Things that bite:

I have been having a very detailed online and private discussion with an adult adoptee about regarding, amoung other things, whether or not using hindsite to battle the "If Onlys" is a accuate and realitic way for a mother of loss to look back on her experience. Part of the discussion kind of revolves around IF a woman does not have the resources to parent the first child..then how does she manage, very soon after, to parent a second under similar circumatances...like how does she find the way this time, and why could she not have done it before. Part of my answer is because the secong time around she KNOWS what adoption is all about. She is not having her own doubts get all mixed up with the "adoption is a great solution" becasue she has lived it. Which prompts this post... The little things that adoption eats away at every day..... Medical history....you go to the doctor. The doctor asks your preganacy history..and you are compelled to explain your pregancy and WHY you don't have the child in your life. Usually ending up feeling somewhat ashamed and sheepish as a result. Even if the doctor ( or nurse) manages to not have foot in mouth disease and say something stupid...you wonder.."what do they think of me now?" Multiple this about 18 times IF you are expereincing another preganancy....you tell the doctors, the OB nurses, maybe the sonogram tech. In the midst of what should be a joyous experience...you are made to be reminded..you did it "wrong" the first time. Anytime anyone asks do you have children: Whether the adoption of your only child, your first, your last, whatever...internally you have that conflict...do you lie or tell the truth? Do I say four or keep it simple and say three? And if I say thre...what do I do with the voice inside me that screams FOUR! If I say four...what if they ask more questions? Do I want to go there? Do I want to hear their views on adoption? Everytime you hear the word adoption spoken at a party or gathering? Maybe you don;t want to "tell" but your ears prick up, you get the sinking feeling in your stomach. GOd, forbid they are saying just uneducated things..or worst maligning the very existance of yourself. Bad natural mother sterotypes are being flung about...do you stand up for yourself.a dn speak th truth? Do you petend to just be really "PC" and not invoved yourself? Or do you just slink away, shaking inside and mad at yourself for being chicken? Your parented child says "I wish I had a big brother or sister" and you just die inside. Or worse, they know of their other sibling..and want to see them..and you can't make that happen. Or as my daughter said to me this week "Will you give me away?" Makes you want a gun to just shoot yourself. Someone assumes that you never had a child and say something discredditing your thoughts becasue "what do you know...you never were pregnant!" Assume internal debate. Or once you have had a visable child and you gain true addmittance into the "Mommy's Club"...do you speak of the early attempt? Those labor and delivery stories...internally you compare, but do you outloud? All bets are off during Mother's Day season. Will you be acknowledged and by whom? Will it be enough or salt on a wound? More internal screaming "I am a mother too!!" and will someone be quick to tell you that you are not as you are not kissing boo boos and wiping butts? The news, the media, the TV, movies....can you hear adoption in everything? Do you become an adoption magnet? And what of every regualar birth and baby scene in any Joe flick or TV show? I use to bawl uncontrollable at EVERY birth scene...so much so that a weak "well it is so beautiful.." would make any witness of my emotional reaction really wonder if my medication as off. Repeat to tell or not to tell conflict..just let them think you are wacky..or give the history? What if you MUST avoid all that like a plaugue for you own survival? Imagine dating a new great guy...out at the movies with his friends..and BOOM..trigger screne!! Do you get up and walk away? Allow the emotional reaction? Beg for it all to be turned off immediatly? What happens when you have a chance meeting with his sister and the new baby at the mall..and you are thrust at the small child? How far will "Oh no..I am not comfortable with small children" get you especially when the look of panic is in your eyes? Then we have the birthday month. I don't know ONE natural mom who does not have issues with birthday time. The Poster board girls for adoption agancies who tout how wonderful adoptin is? They get weepy. The moms who have 40 years behind them...weep some more. Can we not hibrnate for a month? Crawl in our hole and cry alone for the week of? How to explain to the rest of the world..be nice to me, will cry without any warning, please ignore me this week..I am useless. Then there are those incredibly astute human beings..they just look at you and they can see it in your eyes. They know something is there..something more than you claim. And they poke, ever so gently...kindly..why are you eyes so sad all the time..what has happened to you? These things one cannot imagine really happening when one considers surrendering a child for adoption. The birth, the pregnacy, the adoption is filling up your field of view. And you thnk if I can just get though THIS..then I will be OK. But these things, these little things, that happen on and on, for years, for life..continue to whittel away at who your are, make you wonder who is judging you, make you discredit yourself and your child, make you lie. No one warns you that that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach and the shaking hands, and beating heart..at the mention of the word adoption..will continue to be your companion long after you lose your pregnacy weight and the kicks in your bladder are nothing but fond memories. You might get though the endless nights of silent screams and soaked with tears pillows..but that ache in the gut will be here to stay.
By Claudia Corrigan D'Arcy aka FauxClaud on Sunday, May 28, 2006

