The Last Days of Adoption, Part Two

While the ongoing discussions here at FirstMotherForum sometimes take on a life of their own and the subject changes (see previous post), I would like to go back to the lack of Cheryl Wetzstein's autobiographical data on a story with which she is intimately involved. Her neglecting to mention that she is a birth mother on a piece that decries the lack of available healthy infant children to be adopted in the United States is like Carol Browner, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and now Obama's White House environmental czarina, writing about greenhouse-gas emissions and neglecting to tell us that Oh, she has a personal stake in the story, she is not the involved journalist we might otherwise suspect.

For my own part, I had wondered--no, more than that, presumed--that Ms. Wetzstein was someone who wanted to adopt a baby in this country, but alas, could not find one available. Call me crazy, but that's how I read the "too-bad-no-more-babies-all-these-willing-couples attitude" that permeated much of the story.

It does seem that no matter through which prism one read the piece (and as readers here have informed me in the previous comment section many read it differently from me), Ms. Wetzstein's own personal history is hugely relevant, and in this case, her having relinquished a child to adoption seems to at least make the piece a justification for her own act of giving up a child. Since posting this blog piece, I have heard from more than one person that Ms. Wetzstein was a mother who relinquished a child, and in her own comment below said she is indeed a birth mother.

Now of course I'm curious to know more: open adoption? Did this happen recently? Does she see the child? Is she continually pleased that she made some couple happy with her baby? Etc. I know I am sounding somewhat hard on another birth mother, and I try to empathize with anyone who has gone through this experience, one that I can only call dreadful. But while giving up my daughter not only seemed the only reasonable thing I could do, it also turned out to be a life-changing decision that would reap sorrow and grief for me and for my daughter. However, young women today who have fully open adoptions do seem to be not as emotionally affected by giving up a child as the women of my generation, possibly because with our decision to surrender came forced anonymity, a mandate of the state shackling us with the yoke of emotional slavery.

Some of the postings below remind me of what was posted anonymously in New York at a place where people left such various musings on life: I hate that I'm adopted but I'm also grateful. In those few words, the writer compressed both the grief of being given up and the relief of having parents. But given normal circumstances, would that be anyone's first choice? To be someone "adopted?" I hardly think so.

As for the statistics about the paucity of babies available, it has long been known that very few women/teenagers give up their babies, and that has led to the paucity of available infants for a huge market for them. To that I can only say Hooray!

And yes, there are many reasons for infertility, and sexually-transmitted disease is one. But age continues to be a critical factor as today's generation largely believes that they can wait past graduate school, past the first/second and third apartments, until they become vice presidents at the bank or have climbed Kilimanjaro, to delay child-bearing. Talk to young college-going or just-out-of-college women and that is what you hear: they will have their children later. And then it becomes: too late. Then comes years of in-vitro-fertilization, possibly surrogacy...and finally, let's adopt.

Young women having years of sexual freedom with numerous partners is precisely how sexually transmitted diseases are transmitted. I am not Victorian about sex not do I decry the lack of Victorian or Fifties morality regarding it, but the message of decreased fertility with advancing age seems to be a large vacant space in the mindset of today's younger generation. The problem is not simply that women want to put off having babies; men delay settling down with one partner because so much sexual variety awaits them. A woman might want to get married and have babies say, in their late twenties, but the guys are yawn...just not that into it. Yet. And by the time they are, the girl of their dreams is likely to be pushing forty.

I recently read a letter from a gynecologist in a alumna magazine saying just that: today's young women and men do not understand their most fertile years are in their teens and twenties, and that after 35, fertility decreases rather dramatically. The other issue that comes with older parents, including the father, are greater numbers of children with severe problems: bi-polar disease, schizophrenia, and the one that gets the most headlines today: autism.

We may have changed our lifestyles, we may have more opportunities to climb mountains and push through glass ceilings, we may have a thousand good reasons that a generation delays having babies, but our bodies have not yet made the switch to a more modern way of being. And we are paying the price. --lorraine

A Birth Mother's Lament: Giving up my baby was like dying

Copyright Lorraine Dusky (c) 2009

When I tried keeping a journal what came out was either a daily dose of woe-is-me or perfunctory notes about the books I was reading. Instead I wrote a long letter to my baby, typing it out at my small wooden desk. It was a real antique I’d picked up cheap in Saginaw and moved cross country. Now it sat beneath a western window where the sun went down through fragments of colored glass hanging there.

…You kick me, you cause hard bulges in my stomach, you do not let me sleep for more than a few hours at a time. Sometimes I think you are standing on your hands kicking your feet against the wall of my stomach….Now that you have announced your presence, I cannot help but love you, because you are me and you are him….You’ll look around sometimes and you’ll see that other lives seem easier, a little gentler on the mind: Why am I adopted? You’ll ask. Try to think only that you have got to learn more than others because you have more to do passing through. Don’t ask why. Such things just are.

But I have to admit that being philosophical doesn’t help much when you’re hurting. I guess I am trying to say that since we can not do anything about the pain, we might as well try to make some good of it.

Our separation is not going to be easy on either of us. I have to give you away and you have to be given away. Oh, baby I wish it didn’t have to be that way. Afterward, both of us will always be different from most of the rest. There will be a mark deep inside that only you and I know about. Only you and I will know how it feels. I know you didn’t ask to be born a bastard, and if I could have chosen, I wouldn’t have been born female. All we can do is make do.

…there is so much I want to tell you, so much love I want to encircle you with, so much I can not do for you, so much that must go unsaid. I tried to kill you, but do not hate me. I love you. I love you. I love you.

I did not dwell anymore about wishing I had been born a man; those thoughts fled as my body and mind were flooded by female hormones overwhelming all earlier considerations. Nonetheless, yin/yang conversations played in my head.

The part of me that leaned male, XY: Someday, when this is over, you’ll see, you’ll have your career back. It’s the only way. The only way.

XX: But will that be worth it? I will have lost my baby. I want my baby. I want to be with Brian and our baby.

XY: Grow up. You got yourself into this mess. If that’s what you thought, that you wanted a baby to keep, your timing is off. By the way, why didn’t you use some kind of contraception, sweetie?

XX: That’s a long story, and you don’t have to be condescending, hon. Brian—he was impotent at first, and then he wasn’t—

XY: So?

XX: So that’s how it happened. Come on, don’t you have any pity—

XY: I am not interested in that anymore. That’s done. Now you must buck up and give away this baby. Tomorrow is another day.

XX: But my baby, don't you see, my baby, not someone else’s. I want to keep him, nurse him, watch him grow up, be his mother….

XY: Too effin’ bad. You made your bed, now lie in it.

Every three weeks or so, I went to see the social worker at Northaven Terrace, the adoption agency. Mrs. Mura, who had become a confident, friend, therapist. Until the day everything changed.

“But we’ll be able to—find each other when he’s eighteen, right—or twenty-one?” I said matter-of-factly one afternoon. It’s half a statement, half a question. She is already looking at me with a kind of shock on her face. “Right?” I add. “Right?”

“NO.” Mrs. Mura shakes her head back and forth slowly.

“What do you mean?” Surely she does not mean what I already know she must mean. Yet she can not mean that. That is unbearable, cruel and unusual, nobody would make that kind of law, nobody with a heart…. A quick hot layer of sweat swept over me.

“But that’s inhumane—that can’t be right, that we never—” I could not even raise my voice, I did not have the strength to do that. She was The Man. She was in charge. I was—nothing. A baby bearer, the woman shamed, someone without rights. Of any sort.

“Lorraine, I thought you knew, once you sign the papers it’s over. I mean, for good. The records are sealed. For good. You can’t find him and he—”

“That is the most horrible thing I ever heard of, what would be the harm? I mean when—when he’s older. Surely that’s what this secrecy is about—why I can’t meet the parents—so that I don't interfere when he’s growing up.” My voice has taken on a plaintive whining tone, tears are welling up.

But she did not send any mitigating signal. She is trying to be kind, I can tell that, but that’s like offering me a smoke on the way to the gallows. Yet I could not give up.

“Can’t we do this another way? Can’t we have an agreement that when he is older, that at least he can find out, and me too? There has to be another way, there must be some parents who….”

“I know you can’t see it now, but you will make another life for yourself. The pain will lessen in time.”

I stared at her blankly, so this is how this will end, my life in an abyss of not knowing. Who dreamt up this vile law? Who was the monster?

“You’ll see, you will make a new life for yourself,” she repeated.

