. However there may still be some cognitive dissonance there, and it will just be a matter of time and reforming your bonds. Therapy may also be very helpful here.

One adoptee with experience in foster care and also as a kinship parent writes – Trauma. That’s the answer to all of the above. That’s why you’re worried about it being snatched away. That’s why you feel uncomfortable accepting gifts or planning in advance. It’s also probably a lot of the reason your partner feels disconnected. Therapy. Therapy for you both individually, therapy together.. if possible. Things may change once the baby is back but it feels important to keep an eye on it because it is common to have attachment issues. I would recommend looking for a good therapist that specializes in reunification if possible, they may offer a sliding scale pricing. Communicate, communicate, communicate. It WILL rock your world adjusting to an 8 month old baby in the home. The sleep deprivation alone is a lot. I would take it a day at a time, as if the baby is a newborn again, and understand it won’t all be perfect at the beginning. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean that you are not the best place for your baby. Plus regarding point # 4 – You can mentor others who are going or have been through this! You will have so much wisdom to share.

Another person has had similar experiences as a trans man – This could not help but create disruption. I had my kids removed briefly when they were toddlers (not from neglect or anything similar). He shares the reason – A family member of my ex, a trans woman, had concerns because we were both trans people and they thought it might “affect” the children. The children came back soon after, but it changed the way I parent. I was scared to let them go anywhere. While out of our care, they had cut my older son’s long hair (he loved it long and he told us they made him cut it). The boys both had nightmares that they’d be taken, etc. So, maybe your anxiety is from the fact that the people who took your kids, might be like the people in a crowd that you don’t know. He adds – offering support looks different in each situation. I guess something trans specific that I could share that some people don’t know is that you might have to adopt your own biological children to have normal rights. Just having your name on a birth certificate might not be enough, even if you’re the biological parent.

The issues are not so unusual these days, here is another one’s experience talking – my wife and I are both trans, and we were caregivers for a chosen family member’s child for a bit. We all had a terrible time, from people constantly mis-gendering us frequently, hurting the child in the process (like a random cashier that would say “your mom is so cool to be buying you xyz”), to some people being unable to fully hide their opinions about us or the chosen family solo parent or the child, all of us who were some flavor of trans/queer and mostly people of color. It’s absolutely trauma because people really are out there thinking we cannot be good parents or trusted caregivers, as if it’s not difficult enough already to navigate how our identities impact our parenting and how people treat our children differently. so much therapy for everyone. Because our kinship placement isn’t your side of this, but because we were also helping the kid’s adult, it gave us a perspective on what others might do to harm us… we lawyered up to double check our own estate planning for our kids and documents for the transphobia side of things (like having all vital records match everyone’s correct names/gender and having an official declaration of our parentage for our children, at least). Lastly maybe you and especially your wife might want to check out peer support groups for trans parents, there may be more community there than you might realize.

A mother of loss shares – I understand what your partner is saying with they took one baby away and gave another one back. A whole lot happens during that first eight months and it is a different baby coming back. It is important to grieve the baby that left and it’s normal to have to bond when the baby comes back. With the baby shower could there be some underlying embarrassment that they baby got taken? I had that with my family when I relinquished my baby. It is probably going to be an adjustment for sure and definitely going to be some anxiety. Therapy will help but communication and transparency between you and your partner is crucial at the end of the day you two are the only people that know what the situation feels like and are in it together. Really lean on one another.

What Would Help ?

A question was asked – what would have helped you to parent? I’ve seen statistics that a very small financial amount was the barrier that kept most women who chose adoption from parenting. As I look around my community at single mothers, though, it seems that their struggle is more a concern of being able to coordinate a combination of a job, a budget and childcare.