19 comments:

  1. I'm so sorry that you have to go through this. For me there is one similar thing. Such as with both kids having their issues... The doctors want my medical history. I can give them my mother's - But I always have to say, "I'm sorry but I don't know who my father is." And I get the LOOK. The one that either wonders what happened, pity, or blatant curiousity.
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  2. It'a funny to read about the "if onlys" I just blogged about this too. Maybe I see it differently though.
    Raising a child without the resources is difficult, so difficult in fact that it may cause one to not raise another that comes along.
    Keeping may result in a different loss. That is the way I see it, because that is the way I experienced it.

    Joy
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  3. You describe it very well.
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  4. amen! the problem, for me, lies in trying to describe this for those around me, who STILL just don't get it. including my own father who says, "what is the matter, he
    turned out fine?" WTF? dad, can't you see that i didn't, that i am not OK?"
    and my son, my firstborn, wants NOTHING to do with me, or the two children that i have at home. yeah, funny thing, no one mentioned that possibility at the time of his adoption!!
    you have quite a gift to be able to put down in words how it feels to have adoption seem all around you.
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  5. Why hide things? My two older children know about my son and that he was adopted by friends of mine. They know the whys, the hows, and everything else there is to know. My birthson now knows that he is adopted and most of why things turned out the way they did. When someone asks me about my kids I tell them. I have 3! If they want to know it all then I tell them. I have lived with doubt and shame and got rather tired of it. Now I just speak the truth about it all. I made the arrangements for my son to be adopted because I wasn't in a place where I could handle another child. He wasn't given away because I didn't want him, he was placed with my friends because they wanted a child to love and take care of and I wasn't able to take care of all 3 kids at that time. I don't love any of them more than the other and they know that. Yes, they are kids and have feelings that are going to arise and that we have to deal with. Ultimately, it was MY decision to place my son for adoption. Yes, there was those who said it was for the best, but I am a person who knows how to make her own decisions. We need to stop placing blame and putting ourselves down for being birthmoms and stand up for ourselves. I am not going to throw a pity party because I made a decision that sometimes I regret. Hell, I sometimes regret getting up in the morning but I still do it. And as for knowing medical backgrounds, I know who my mom and dad are and still can't give a detailed background because I wasn't told everything before my dad died. There are no longer any 'if onlys' in my life. I've dealt with the anger, pain, and all that other crap. I wish other people would see birthmom's as very special people who did something so courageous that it is the greatest love you can give your child. Fight through the hard times when your children ask questions. Stand up, and tell the truth always. There are going to be those who put you down, but with strength will come backbone and the courage to be proud of who you are . I AM A BIRTHMOM TO 3 WONDERFUL KIDS AND I AM DAMN PROUD OF MYSELF.
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  6. claud, what you say is so very true. and it's amazing how many women who have recently (within the last 10 to 15 years) are so very blind to their pain. denial. dissociation. repression.

    and they think (like this last poster), that they made a "decision". yeah, "DAMNED PROUD", the way you put it about your "choice," you didn't want your kid, did you? otherwise you would have kept it. keep on about the "loving choice," kid, because once you figure out the oxymoron you've created for yourself, how "choice" has nothing to do with "I wasn't able to take care of all 3 kids at that time..." then you'll see that you were never given a choice. Why weren't you able to care for them? lack of resources (human rights abuse to be denieed adequate social assistance), mental illness (again, human rights abuse to be denied medical care). Look to your gov't to how they forced you to surrender by systemally denying resouces to young or unwed mothers but giving millions in corporate welfare and tax breaks to mega-companies. "your choice"? wake up. and know that your child will grow up and know the anger that all adoptees have at being "unwanted" and "given away" no matter how you try to sugar-coat it for your "birthson" (this sickening means "uterus product", by the way).
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  7. My God, Claud. Did I write this?

    Imagine working in the media. Imagine a live newscast. Imagine me. Not a daily occurence on our news station but, since it is so sporadic, when adoption is mentioned on our newscast, I almost ALWAYS make a mistake on the next story.

    And in every NBC show, there's some kind of effing adoption. And I hate it all. It's in my face.