I looked out the window, it is high up and all I can see is the sky—the better to keep away prying eyes from the parking lot—it was a sunny day and a patch of clear bright blue filled the window. How can it be sunny today? How can today be a sunny day? I want to scream and rail against this injustice, I want to roll on the floor and moan in misery.

“What about if we—ask the adoptive parents? Or can’t we find a couple who—”

“Lorraine, if you won’t agree to this, we can’t help you. There is no other way.”

We can’t help you. There is no other way.

“This is the law. Once you sign the papers, you have to walk away. You will never forget her, but there is no going back. The records are sealed for good. It’s best for everyone this way. For you, for her…. ”

Are you out of your mind? Best for me? This will never be best for me. I want to grab my purse and run. To where? I can not go home to my family. Brian hasn’t made a move.

And I have no Plan B.

I slunk down into my chair, inspected the tiled floor, the pale green of vomit. This is so much worse than I thought it would be. This is going to be a living death. I have no say so about how this happens. I am a woman without rights. Of any sort. They think I am garbage, to be disposed of, once I hand over the baby.

This is not right. This is wrong. Every part of my being is screaming: this is wrong.

I remembered what the Chinese palmist said the time she read my hand: You have one child but something is wrong. Like he's adopted.

I did not know what she meant at the time. Yet I may have been already pregnant. I just did not know it. --lorraine

The Daughter I Never Wanted and other lies about adoption in the media

How do we deal with our reunited children--if we don't like them? Or, how does the media deal with adoption?

The topic is the subject of Dear Prudence, advice columnist at Slate.com, this week (3/26/09). Headline: "My long-lost daughter is a terror, and I want nothing to do with her." Well, the letter doesn't exactly say that.

The writer seeking advice from the ill-advised Prudence says that she got pregnant at 17, her family was not supportive, she gave the child up, but "never forgot her." The writer adds that she reached out to her daughter through the lawyer who handled the adoption, met the daughter, who also had a child at some young age and was living at home with her adoptive parents and the child. After email and phone contact, they met--what a meeting: the birth mother, her mother, another daughter she had five years later...and the adoptee, her baby, and her adoptive mother. Talk about a recipe for disaster!

The birth mother frankly admits that she did not like her daughter: She wrote that her daughter was "rude and disrespectful to her mom, yells at her baby, dresses like a slob, and was a brat the whole weekend." Ya think the girl might have had some issues? She also criticizes her daughter for not being more grateful for the "great gift" she got her. It ends with this note: "She is in school to join my chosen profession, which I think she will suck at." Signed: --What Should I do About the Daughter I Never Wanted.

There are so many issues here one hardly knows where to begin. But before we get to the writer's disappointment with her daughter, let me deconstruct the way the issue is handled by Slate and Dear ImPrudence, who now is going to join my rapidly growing list of obnoxious people I feel cranky about. Really cranky. Though the birth/first/natural/biological/real mother says she "never forgot" the child she gave up for adoption, yet the letter's signature says...the daughter I never wanted...Give me a break, Slate and Ms. ImPrudent. That is the lovely idea of someone in the editing department, or maybe Prudence herself. Does anyone know if she is an adoptive mother? Might be. Because that's just the kind of idea--that the girl was never wanted--that many today want to believe because that makes it easy for adoptive parents to imply...Your mother never wanted you. Meaning: Be grateful you got me, you lucky bastard.

And as someone involved in the media myself, I know that many professional women waited way past their fecund years to have a child and then found a way to adopt. (Further proof is Sunday's (3/29/09) New York Times' Modern Love story, "My Clock Was Already Ticking. You know how that one ends. After an abortion at 34, the writer [creative person, natch] gets married a "couple of years later," and whadda ya know, she can't get pregnant [now she has to be 36,37, at least], even with expensive IVF treatments over a couple of years. So a birth mother provides a child--no two birth mothers provide two children. I am feeling cranky about this tonight.)

But I digress.

Back to Prudence. Dear ImPrudence, those of us who relinquished our children did not want to get pregnant when we could not keep the child--if that was anybody's goal she needs her head examined--but once we were carrying our babies, once we had them, we sure as hell bonded with them and let them go only under terrible duress and unending sorrow. To make up the "daughter I never wanted" line might be satisfying to adoptive parents, but there is nothing in that letter that would lead to that. Nada. Not liking a daughter in person is not the same as "never wanted.

Furthermore, the birth/biological/first mother/letter writer says she initiated the search! If she "never wanted her" it is not conceivable she that would have searched.

In Prudie's answer, she goes on to tell the writer that a) maybe the girl has issues, and b) notes that one of the issues might be that her biological mother kept a second child, also a daughter. Well, there she has a point, through the rest of the verbiage chides the writers for "disrupting" the girl's life. We also get the smack in the face that of course her "mother is the person who raised her." We know that, Dear Pru, it's been drummed into our heads since the beginning of time. We are just the DNA carriers. And gestational wombs. And then we are supposed to exit, Stage Left, never to return and certainly not for the curtain call.

As a last insult to us natural mothers, the link that shows up at the bottom of my screen says this: I loathe my daughter...Really, did the writer say that? This is yet another example of how the media looks upon us. We loathe our children; we "disrupt" their lives if we find them? Prudie the Ignorant shows not one whit of sympathy for birth mothers. But ain't that the way?

Well, there's more to this story. Fellow blogger Linda, as regular readers know, was found by her daughter, had a wonderful reunion and then the daughter cut her out of her life. But Linda did have some less than laudatory feelings about her daughter. Here's Linda after reading the Dear Prudence column:

I smiled as I read about how obnoxious the adoptee is. I can relate, a little. My daughter was 23 when she contacted me, and as I’ve said before, the honeymoon was short-lived…the daily phone call and the all-day-long e-mail blizzard ceased six weeks into our reunion, and I was…shocked? hurt? dumbfounded? confused? Yep.

People who’ve met my daughter have sympathetically said “It’s how she was raised” to excuse her behavior. She wasn’t bratty, but rather cool, aloof, she grew up in a privileged bubble, the polar opposite of me…if we were cast in Titanic, she would have been Kate Winslett in first class quarters and I would be Leo DeCaprio having a grand old time with the peasants in steerage. She was accustomed to getting her own way 99 percent of the time, and then she met me, who knew what she was thinking before she did, and that really freaked her out. No one was more shocked than I when, having had enough of her bad behavior (that snotty sense of entitlement that was just unacceptable to me), I told her “I love you but sometimes I don’t like you.”

Unlike this writer to Dear Prudence, my daughter was wanted, And yes, unfortunately, my daughter inherited many of my least favorite qualities. That doesn’t make me love her less.

I realize a lot of it, if not all of it, boils down to "you gave me away," even though she understands the circumstances and has told me many times she feels very fortunate to have the advantages she’s enjoyed. And it's not just the abandonment issues, it's so much more, as I've learned from the adoptees who I've met and learned from. I realize she'll be struggling with these issues for years to come, even though she swears (at least the last time we spoke, and apparently tells my sister regularly) that she's a shiny happy adoptee. I didn’t hide my feelings and heartache about relinquishment as well as I should have (too much information isn't necessarily a good thing)…but as I’ve also said, if anyone was prepared for reunion, it was me. It's virtually impossible for anyone to be prepared for the post-reunion Pandora’s box.

Oh, what a friggin’ mess this business of adoption is.

_________________________________________________

PS: We'll find out if Madonna is going to take another child out of Malawi on Friday. I know she is going build a school or some such, but why can't she leave it at that? Every time a celebrity adopts, it sets the thought in motion once again: Gee, how great to adopt. I think I'll adopt. I'll get one of those cute starving kids from India. Nepal. Siberia. And so it goes. More kids are stolen to supply the bull market in babies. No recession here.

Mother and Child Separations, Reunions-When will it ever end?

While Big Love, HBO show on Mormonism and plural marriage, got it right in their final episode of the season, hospital drama ER ended with a big fat ugly "adoption is the holy grail" thud last night (3/26/09). Fellow Blogger Linda sends this report from the trenches of ER:

High school mom who left infant at hospital returns two weeks later and says she made a mistake. Her mom will help her with the baby, and besides, she has welfare. Angela Bassett, the black physician who has become the infant's temporary custodian and has been trying to adopt for seven years (why don't we feel much sympathy?), is heartbroken, asks the girl, Are you sure, all the usual platitudes.