Some responses –

Money. Assuming the same lack of family support that caused the coerced adoption, having my own financial security would have meant them never even having a chance to suggest. much less force it. Asked to elaborate, she added – they could have been financially supportive or even emotionally supportive but both families (the father’s and mine) chose not to; my parents basically abdicated. That had always been the case. His family, though well off enough to help a young family get established, instead chose to coerce me into adoption to protect their precious baby boy’s future.

blogger’s note – it is true that it is often the parents, even adoptee parents like my own who coerced my sister into giving up her baby. Truly, in their heart of hearts, they believe this is best – not for the baby – but for their own children. They don’t know that baby yet.

Another one shared – For me, it was lack of “support system” and with that, childcare. 1) I can’t afford childcare since I only work part time and 2) my hours are “outside” the “daycare hours”, so finding daycare, even if I was given the “financial stability” (aka, “paid”) to do so, I still would have the barrier to actually find a daycare that would offer services after 3/4/5 pm when I could drop them off until 8/9/10 pm when I could come pick them up. I live in a fairly small town (pop. 10,000 ish). Everything is limited here. Most of the stores/shops even close around 5/6 pm, but I’m one of many that work at one of 2 places that either close at 12 am (major chain grocery store) or never close (tribal casino).

The one who first asked the question wanted to know – so if you had had a “grandparent” that would care for your child just for the sake of spending time with them, or a babysitting co-op where you watch someone’s child 5 days a week, while she works her 7-2 shift, in exchange for her watching your child 5 days a week while you work your 3-10, that would have made an actual difference, in whether or not you felt equipped to parent ? (No response yet, at the time of writing this blog.)

In first researching for this blog at sources not limited to adoption issues, I read two that discuss the challenges or myths about single moms. Without a doubt, an unwed mother considering parenting her unborn child, will have encountered similar arguments about trying to give it a go.

[1] LINK>Your Tango – a single mom shared that she was battling a litany of problems that will likely sound very familiar to most single moms out there, from a punishing schedule to a lack of space for self-care and sleep deprivation. At just 26, she was struggling. “I work full time, clean, cook, grocery shop, take care of the kids, etc. all on my own,” she wrote. “I have no time for myself and what little time I do I have I try to spend it with the kids.”

[2] LINK>Slate – 4 long-standing myths about single mothers. The article elaborates on each but here are the 4 – Myth 1: You can’t generalize about single mothers Myth 2: Single mothers get pregnant by men with whom they have casual sex Myth 3: Single mothers get pregnant because they were ignorant about, couldn’t afford, or didn’t have access to birth control. Myth 4: If unmarried couples would just get married, they would be a lot better off.

Post Adoption Depression

Yes, it is a thing. I believe it is partly caused by unrealistic expectations. Fantasy and reality have collided. The difference between those expectations and reality create a very real stress and may even lead to depression.

It is a crash in the “high” of adopting (basically the excitement is over), the dopamine is no longer being released. The sad fact is that the adoptive parent finds they still have the same emptiness troubling them that drove them to adopt to begin with.

Life had been a flurry of emotions during the adoption journey: hope, relief, frustration, waiting, excitement, and not to mention adding another person to one’s family. Not having the hormone fluctuations related to birth does not mean that the adoptive parent won’t have their own share of emotional fluctuation.

Of course, new parents of both genders have emotional reactions to 1) sleep deprivation 2) new roles and 3) reconfiguration of daily life, but having this is not the same as hormone induced postpartum depression that a delivering mother experiences.

So, with a newborn, sleep deprivation can certainly be a factor. If an older child was adopted, then the reality of a traumatized child may be very different than the idealistic vision hopeful adoptive parents expected.

An adoptive parent may even grieve for the child who is now in their own home, who they may love desperately, only to find that child dreams of his original mother coming back to reclaim him. An adoptive mother can never replace the original one.

So a couple does CHOOSE to adopt. If those circumstances turn out to be hard to live, like any biological parent, they need to deal directly with it. If it’s all NOT what the adoptive parents expected, they should seek help and learn to deal with the reality. That’s parenting and adoptive parents have signed up for it voluntarily.

Depression sucks regardless of what it’s caused by. Affected parents need to seek help, see a trauma informed therapist, seek out specific resources, get on anti depressants if necessary – but NEVER just throw away a child.