    I don't work on Munchkin's birthday anymore. I just don't. Useless.
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  8. wow. excellent post. i could comment further but lived through some of this as recent as this a.m. and I am still reeling.
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  9. I won't be made to feel bad about myself or my decisions. Not everyone's adoption is bad. Not every adoptee turns out to be someone who feels unwanted or unloved. I made the right choice for my family at the time. If it is wrong then I will live with what happens not anyone else. Stop judging people you don't know. I stated my opinion and that is it. I am not a bad mother and I am not a bad person. Jesus...My son knows he is adopted and even though he is still young he knows that he is loved by me and his adoptive parents. I wish I could say that this was a miserable experience, but in truth it wasn't. Not for him and not for anyone else. We judge too much in this life and I wish it would stop. I know that there are adoptees out there who feel unwanted and unloved. But my son wasn't either one of those. If the situation was different yes he would still be with me. But it wasn't. This is how life sometimes is. If I am ok with it why belittle me and make me feel like crap. You are mad at someone other than me, yet you feel the necessity to direct that anger at me. A birthmom who isn't into regrets and what if's. Be glad that there is one child who was adopted who will know both his mom's and dad's and be ok with it. And if he isn't when he grows up then we will deal with it like we deal with everything. As one.
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  10. To anonymous:
    I am an adoptee to doesn't experience herself as unwanted or unloved, doesn't mean I got off scar free.

    As my bmom told me, "protecting the status-quo is one way the devil comes dressed as a gentlemen"

    But one question, Why is your name anonymous?
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  12. "I wish I could say that this was a miserable experience, but in truth it wasn't. Not for him and not for anyone else. "

    anonymous ... part of where you are coming from is that this is very new to you. you say your son is young, and thus you only surrendered him w/in a few years, right?

    you and he haven't lived with this for decades yet, and like you i thought i had healed too. i would swear on it. i was strong, i was healed, i was "over it." and then in yr 20 i read a triggering book and the grief/pain/loss exploded and i was suicidal from the pain. PTSD, complicated grief, major depression. Try to "resolve" all of those!

    Did the "adoption professonals" admit to you that the pain/loss only gets worse over decades? or did they withold this information from you?

    Your child isn't old enough to "close" the adoption, shut the door on you in anger. THAT stage comes when they are a teen and are sick of seeing the woman they bonded with in the womb continually walk out the door with their siblings, leaving them behind. Your son will begin to wonder, "If I was important enough to her, she would have kept me. She would have found the way. She kept the others."

    the thing is, you are standing where we all were years ago. you are still in the "denial/dissociation" stage we were all in. which is fine, because it's a necessary survival mechanism.


    So far, for you and your son, it hasn't been miserable, but you are only at Step 2 of a long long journey. please don't judge the rest of us who see the aftermath of 20, 30 or 40 years along the road who see adoption as being damaging, destructive and exploitative.

    ...

    btw, what did your friends have that you did not have, that made them deserve your son more than you did? what made you decide you were unfit to be a mother?
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  13. This is really painful to read. I am going to be an adoptive parent soon (international). We've lost three pregnancies, one quite late. I know it is not the same thing at all, but I and probably other mothers with children who were not born dread the dates, innocent questions and comments. I think alot about the mom to be and what she is going through. We will have the option of open connections with the mother if she wants it at somepoint (and I can't imagine she wouldn't)
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  14. I wish everyone could read this post and the comments. So much here... so much!
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  15. Thank you for totally debunking the myth that any mother can fully move past the loss of a child. This post should be required reading for any adoptive parent, prospective or otherwise.

    Margie
    Adoptive mom to two teens
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  16. Very well put. I couldn't have said it better myself.

    It gets me all weepy just reading this and all my emotions surfacing, but that's nothing new. I go through that every day as a firstmother.

    The part where you mentioned how some see that sadness in your eyes or can tell something's different and gently ask what happened is one thing that got me. I've had that happen to me more than once and at first, I didn't know or realize that difference was that visible in me, but now I do.

    It's like I was just thinking the other day how a friend of mine I hadn't talked to in a long time reappeared and after talking to me, he told me how different I am. He told me I wasn't all fun, light and carefree anymore and he didn't understand what had happened to me. He knows that placing my two girls and becoming a firstmom is what happened to me now though. He like others just don't realize the effect it has and what happens to you after you place.

    Anyway, thanks for writing such a great, enlightening post.
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  17. Greets to the webmaster of this wonderful site! Keep up the good work. Thanks.
    »
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  18. I find some information here.
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  19. Wow.This is sad.I guess I never thought of it because in our adotopi discussions -we haven't adopted (yet)- we've always thought we'd adopt an orphan. After this post, I really hope so, because knowing the pain the birthmother may be going through would tear me apart.These are the stories that never get told.Thank you for enlightening me.
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