The teen spends hours hanging out in ER waiting for social worker, and sees the great doctor saving lives, doing good. By the end of the show the teen mom, who incidentally is white, the baby bi-racial, decides it'll be too much to go to school, make something of herself, and be a mom all at once. She wants her son to be look up to her. Bassett chokes back tears; teen mom says something about not being able to know her kid if he's adopted...Bassett says it doesn't have to be that way, there's "open adoption," the teen would know her child, be a part of his life. Wow! The perfect answer for everyone!

Yet another: Gee, adoption is soooo great plot line, see how much better this will be for the teen mother and the lovely, hard-working doctor gets what she wants, a baby. Tidy, that. A couple of weeks ago adoption was the theme at the noxious Brothers and Sisters, (see earlier post) in which another black mom, this one also a doctor (How unreal is this plot line--the woman is a doctor and she's going to give away her child?) Not only does she do that, she does it without drama, no tears, no regrets. She has the baby, and she is outta there. No, she is not open to having the adoption being more "open" than previously agreed. Pictures. That's it.

Big Love, on the other hand, had a different twist on the mother-and-daughter reunion. It is revealed that one of main wives, Nicki (Chloe Svigney) had an earlier marriage or "sealing" to another man when she was very young and lived among the way-out Mormon fanatics (long dresses, big hair). She had a daughter then, and no one else on the show knew about it, as she up and left the cult and married into a middle-class plural marriage (if there is such a thing, but bear with us) in Salt Lake City. We will pick up the story here. This is at least a close facsimile of what was said between Nicki and her sister wife, Barb:

Nicki: I did the worst thing a person can do. I left my daughter.
Barb: (Incredulously) You had a daughter?
Nicki: I have a daughter.
Barb: (Still incredulous) You left a child?
Nicki: It was the only way I could get out. It was an impossible choice but I made it. Now she's here and she knows who I am and she wants answers. Everybody has tears in their eyes. (Including me.)

The show ends with the daughter being brought into Nicki's life, and her new marriage. I was cheering at how this revelation and the ending was handled, as the girl is now going to be a part of Nicki's life. At least these writers understood that leaving a child...is not a good thing. Other script writers seem to feel as if it is god's gift to the plot lines, as in ER, Brothers and Sisters, countless soaps, the despicable Juno, ad nauseam.

But it's not always simply adoption that seems to stalk us birth mothers. Linda and I went into Manhattan the other night as she got free tickets to August Wilson's play, Joe Turner's Come and Gone. The play is set in 1911; the characters are descendants of slaves, or in one case, a free man. It's a strong drama involving a man searching for the wife who left when he was taken away for reasons unknown and gone for seven years. Now he and his daughter, who was left in the care of her grandmother, are searching for his wife, the girl's mother. Near the end of the second act, Bam! there it is, the denouement, an emotional mother-and-child reunion.

For Linda and me, two birth mothers sitting there enjoying a night supposedly away from all adoption/separation-related things...it was indeed black humor. Linda gasped, I put my hand on her knee. I wanted to chuckle, and might have if we'd been watching this together on television. Adoption, mother-and-child separations and reunions, they follow us everywhere.

Check in tomorrow. We will have a heartbreaking post from a woman who agreed to an "open adoption." That wasn't.

Rachael's Visit

As readers of FMF know, my surrendered daughter Megan and I have had our differences, and we have not been in touch since August. However, several weeks ago, her oldest daughter, Rachael, emailed and asked if she could come for a visit over President's Day Weekend. You can imagine how thrilled I was! Yes!

I first met Rachael, now a college sophomore, when she was nine, a day after I reunited with her mother after a separation of 31 years. Rachael does not consider me her grandmother, however. In answering the question "Who Am I" on her blog, she described her mother's adoptive family as her maternal line, omitting her mother's biological family entirely.

Megan, a devout Mormon, believes that her adoption was God's plan; her adoptive family, the family to which she is sealed for eternity, is her only family. After a public disagreement over whether adoptees had the right to their original birth certificates, Megan (who had searched for me) emailed me and asked me not to send birthday gifts to her four children. (A Daughter's Change of Heart)

So you can imagine my surprise when I heard that Rachael who attends Brigham Young University wanted to visit. I waited anxiously for Rachael at the airport and when I saw her I tried to hug her but she turned away. (I'm actually not a huggy person. The first time I met Megan, I tried to hug her in an awkward sort of way and she turned from me. At our next meeting, I kept my hands at my sides and she reached out to give me a hug.)

Rachael and I came back to my place for pizza and lots of conversation. Rachael told me about her work on an Indian reservation last summer, her roommates, her classes, her ham radio club, what her brothers and sister were involved in. All the things that interest grandmothers.

Saturday, we toured an exhibit about 18th century French art and Mme. Pompadour at the Portland Art Museum. We lunched at a Portland institution, Dan & Louis' Oyster Bar. Trying to sound casual, I mentioned that I had not sent birthday and Christmas presents because her mother had asked me not to. Rachael said she hadn't noticed. Hmmm.

I asked Rachael if her if she had told her mother she was coming. She said she had mentioned it just before she left. She did not seem to be aware -- or at least concerned -- that there were issues between her mother and me.

Over the weekend we soaked in the hot tub at my condo, and had dinner with my husband, Jay. Sunday Rachael went skiing -- her first time -- with my husband, our raised daughter Amy, Amy's son Chris and Amy’s husband Geoff.

Dinner at Amy's (take out Indian food). Back at the condo, we watched part of Edith Wharton's "Age of Innocence" (the Martin Scorsese film) and agreed it was slow. Monday, swimming and a trip to Powell's Bookstore, the largest independent bookstore in the country and another Portland Institution.

Rachael is shy, yet self-contained; like me she wears no makeup and dresses casually. Like her mother and my raised daughters, she is willing to try new things – calamari (aka squid) for example. She seems unconcerned with where I fit into her family or how she fits into mine--maybe that's why it all felt so natural. There was no questioning as in, What am I doing here? There was no reason for naval-gazing about anything because the whole weekend felt so natural and normal, as if we were a typical family, who had not been separated by adoption. We talked about literature, travel, history, even religion and politics. She asked if she could have one of my Hillary buttons for her paternal grandfather who collects campaign buttons. She likes Hillary although none of her friends do.

There were some differences of course, particularly religious beliefs. Differences exist in all genetic families. My raised daughter Lucy loves the Clinque counter at Nordstrom's and raised daughters Julie and Amy prefer action thrillers to dramas which Lucy and I enjoy. Overall, however, our similarities, Rachael's and mine, in style, likes, and personalities outweighed the differences by a long shot. Rachael's visit seemed so normal because it was so natural.

When we were in the hot tub, another resident asked if I was Rachael's mother; "No," I said, "grandmother." I looked for Rachael's reaction but she showed none. Amy introduced her children to Rachael as "Your cousin, Rachael" (sounds like a Daphne Du Maurier book?). Again no response. A note about Amy. When she and Megan met back in 1998, they were wearing the same Birkenstocks and had the same hair style. They sat in the same position and had the same "what's this to me?" look.

When Rachael left, she said she would keep in touch. I haven’t heard from her but kids today are not schooled in manners. Both Rachael and Geoff, Amy’s husband have Facebook pages. Geoff received an email telling him that Rachael would like to be his friend.

I’ll email Rachael in a few days. Perhaps I may even venture into new territory and sign up for a Facebook page.

What To Do With the Kids in the Freezer?

Adam Fuss

Reproductive news is certainly all the rage these days. Following the story about surrogacy we've been discussing in the previous post, Thursday's (12/04/08) New York Times has a story about parents with frozen embryos who have all the children they want but don't know quite what to do with the leftovers. Feed them to science? Keep them frozen until they are no longer viable? Simply stop paying the annual $200 fee and let happen what will? Ask for them and hold a burial? Have them implanted at a time when the woman knows she can not conceive? Let them be adopted by strangers?

Here in the U.S. where we have some of the most absurd and unregulated reproductive legislation, doctors can make as many embryos as they and their clients please, and the trend seems to be make as many as possible...since you never know. In Italy, however, more common sense has taken hold: Fertility clinics can make only as many embryos as can be implanted at one time, and so there are no excess embryos lying about in vats of frozen nitrogen. Sixty-six percent of the people surveyed said they would likely donate their extra embryos to science, but amazingly, that option was available only at four of the nine clinics surveyed. Disgustingly irresponsible? Yes. Illegal? No.

One woman said a freezer full of embryos was "like an orphanage." I suppose she has a point--but that would be an orphanage that has 400,000 potential people, according to the study, give or take a hundred thousand or more since not all are going to be viable when, uh, defrosted.

