' [Birth Mother] First Mother Forum: How a birth mother's No to adoption turned into a Yes

Saturday, April 14, 2012

How a birth mother's No to adoption turned into a Yes

There is more yesterday regarding Bethany Christian Services (cough, cough)  and others who turn dazed new mothers who relinquished into recruiters, and so I am reposting her comment again for those who do not read the comments. See below the wonderful graphics---lorraine  

 unplanned pregnancy options

 From another give-up-your-baby-site...but guess what keeping your baby aka "youth parenting" looks like? Mopping the floor while clutching your child. Give him up and you are the happy college or high school grad. What me worry?

Oh, gosh. I'm the anonymous commenter.

To answer Robin's question, I was involved with a church that put me in touch with a "crisis pregnancy counselor" at a "Christian Services" organization.

I knew adoption was part of what they did, but I didn't think it was all they did. I thought "counselor" meant counselor. I thought they were a charitable organization, like The Salvation Army, etc. And, yes, during my counseling sessions, I did opt to heed the "explore adoption" counsel. I agreed to meet with a couple while pregnant on the condition that they were told that I was uncommitted to adoption.

In the hospital, to the frustration of some, I still wouldn't commit. After giving birth, seeing my child's face, I called and told my counselor "no."

My no was not accepted. Instead, phone calls began to come late into the night ... my counselor, offering "more contact than we usually offer birth mothers" (if I "followed through" and relinquished.) She suggested I let the hopeful couple just come to my hospital room to "visit."

And I trusted my counselor. I liked her.

There is so much more, but I don't want to write a novel here.

In the end, something in me began to fissure. I finally believed I wasn't good enough for my child. That he deserved better than me, a single mother without family support. That it would be "selfish" to disappoint a "deserving" couple. That a father was an imperative part of "God's plan." And I did not have one to offer.

There's much more, of course. Yes, the final decision was mine. Naivete, ignorance, the belief system I held at a moment in time, perhaps even what some call weakness, were all factors. But, in that final hour in the hospital, I viewed relinquishment the way they hoped I would: as strength, as courage, as "an act of self sacrificial love" -- much the same way the newer birth mom bloggers do.

I understand that mind set. How it comes about. Why one holds on to it. I also understand the utter groundlessness when that belief system is called into question years later.

As for the original comment, I could add a great deal to it. As, I'm sure, others can.  

_______________________
 I am really operating with limited power here. More tomorrow or later about how adoption is a billion dollar business in America. Recruiting vulnerable new mothers who have relinquished is how the business succeeds. For many the scales fall from the eyes later. Years later.

see earlier post
Former Bethany "recruiter" speaks up


11 comments :

  1. What? You mean college grads don't have to mop floors? Well shit I have a MS and I didn't fuckin' know this. Damn.

    PS please take care of your arm.

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  2. I have a Ph.D., two books in the works, AND a husband but just yesterday I was mopping my kitchen floor with a toddler pulling on my apron - literally. But according to this advertisement, floor mopping with a baby on the hip is reserved for uneducated single moms.

    Dang it - what did I do wrong???????

    /sarc

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  3. I find the idea that college grads don't have to work hard, mop floors, etc., ludicrous. I am a college grad! I have wiped old behinds and cleaned up after the rich ladies many times over the years.

    My daughter would have been much better off with me than were she ended up.

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  4. I was looking at the propaganda you posted, with the pictures, with my husband last night. We were joking that I was a married mom in my 30's, with multiple advanced degrees and all the trappings, holding my baby while doing housework, and I still was frazzled as hell. The answer, from the pictures, my husband said, is clearly to adopt! Not to place: everyone should adopt! That's how you get instant college graduates with no fuss, no muss, as the pictures show. Only if you adopt can you be "happy." We both gagged.

    It's so sad that young women can be made to think by the vultures in agencies, that parenting is never enjoyable hard work, that you can't do it as a single parent, that a child is "better off" with strangers who may be divorced in a year or who may be alcoholic child abusers, for all the mother knows. It's in selling the product, and the adoption industry is slick. How I hate the NCFA and the agencies. The lies just don't stop.

    I had an infant prebirth matching adoption in my extended afamily this week, through Bethany (yuck), and while I know the parents and that they'll be great parents, the whole situation is heartbreaking. I keep thinking of the mother and the new baby, and what they're feeling. Reading your posts about Bethany coercion really makes me wonder what happened behind the scenes.

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  5. Well heck! I missed that memo too. I'm married, have a college degree and a career and not only have I mopped the floor with all my kids but I just, last week, mopped the kitchen floor (spilled cocktail sauce makes a horrid mess) with my granddaughter in my arms.

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  6. The agency that the picture comes from advertises that they are the experts to turn to for adoption because it is run by all adoptive mothers. Of course, this would qualify them as experts on the first mother and adoptee experience. They refer to adoptive children (I thought that should be adoptED children)but grammar aside, they also refer to expectant mothers as birthmothers. Yep, right off the bat get them thinking of themselves as not really the child's mother. Better to seal the deal.

    Sad that so many people who aren't savvy about adoption don't realize how much manipulation is going on.

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  7. Propaganda is to a democracy as violence is to a dictatorship.

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  8. Those kinds of ads should be illegal. Those images are coercive and misleading. Shame on the people who deliberately manipulate young women into giving up their babies.

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  9. I just can't get over what overly-stupid copywriters have against eggs. Stabbing an egg with scissors?

    It reminds me of the stupid 80s commercial where the menacing man confuses yummy breakfast with drugs. I mean who is the crack-head, oh I love bad Humpty puns, but really.
    Who is the confused one here? What kind of drugs? Amoxicillin? Aspirin? My brains were never yummy with a dash of hot sauce and a side of hash...browns after indulging. Maybe he meant sugar and processed foods? Idk, just know he is funny as hell,a classic.

    In the Congressional reports on criminalizing LSD, yes,I have read them but as a teenager, so I don't know if they have now been wiped clean of the data stream, was after ingestion of LSD, young men failed to have interest in joining military service. I got my info from books in the library...

    It was good enough for the C.I.A.though, but enough with my subversiveness, let's all look back and try to follow this tough guy's reasoning. I think the adoption agencies took him as a genius, this poor addled fellow that can't discern the difference between breaky and drug use...tres droll

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub_a2t0ZfTs

    Any Questions? Um,yeah, can I get some fruit and a biscuit with that?

    Another beauty:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyXFN4ocN_o

    Any Questions? Um,yeah, are you going to make youth parenting clean up after your psychotic destruction of your mom's kitchen? Is she going to have to hold babies while she does this? Another question, is your smashing of kitchen an endorsement of sobriety?

    I don't know, I was a youth parenting and my kid is fab and grown and I weirdly still have to do housework, and I weirdly still graduated from college and have a successful life.

    I think the only thing that has ever made me break shit was being adopted. Maybe we should make some PSA's this is your brain,this is your brain after your identity is sealed,after your familial relationships are criminalized. After you yourself are criminalized, stigmatized, and made a permanent second-class citizen.

    We should,but I think we can do it without eggs.

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  10. Those pictures are very stupid. They could just as easily and more truthfully show a happy young mom breastfeeding her a baby, no mop needed, to represent raising the child. Next, a tearful young woman puking in the bathroom of a cheap bar after trying to drown her sorrow about losing her child, and an ugly old couple who look more like grandparents with her baby. The abortion stabbed egg, yikes, I don't even know what to say!

    The whole thing is so cheesy, hopefully it is not effective in getting anyone to surrender.

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  11. Well, from a male perspective, the message seems to be that youth parenting is best for a girl's sex appeal, which I guess is the truth.

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