The Times was reporting on a new study in the Journal of Fertility and Sterility which found that 53 percent of the couples whose embryos are frozen did not want to donate them to other couples, mostly because they did not want someone else bringing up their children. That leaves a whopping 47 percent who do not object to passing out their DNA to strangers. And that I find distressing.

One woman quoted--with nine frozen embryos--said that she had a queasy feeling about donating them to science, but was against adoption because she would worry too much about "what kind of parents they were with, what kind of life they had." At least She is aware what stranger adoption actually means. That someone else--genetic strangers--are raising your children. However her teenage daughter is for adoption, a reflection of our pro-adoption culture, especially among the younger generation.

But progress has been made on the adoption issue: If you want to donate your embryos to another couple, you must be screened for infectious diseases, sometimes at your own expense. And clinics no longer suggest that people give their embryos to other couples anymore, something that was common a decade ago. I can imagine the marketing: "Well, you can chose between a possible blue-eyed blond baby or a green-eyed redhead, or are you more in the market for someone with more Semitic features? There we can talk about possible IQ points. Looking for ability in mathematics? We have several Asian choices, Japanese, Korean, Chinese...take your pick." Talk about "chosen baby."

Yes, I'm being flip but all this is yukky and frightening.

Of course, I never had to face infertility. After I had Jane and surrendered her I never wanted another child, for several reasons, one being the sense that it was so unfair to have a child and give her away, and then keep another. It's called secondary infertility; studies show that birth mothers fall into this statistical category more than most, and as I recall, the numbers of women who surrender children and have no more vary from a low of 17 percent to a high of 34 percent . (For more information, see the Donaldson survey of birth mothers, p.46) I never tried to have another child. I recognize that my rationale could simply be that, a rationale, for I did want to have a career rather than be a mother with all the responsibility that entails, and without more money than I have ever had--nannies did not seem to be in my future--I did not see how that would be possible.

I felt that way before I became pregnant; but once I was, everything changed, and every microcosm of my being screamed for me to keep my baby. I did not and I have been paying the interest on that decision since. --lorraine

Living in Interesting Times

Become a crusader and life never is boring...Today I'm thinking about that Arab curse that goes something like: May you live in interesting times.

A few months ago, as readers of Firstmotherforum know, I was scathingly attacked by a friend, a hot-shot bankruptcy lawyer and rainmaker, for having searched for my daughter and effecting a reunion with with her. Mind you, I've known "Aston" for nearly as long as I knew my daughter--since 1981. Aston started a cancer-care foundation for people who live on the East End of Long Island and my husband, Tony, is an active member of the board. We see Aston and his wife for dinner; we have mutual friends. Aston, incidentally, is godfather to the Chinese adoptee of mutual friends who have a home down the street. Aston and his wife,Marci, are childless; his mother argued against adoption and so they did not. I've known his wife for longer than I've been married, and I've been married 27 years. Shortly before this incident, she and I spent an afternoon together at a horse show. We're aren't, say, BFF, but we like each other.

Aston was not against adopted people searching and meeting their natural parents, but he was really against, really really against, first mothers searching. This would disrupt the adoptive family that has been getting on just fine, thank you, without interference, he insisted. He spoke of other mutual acquaintances who adopted from Gladney and then moved to Texas, where the wife was originally from, as really "taking a chance" because then the first mother might have an easier time finding them. (I don't know if this is one of Gladney's "open adoptions." Apparently the adoptive mother was worried about what the girl was eating during her pregnancy, and so at least knew something about her.) All of Aston's sympathy was for adoptive parents, who were there in the middle of the night, fixed the scraped elbow, read the nighttime stories, paid for orthodontics and SAT prep tests, et cetera. There was not an ounce of compassion for any first mother who searched. Marci, there at the dinner table also, said nothing. My husband felt she was anxious that Aston was going too far.

Finally, he asked: "What part of your pie chart in doing so is selfish? I just want to know." How do you answer that? The question was designed to make all first mothers who search look bad.

I have been quite torn up by this incident, for it made me acutely aware of how many people--including friends and acquaintances-- see me, a first mother who had the audacity to search, as well as the whole shebang of open records, particularly giving first mothers information about their children. We've got a lot of educating to do, and some people we will never reach. Aston represents legislators who will never vote for open records.

Except for answering the phone the time he called for my husband and I was curt, I have not spoken to him, or Marci. They have an annual party Thanksgiving weekend. I threw out the invitation. We did not RSVP. This morning I found an email from Marci asking if we are coming, that it's been too long since we've seen each other, signed "love." I have no hard feelings toward her at all.

In the larger world of searching and adoption reform, this incident is small potatoes. So what if my feelings are out of joint? Or even if this is the end of a friendship? This too will pass. I'm just venting today to friends who read this blog. You have to put aside the personal happenings and insults if you believe in a larger cause, one that you know is just and right, even when it seems everyone is against you. I know I sound hopelessly petty today, please forgive me, but I'm feeling blue.

Here is what I emailed Marci.

Dear Marci--

The conversation with Aston about adoption hurt deeply and has stayed with me and I would feel really uncomfortable coming to the party. Being a birth mother entails lifelong pain. It isn't something that happens once and you get over it. I have turned that into lifelong crusade both for opening sealed birth records for adopted people and the rights of mothers to find out what happened to the children they gave up. Aston's attack that night was therefore an attack on who I am so it is very hard for me now to know how to relate to him at all. It's also becoming increasingly awkward for Tony because of ------Foundation.

I tried to explain my feelings to Aston in a subsequent email but he never responded.

I'm very sorry because we have known each other for a long time--actually since before we had Tony or Aston in our lives. I don't know where we go from here.

This is one of those days I wish I didn't live in interesting times.
--lorraine

PS: In a day or two we'll be writing about international adoption.

Unsung Heroes? --Then why did I feel like a slut?

Well, I just discovered what an unsung hero I am: I gave my daughter up for adoption! According to Gloria Whitcraft, director of Shepherd's Gate, a Lutheran adoption agency in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that is what my "selfless" act made me. Holy cow, I didn't know I was such a saint. Writing in the Fort Wayne, Indiana News-Sentinel, Ms. Whitcraft, says that women who turn over their babies to total strangers are making the"most loving and selfless things anyone could ever do."

Expletive! #@$!!!%$

If that's the case, then how come when I first met my daughter and we did some "play acting" about how she felt about being given up for adoption--excuse me, being made a part of an adoption plan--one of the first things she did is put her hands around my neck and pretend to choke me? If my decision was so loving and selfless, why wasn't she grateful? Answer me that, Ms. Whitcraft. My daughter was raised in a religious, stable, hard-working two-parent family of six in a middle-class neighborhood. She wanted for nothing materially. She had three brothers. She loved and relied on her adoptive mother. She even said she understood how she came to be given up to be adopted, but still--well, let's just say the girl had issues.

Ms. Whitcraft goes on to decry that often women who are surrendering their babies do not receive support from "family, friends and society" for considering such a terrific option. Progress! These family members sound like they have figured out what happens what someone is given up for adoption--the whole family loses a member, the first mother will most likely grieve all her life, and the kid...goes up to total genetic strangers who don't understand why he isn't a whiz in math like the rest of the family who scored perfect 800s in the math SATs. I know I'm getting a little cranky here, but the kind of BS that your editorial postulates is what is wrong today when adoption is considered simply an alternate way of making a family.

Although Ms. Whitcraft says she and her trusty band of adoption operatives never --no, non, nien, nyet, niec--never "pressure them into a decision" that leads to adoption, she is so gung-ho about the unsung heroes that we first mothers are, her words ring hollow. It's likely that as the number of selfless mothers goes down, Shepherd's Gate doesn't have enough sheep to tend, and then there goes her job. As for the prospective parents who don't want mothers pressured, I suspect that at least some of their magnanimity has to do with not wanting to have a mother who changes her mind and ends up in court fighting to get her child back. Look, I don't think every adoption social worker is Attila the Hun, or every prospective adopter a member of the hordes pillaging our young women for their babies, but I do not buy this kind of blatant advertisement to encourage adoption wrapped up in pious, self-righteous prose.

Ya' all might want to comment at the site of this nefarious editorial and leave us a word below. And thanks to Maybe for alerting us. Thanks

Heidi Hess Saxton continued

Heidi Hess Saxton Continued

Catholic adoptive mother Heidi Hess Saxton contends that adoption is the answer for “children born to young teens … children of parents with unresolved substance abuse or domestic violence issues; and children of abusive and neglectful parents.” Sealed records are a necessary component of adoption (Catholic Exchange http://catholicexchange.com/2008/11/11/114414/). To those who disagree she hurls the epithet “anti-adoption.” To which I echo Lorraine “Damn straight we're anti-adoption--unless really really necessary and even then those birth records better be open from the get-go.” http://www.firstmotherforum.com/2008/11/thats-what-adoption-is-fornot-on-svu.html

Saxton admits that adoption is not a perfect answer: It “does not completely shield the child from the consequences of her first parents’ choices. There is no way to shield the child entirely — that is the nature of sin.”

Sounds like a win/win situation – heal the child (well almost) and punish the sinful parents in one fell swoop. Except that children are not chameleons who can adapt to any environment. Except that many children raised by teen parents do just fine and lots of children raised by adoptive parents have horrible outcomes. Except that people who seek to adopt don’t want the offspring of young teens, drug abusers, and other unworthies.

If the parents don’t give up their child or “fix their own messes”, Saxton asserts the child should be removed involuntarily. This happens now, often with disastrous results. According to The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (www.nccpr.org) “many children taken from their homes and placed in foster care don’t need to be there. These children could have been safely kept in their own homes…. Being taken from everything loving and familiar is among the worst emotional blows that any child can suffer. ... In addition, there is far more abuse in foster care than generally realized.”

If Saxton looked around, she would see countless examples of successful people born to single mothers: Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Oprah Winfree, Jesse Jackson, Ethel Waters to name just a few. Countless others were raised by single mothers, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton for example. Indeed I would put them up any day against George Bush who was raised in what Saxton would consider an ideal home.

And of course adoption is no guarantee that a child will be raised in a stable two parent home. Passing muster with a social worker at the time of the adoption to become parents is no guarantee of a being good parents for a lifetime. Like other parents, they may divorce, suffer from alcoholism, or become unemployed. Adoption may actually precipitate these problems. Adoptive parents can turn into terrible parents who shouldn't be raising any children, let alone someone else's.

Adoption is not a quick fix to social problems. If Saxton were truly committed to helping children, she would support programs that keep children in their own homes rather than trying to justify destroying the families nature created.

Cuckoo Birds

Last week I borrowed a book from the library that wasn't my usual read; I wanted light, and this book, a suspense thriller with Russians and Wall Street corruption, seemed safe. Restitution is a debut novel by Lee Vance, a graduate of Harvard Business School and a retired [retired at 45 judging from the book jacket photo] general partner of Goldman Sachs Group living in New York City with his wife and three kids. I'll insert an apology here to FMF fans who are weary of reading about adoption themes in movies and television series for the past few weeks. I had put the soapbox in storage, but then I started reading a formulaic, banal whodunit that, combined with the full moon and raging hormones, turned into a perfect emotional storm. I lost yet another day of productivity and even a half day of work because once again, I was blindsided by...stupidity? insensitivity? ignorance?

Here's the plot summary offered by Restitution's publisher:

"Peter Tyler appears to have it all -- a loving wife, a powerful
job on Wall Street, a sprawling house in the suburbs. But in a
moment of weakness, Peter indulges in a one-night stand with a
beautiful trader. A few weeks later, his house is broken into
and his wife brutally murdered. When the police discover Peter's
infidelity, he immediately goes from grieving husband to prime
suspect. Suddenly, it's up to Peter to prove his own innocence
and find his wife's killer. Written with ferocity and at a lightning
pace, Restitution marks the debut of an intelligent and exciting
new novelist."

One-third of the way into the book, the reader learns that Peter and his wife of 16 years have tried in vain to conceive, but she's waited too long. IVF treatments aren't working. The couple is in a therapist's office, where Jenna [the wife] felt it was the safest place to tell her husband she wanted to adopt a child. I sent the following e-mail to Lorraine a few days ago:

"I've been on a downward spiral for the past 24 hours and this didn't help...So she wants to adopt. Her husband's against it, something his father told him when he was younger about cuckoo birds: They lay their eggs in other birds' nests. After the baby cuckoo's born, it pushes the natural hatchlings out so it can have all the food. The adult birds don't notice. They go right on feeding the baby cuckoo as if it were their own. Adult birds want baby birds. A baby cuckoo might seem better than an empty nest. But all the care and feeding the world isn't going to make a cuckoo a songbird. Nature always trumps nurture in the end." [This tale was in reference to childhood neighbors taking in a twelve-year-old foster child who was led out of the house in handcuffs by the police. Nature trumps nurture, but not in my case.]

Later this couple is in the wife's therapist's office, where the wife confesses she wants to adopt and he's blindsided by the sneak attack. He says, "It's not my fault we're in this situation. I'm not the one who decided to wait, and I'm not the one with a fertility problem. And yet you blame me because I won't let you compound your mistake. So once and for all, here are my views on adoption: I don't want a three-year-old with fetal alcohol syndrome. I don't want a baby who was shaken, or born addicted to crack, or has HIV. I don't want a kid some Chinese farmworkers threw away like a melon, or to go to sensitivity training so I can learn how difficult it is for our black child to grow up in a privileged white family. I don't want a kid whose parents were fundamentalist Christian hypocrites, or a fifteen-year-old checkout girl at the local supermarket and her bald forty-eight-year-old manager. I don't want a kid who's a f*****g loser. Are those enough words? Do you understand me now?"

I ended my screed with "Improper Adoptee would love to be called a kid who's a f****g loser." And, sadly, the statement isn't that far off base. With a few keystrokes, this author managed to attack, heck--emotionally maim--birthparents, adoptive parents, and adoptees alike. Anyone slammed by adoption knows we're all losers; it's one of very few human dynamics based on loss.

I wondered where the author mined those gems. Is he an adoptee? Did he languish in the foster care system as a youth? Does he have friends who wrestled with infertility? Is he an adoptive parent who went through the wringer trying to fill an empty nest? I'm guessing the latter, and he's not the only one.

My former best friend wouldn't consider adoption because it was dicey, but she had a kinder, gentler way of expressing the character's sentiments. After lots of trial and error, her son was conceived in a petri dish when she was 44 and now they're a happy little family. And when Judasina, my back-stabbing sister who continues to have a relationship with my daughter while I'm exiled to the island of first-mothers-who-aren't-mothers, [this is third party info so I can't vouch for veracity] asked if my daughter would consider adoption (recently diagnosed cervical cancer ends her dream of having a third child) she, the perfect grade A Mercedes Benz of babies relinquished to adoption, replied that her [adoptive] mother was very lucky, but she wouldn't want to chance it because "you never know what you're gonna get." To her credit, she also added she wouldn't want to subject another mother to the heartache I've endured. Maybe life as a crackwhore would have been easier and nobler after all.

The initial SOS e-mail to Lorraine was prompted by yet another e-mail announcement from Adoption News Service for a single adoptive parent conference in Boston. It described the hotel's wonderful amenities and program, but I reacted like a bull seeing red cloth when I saw "Single Adoptive Parent." As I said, combined with the full moon, raging hormones, and overall inability to shake off the temporarily negative wheel of karma, I just felt ripped off. After reading those charming fictitious yet laser-sharp words about adoption, surely at least one reader feels the same.

"Adoption Reform?" Not really. Just the same old story

I sent the following today to Adoption-News-Service, which supposedly is about "adoption reform," as it states on the bottom.

"Could you please enlighten me as to how this announcement--which I seem to have received six times already--relates to 'adoption reform'? It has nothing to do with 'adoption reform.' It has to do with adoption. If I continue to get these kinds of emails, what is the point of being on this list?"

If others agree with me, please leave a note here--and then respond to them directly. I've had it with these noxious invitations to help adopters deal with the "challenging process that feels like an emotional roller coaster." I seriously doubt they want me to show up, and talk about my daughter's difficulties, her adoptive mother's seeming actual dislike of Jane, the various symptoms of neurotic behavior that show up with greater frequency among adopted people. See Adoptees More Likely to be Troubled in Time magazine. Bring this up at a conference about adoption, as I did last year, and you will be hushed almost immediately.

I understand that prospective adopters have real issues and fears to deal with--this child is after all, not carrying their DNA and who knows what that could mean!--but please, do firstmothers want to be reminded of this? Walk in our shoes for a day. Maybe Adoption News Service could send out invitations to all on their list to attend group therapy sessions for women and teenagers considering giving up their children for adoption.

THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE FROM ANS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ADOPTION REFORM. PLEASE LET THE ADMINISTRATOR OF ANS KNOW.

Email: Adoption-News-Service@yahoogroups

In a message dated 11/06/08 19:01:10 Eastern Standard Time, Adoption-News-Service@yahoogroups.

Title:		PRE ADOPTION SUPPORT GROUP
Date:		Thursday November 13, 2008
Time:		7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Location:		JCC of Manhattan, 76th and Amsterdam Ave
Notes:		PRE ADOPTION SUPPORT GROUP Adopting a child can be a challenging process that feels like an emotional roller coaster. JCCA’s Ametz Adoption Program PRE-ADOPTION SUPPORT GROUP is there to help future parents navigate the waiting period in a warm and supportive environment with others struggling with similar challenges. The experienced group leader, and adoptive mother herself, really understands both the practical and psychological demands of adoption. Come share experiences and get answers with someone who not only knows that success is absolutely attainable, but can provide the guidance and support to make the wait easier. If you have any questions or would like to register for one of these groups, please call JCCA at 212-558-9949 or visit our website www.jccany.org/ametz to register. We look forward to your joining us.
Get reminders on your mobile, Yahoo! Messenger, and email. Adoption-News-Service is a broadcast-only list that posts legislative activity, media coverage and conference information pertaining to adoption reform. It is (thankfully!) member-driven. The moderator reserves the right to approve the forwarding of messages sent to the list. Conversational messages need to be sent directly to the individual who posted the notice, not to the list itself :-).

Happy Adoption Day

Oh, who would have guessed? Who could have seen? Who could have possibly known?
All these roads we have traveled, the places we’ve been would have finally taken us home.

And it’s here’s to you and three cheers to you! Let’s shout it, “Hip, hip hip, hooray!”
For out of a world so tattered and torn, you came to our house on that wonderful morn.
And all of a sudden this family was born. Oh, happy Adoption Day.

I first heard this song (now a children’s book), Happy Adopton Day, November 4, 2001. I was participating in a Sunday service at my former Unitarian Church--on my birthday--along with an adult Korean adoptee with a not-so-favorable view of adoption, another adult adoptee frustrated by her lack of information regarding her roots, and adoptive parents. I knew the adoptees from my support group; we were all on the same page regarding adoption.

After a very emotional service—a photographer from NJ’s largest newspaper had taken a photo of me embracing the Korean woman where we appear to be smiling and laughing when in fact we were sobbing and comforting one another—we closed with this song. The adoptees and I looked at one another in disbelief and we stopped singing and just stood there in silent solidarity.

As National Adoption Month gained momentum over the past several years I’d start bracing myself around the end of October for the onslaught of warm and fuzzy adoption stories and the “A Home for Holidays” television special sponsored by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. I’m sure readers know that the late Thomas, founder the Wendy’s hamburger chain, was an adoptee. The show has been hosted by Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow (who is now an adoptive mother), and Rod Stewart. I realize while I’m not thrilled with the institution and wish it could be eradicated like polio, it does have its place. Being a responsible blogger, I did some homework; here’s what I discovered from About.com:

In 1976, the governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, announced an Adoption Week for his state. Later that same year President Gerald Ford proclaimed that Adoption Week would be celebrated nationally. As more and more states started to participate in Adoption Week it became clear that more time was needed for holding events and in 1990 National Adoption Week became National Adoption Month.

Today National Adoption Month is celebrated during the month of November. The celebration usually includes National Adoption Day with courthouses throughout the nation participating and hundreds of adoptions being finalized simultaneously.

National Adoption Month is a time to celebrate family and to bring about awareness that there are hundreds of thousands of children in foster homes awaiting adoption. States, communities, and agencies hold events during the month to bring the need for families into public view.

How about that? NAM has been around for as long as I’ve been a member of the birthmother sisterhood! It wasn’t created by Dave Thomas; it was started by a Yankee politician!

More importantly, it’s not about separating newborns from their mothers who may not be prepared for the emotional and financial responsibility required to care for their child; National Adoption Month is designed bring awareness to the fact that there are far too many children in foster care who need permanent homes in stable loving families. That’s terrific, really. For the past few years the Heart Gallery, a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to raising awareness about foster children available for adoption here in NJ, has worked with some of the country's most prestigious photographers to create portraits that capture the individuality and spirit of each foster child who is eligible to be adopted. These photographs are then shared via the web and through gallery exhibits in the hope that potential families will be moved to inquire about adoption.

These are kids who have been in the state foster care system system for years, some since birth who have never had a permanent home. Many have lived in several foster homes all their young lives while their parents battle with substance abuse,mental illness,or even prison. I attended the opening exhibit and can attest to the power of the program, which has resulted in happy endings for several children. I even met some of the kids featured in the exhibit; they’d melt your heart. I spoke to some of the photographers and they said they wished they could have adopted their subjects; perhaps some of them did.

For the first time in seven years I’m not dreading National Adoption month; nor should you. If your library doesn’t have its collection of adoption books and movies prominently displayed, nudge them. People like to be informed and enlightened; who wouldn’t enjoy reading The Girls Who Went Away, right? Just don’t ask me to sing Happy Adoption Day.

Forced to be a Father

The other day Dr. Phil did a show called Forced To Be a Father, about dads who feel tricked into fatherhood. The two guys on the show were very angry they have to pay child support because they say they feel no connection with these children they didn't intend to have. One was a guy in Michigan who says his girlfriend said she was using birth control, and couldn't get pregnant, so he didn't use a condom, and then, bingo! pregnant she was.

He wanted the mother to give up the child for adoption. She did not. So now he pays $500 a month. When asked how he felt about the child, he said that he felt no more connection than would a mother who gave up a child for adoption.

Well.

You can see that comments do not pick up on that remark, but let's join the party and hit that hard.

The other reluctant father was a family guy who found out two years after that the one night he spent with an ex resulted in a child, and a paternity test proved that he indeed was the father. He has two other young kids with his wife. The wife is quite bitter over the $350 a month in child support they pay, and this father also does not want to see his child. Feminist attorney Gloria Allred argued that these fathers are not taking the child into consideration, and, should they so choose, could ask for, or sue for, visitation rights. But neither of these guys were heading in that direction.

Maybe they will soften in time, as happened in the case of a friend who is the mother. She had given up her first born, and when she got pregnant unintentionally sixteen years later, she decided to have the child and raise him. As a single parent. The man's mother did act as a grandmother, and eventually the father came into the picture, has a good relationship with his son, and I believe, paid for his college education.

Back to Dr. Phil. The show ended on a huge upnote when the actor/comic Jay Thomas (the love interest of Candice Bergen on her old show) told of his warm relationship with a son who had been given up for adoption twenty years earlier. Thomas said that he was initially dubious when the son contacted him (the young man's first mother made the first phone call), but after talking to him agreed to see him in a public place. Thomas invited his son to a show he was doing, and asked his best friend to sit next to his son. The friend told him afterward that it had been like sitting next to you twenty years ago!

Within two weeks, Thomas said, the young man--who wants to be a singer, and has just done an album--was house sitting for them, knew his other two, much younger, kids (eight and six, as I recall) and ... all was well. All was, in fact, great! He has so much in common with his son! His wife said, let's not tell the kids yet, let's go to therapy and do it that way. But Thomas, at a two-for-one margarita night/afternoon where he happened to be with the oldest child, blurted out the truth, and as soon as the child got home, told his brother, and all beans were spilled. It all worked out well for everyone.

The truth shall set you free. If only more first mothers--if only all first mothers and fathers--acted on that. Secrecy is what keeps many first/birth mothers from having a relationship. They have been lying so long with their secret, they are afraid to let the air in. I imagine that if I had never told my husband that I'd had a child, and she contacted me, I would freak out. If I tell him now, my thinking would be, it's an admission that I have been lying by omission for more than twenty years.

Dr. Phil's show that day ended on such an upnote--the kid looks like Thomas, you could see how they were kidding around that they got along famously--and I can only assume that it would encourage more people either to have the courage to either search for their first parents, or accept into their lives the child relinquished.

It's well worth watching the show at the site above, and do post a comment about that stupid, uninformed comment from the guy who resents his child.

Be well, stay warm. We're switching from oil to gas (cleaner and eventually cheaper) and it's taken a month so far. The gas company was supposed to be here today...but no such luck. At least it hasn't been too cold. Yet. I'm wearing several layers and drinking hot water with lemon. Life is so much worse in so many places in the world. I think of Afghanistan,where I support a "sister" through Women for Women International.

--lorraine

"God's Will?" I don't think so.

Just a short note here responding to a post from UnsignedMasterpiece about God's Will in this business we have unhappily found ourselves as mothers without children and children seeking first mothers:

You hear a lot of talk about God and adoption and I always wonder where "God's plan" has gone when things go wrong,...You never hear anyone referring to how God meant them to have this experience then.

I just can't buy that it was "God's will" that I got pregnant at a time and place when I had to give up my daughter to strangers...they loved her, yes, as well as they could, but both her epilepsy and her being given up put a huge traumatic burden upon her and in the end, she was not able to cope with it all. How can it possibly be "God's will" that we who have lost our children in the closed system of adoption never fully get over it? How can it be "God's will" that we are the "reproductive agents" for some other family? How can it be "God's will" that many of those same adoptees spend their lives looking for their first parents?

If there is such a God, he or she is a pretty nasty piece of work. At times when I hear people talk about God's will in relationship to losing a child to adoption, I find that I just turn away. I was raised in another time--the Forties and Fifties--and wasn't supposed to have sex when I wasn't married. Okay, you can say I sinned when I had that sex with my daughter's father, and the result was conception, but is there no reprieve from this hell on earth? If there is a God, why can he give us no solace? The Republicans talk about "making adoption easier" in their manic quest to make abortions more difficult (or impossible), but they have not walked in our shoes. If they had, they would not be talking this way, nor would web sites offer "a beautiful adoption experience." To give away your own flesh and blood is hell, plain and simple.

There is this quote from Euripedes that I think sums up what we read on this blog:

“No man lives happy to the end of his life. Or avoids his share of bad luck. We inherit grief merely by being born.” --Euripides.

Amen.

--lorraine

Heart to Heart

I spent the weekend before last in Denver with a charming group of about 30 mothers who came together for a few days to share their stories, their pain, and their hopes. These women met through an online support group, Heart To Heart (hearttwoheart@yahoogroups.com), and have been coming together each year since 2003. Next year H2H, as they refer to it, will meet in Boston.

Many of the women were younger than I; a few young enough to be my daughter. Some had forged strong relationships with their excised child although others had been rejected and one had not been able to find her child. The younger women did not appear to have the same “hang up” about being pregnant “out of wedlock“ that women of my generation had.

Their reasons for surrendering their infants, however, were the same. “Don’t come home with that baby,” they were told. “If you love your child, you will give him away.” “You’re too young to be a mother.” "You’ll forget and get on with your life.”

The H2H agenda was simple: A trip to the mountains with great views of the rocky peaks when the clouds parted; an afternoon ceremony honoring ourselves for the births of our children; and a buffet dinner. We received small mementos including three CDs with songs of motherhood and empowerment. “Lullaby” by the Dixie Chicks; “I Will Remember You” by Sarah McLachlan; “Mother and Child Reunion” by Paul Simon; and many others.

It was a sweet and sad day.

Sweet because these women were so supportive; they put aside inevitable personality conflicts to comfort each other.

Sad because their presence was a reminder that the carnage of adoption is continuing. I wish I had known these women before they signed away their children so I could have warned them. Would they have listened to me? I question whether I would have listened to Lorraine or Carol Schaefer or Meredith Hall or Pat Taylor or any of the other mothers who preceded me. I fear that we mothers are modern day Cassandras, doomed to tell the truth but never to be believed.


PS Regarding Linda’s post, I knew another mother whose sister cozied up to her daughter and the two of them cut her out. The sister’s reason may have been jealousy; she never married and had no children. The daughter may have been using the sister to get back at her mother. It was also a way for the daughter to maintain a connection with her birth family without conceding anything.

this Birth Mother Is Uncomfortably Numb

Since I joined the virtual world nine years ago I’ve referred to some of the citizens as walking wounded, i.e., most people are in chat rooms, blogging, etc. because they’re striving, seeking, finding. Honestly, all is well in my world and I’m considered a happy, upbeat person, except when it comes to my life as a firstmother. Last week while I marked my daughter’s birthday I was thinking about this passage from The Giver, a futuristic young adult book by Lois Lawry that I read in the aftermath of 9/11:

Lily sighed. I hope to get assigned to be a Birthmother.”
“Lily!” Her mother spoke very sharply. “Don’t say that. There’s very little honor in that Assignment. The birthmothers never even get to see the new children.”

Very little honor indeed. And a simple phone call to my sister this morning was a grim reminder that in the world of adoption, we birthmothers are merely, to borrow a phrase from Lorraine’s July blog entry, “reproductive agents.”

I phoned my sister, Judasina (the name Lorraine and I call her, you’ll see why in a moment), to ask her if she wanted to join me for a Sunday drive to a craft show, and we caught up on the past week’s events. She knew from her daughter, my beloved niece, that I had sent myself a bouquet on my daughter’s birthday. She knows that’s always a difficult day for me and she leaves me alone until she’s given the all clear sign. I told her I had discovered my daughter’s address but that I wouldn’t use it because I didn’t want to upset or anger my daughter any more than I have, but that it was a comfort to me to have the information.

And then my sister confessed what I knew all along, she’s been in touch with my daughter over the past several months. This soap opera began over three years ago, up to and during my daughter’s wedding. My sister basically usurped my role…she met my daughter’s adoptive mother before I had the chance, despite knowing what a huge moment that was for me. She’s visited my daughter, who lives several states away, and bounced my grandson on her knee, yet I’ve never seen a photo of either of my grandsons, let alone told about their births (like everything else over the past three and one-half years, I discovered that information on the Internet) While my daughter has cut off all contact with me, she sends my sister photos of her two young boys (whom I jokingly refer to as my sister’s grandchildren), they e-mail occasionally, and apparently they tried to have a clandestine get together this past summer while my daughter had a month-long stay at the family home at the Jersey shore. My sister’s back stabbing and secrecy over the past several years has earned her the moniker Judasina. Suffice to say her ongoing relationship with my daughter (she’s not the firstmother so it’s OK to connect) has caused me a lot of heartache and long estrangements from my sister, and my sister ceased being my confidante long ago.

So, while I calmly let my sister share all the details of my daughter’s life, she saved the best for last: my daughter was recently diagnosed with cervical cancer. There’s absolutely no history of cancer on either side of her birthfamily, so I suspect it may be stress-induced. When I heard the words “cervical cancer,” all I said was, “that’s a shame,” as though my sister was talking about a work colleague, or an acquaintance.

I went to my craft show, did some errands, and by mid-afternoon I was just dumbfounded. If my daughter is so angry, so hurt, so overwhelmed that she can’t share serious health news with me, then I’m screwed. She really, really doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. I know and understand adoptees' struggle, but this—not being able to tell me she has a serious, life threatening illness, is just more than I can bear. One of the comments in my previous post told me to keep fighting, but I have no fight left in me.

I was going to send my grandson a first birthday gift this week, but decided against it. Jane commented in the previous post, perhaps we’re being spiteful. NO! This is self-preservation; I need to protect what’s left of my heart.

When my daughter’s first son was born, I--crazed, stalker birthmother than I am--phoned hospitals in my daughter’s city, and I found her on the second attempt. My sister, unable to keep the news to herself, told me she was having a Caesarian and the scheduled date. I just wanted to know that mother and child were well, and was it a boy or girl. Before I had a chance to react, the receptionist connected me to her room. My daughter answered the phone, and all I could say after not hearing her voice for nine months was..."Congratulations. And what did we have?”
It took her several moments to recognize my voice, and all she said was “Thanks for calling,” and hung up. I immediately sent an-email to Lorraine that I felt as though my heart was cryogenically frozen and it shattered into thousands of shards. Thankfully, I don’t feel anywhere near that at the moment, actually, I don’t feel much at all, and that hurts even more. I’m not angry, I’m not sad, I’m not wistful. I’m just numb.

Increasing Adoptions Act....NOT

A new law designed to help states cope with foster care has some good provisions--it encourages greater efforts to keep siblings together, for instance, but it appears that it might also streamline the process for parental rights to be terminated. As the AP notes, it has "enhanced adoption incentives," which is the kind of language that gives me the creepy-crawlies.

From the AP story:

"As encouragement to the states, the bill calls for doubling the per-child bonuses they receive for placing foster children in adoption. Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, says this could aggravate an already worrisome phenomenon.

That means an even greater incentive for quick-and-dirty, slipshod placements, for placements more likely to disrupt, and for the creation of more legal orphans, as states rush even faster to terminate parental rights," Wexler said in an e-mail."

But what does the bill not do? It does not take on the worrisome problem of combating neglect and abuse so fewer children are removed from their families in the first place. There is not one penny for keeping families together.

The name of the new act says it all:

Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act

I know that adoptions are necessary, and in some circumstances good, but we need to encourage keeping families together, and whether that means helping the parents reform, giving them more financial aid, or whatever, the country is going down the wrong road on this. A friend's sister adopted a baby from a fully-formed family in Rhode Island a couple of years ago. That was pitiful--the story I heard was that poverty was the reason the child was available. So somewhere in Rhode Island there is a family--a mother, a father, siblings--who have lost a member of their kin. I wonder how often the mother thinks about the child when she sets the table.

Then I recall that gee-chucks Sarah is in favor of "adoption made easier."

You betcha I'm going to oppose that. You betcha.

On Guard: Adoptive Parent Approaching

My life is totally surrounded by adoption. Maybe because I live in the demographic (though I am slightly older than this) of women who had careers, delayed conception, were unable to conceive in their late thirties when they got around to trying, and then ended up adopting. This means that I almost never can go to a party of say, twenty or thirty people, without there being one or two adoptive couples present. Some of them are relatively good friends that I see often enough so that ADOPTION is not the first thing that comes to mind when they walk in.

But then, one friend's (an adoptive mother of a Chinese girl) college roommate is out for the weekend, and she too is an adoptive mother. With a kid as Irish-looking as they come who is being raised in a quite different religion. And bang, I see her, and I think: adoptive parent, how is the child, do they know who the mother is, do they ever think about her? And I wonder if the first thing the woman thinks of when she sees me is that I am a birth/first mother. Who found her daughter. I wonder how her son is faring, is he interested in searching, and I pray that adoption never comes up that evening. And I am on some sort of edge until we say goodnight, and relieved that I got through the evening unscathed.

And there's another friend--the divorced dad of an adopted Chinese daughter--whose new girlfriend, in her late 30s, maybe even her 40s, wanted to have a kid but waited too long and now...she's shopping countries for a baby. Our friend tells my husband that you can either get in line at the countries that allow adoptions, albeit ever more slowly, or you can go to the head of the line at countries that have not yet allowed international adoptions but are thinking about it. That's the route she chose, and is applying for a child in Nepal, which has not yet opened up to foreign adoptions. Our friend and his fiancee are not getting married, in fact, because it will be easier for her to adopt as a single parent rather than as a couple, because then the father-to-be has a Chinese daughter from an earlier marriage. Incidentally, my friend is in every way a great divorced dad. (This is certainly a plot line for a soap.)

And another friend is Arthur, adoptive grandfather to Emily Prager's daughter, who moved to China with her daughter. And of course there's my somewhat tenuous but real connection to Brooks Hansen, author of the despicable but honest, The Brotherhood of Joseph. His parents live nearby, and are good friends of a friend, who used to have us to dinner together...until I introduced myself as a first mother who searched, found, had a relationship. And there's lots of other friends of friends....

Because I'm 66, many of our friends have children who are of child-bearing age, and when I hear that someone's daughter, or son, is having a baby, I cheer inside, because then I won't be faced with having to deal with yet another adoption, so close, so personal. I won't be drawn into conversations I don't want to have, and I won't be the subject of gossip I don't want to be.

I was reminded of all this by a piece in Newsweek this week about how American interest in foreign adoption is as strong as ever, but the number has dropped ten percent due to countries such as Russia, Guatemala and China dialing back their programs or ending them entirely. I don't really know how I feel about that because poorer countries have used their children as a cash crop, and that has led to all sorts of abuses (baby-stealing, kidnapping, extortion from poor women), but at the same time, a kid who might otherwise grow up in an orphanage anywhere is almost certainly better in a home with someone who cares. Yes, of course, there are abuses, and kids end up frozen in freezers, and sexually abused, but that has to be the exception.

So, am I alone is thinking ADOPTIVE PARENT, Be On Guard! whenever I encounter one? Or am I just obsessed...? Inquiring first mother wants to know.

--lorraine

Making "empowered" Choices...Not

Thanks to Joyce Bahr from Unsealed Initiative for sending this:

SUPPORTING PREGNANT TEENS TO MAKE EMPOWERED CHOICES

A Free Half-Day Training for Professionals

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

This conference is an integral component of the Options Awareness Project in Nassau County and enjoys the support of the Nassau County Department of Health and the County Executive’s Common Sense for the Common Good Initiative.The Project is coordinated by Spence-Chapin, a nonprofit adoption agency with a 100-year history in New York City and a significant presence in Nassau County. Spence- Chapin’s mission is to find adoptive homes for infants who need them, to promote understanding of adoption throughcounseling and public education, and to continuously strive to improve adoption practice.

Exactly what is an "empowered" choice for pregnant teens? Abortion? Keeping the baby? What do you think that the meaning of "empowered" would be at a conference sponsored by an adoption agency? Hmmm... I would guess that would be to make the "informed" choice to surrender your baby...not to keep it, because if you kept him/her, then how would the agency stay in business?

Yes, we would like to see the agency improve adoption practice by making it NON-EXISTENT EXCEPT IN THE MOST RARE CASES, where the parents abuse the children, where there is no possible other way, where there are no family members who can care for the children, and then we would like to see the adoption, with the force of law, be O-P-E-N.

If that is what Spence Chapin is promoting as "empowered" than I can support this conference...but somehow I don't think that is it. More likely it's a conference on how to make girls feel they are making the "right" decision by giving up their babies. Truly "empowered" would be counseling by first mothers who haven't gotten their lives back together the way the social workers said they would, so that those considering adoption could look at it from all perspectives; "empowered" would be enough aid from the government to be able to have good day care and food to take care of your baby and not give him or her up for adoption.

If Wall Street can go begging for aid from Congress, why not us? Oh, I see because we are not CEOs of financial corporations whose idea of hard times is to have to sell our art work worth millions, or unload that house in Hamptons in a down market.

Any readers who feel they made an "empowered" choice when they relinquished, please post a comment. Firstmother would be interested in hearing your thoughts. And first mother will not argue with you. Adoption, we know, adoption is always painful.

--lorraine (feeling feisty this morning)

Conflict Is Built into Adoption

"In all of us is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are, and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning, no matter what our attainments in life, there is a most disquieting loneliness."

This quote from Alex Haley is what inspired a 62-year-old adoptee in North Carolina, Raye Hedden, to search and find her natural/biological parents. Though reunion stories are rife today, this quote caught my eye because it sums up everything about the need to know. Contrast that with the comments from singer/actress Kristen Chenoweth, also adopted, and a memoir in progress, A Little Bit Wicked, about why she has not searched. In the interview Chenoweth says she gets sick of people pointing out that Brangelina have adopted children; that's she tired of the pressure to search and:

One thing it's [the book] not about is the search for her birth parents. "It's actually kind of the opposite, about what it's like not to do that, and what it's like not to have that family history, but to connect with the people who raised you," Chenoweth said.

"There's so much pressure," Chenoweth said. "Every time I meet somebody, and they say, 'You're adopted — have you found your birth parents yet?'

"If you met my parents, you'd know, (Chenoweth) is so their kid. I mean, we don't look alike. If I'm going to be honest, they're tall, brunette, they can't sing. They're engineers."

Asked about her brother, she said, "He should never, ever sing. Not ever."

When it was suggested that her family probably wonders sometimes where someone like her came from, she nodded. "I talk about that. I talk about like a little bit of depression that happened in my life and where that came from, and rosacea, and just things that people who aren't adopted know about."

Adoption-reform pioneer Florence Fisher, who remains a good friend, talks about "good adoptees," who tow the line, do everything possible to make their adoptive parents happy and...not do anything to offend them in any possible way. It sounds like they are afraid of losing their parents' love. Sounds like Chenoweth.

How sad. How pathetic. How unreal, but then, that is their reality.

In the years that I knew my daughter, Jane, before she committed suicide last December, I often would be so aware of her not being able to freely connect with me because of hurting her other mother. The first time Jane visited us, we spent the day shopping for clothes for school for her at Macy's (The world's biggest store! In New York City!), had dinner with my husband at Benihana, which we thought she would enjoy, and then went to see Evita on Broadway. She was fifteen.

She was non-nonplussed and didn't seem to like the show--even though we had first row balcony seats. Okay, I thought, maybe it's not her cup of tea.

But later, years later, she confessed that she only did that because she was having such a good time that day she felt disloyal to her other parents. One can truly understand the conflict, but it's sad. Sad that she could not be free to be loved and feel loved by both sets of parents. (My husband was not her father, but he took on the role of step-father rather easily, and that's how she saw him.)

And this again came into play when she stopped talking to me after her adoptive mother said at the funeral of her eldest biological son: "He was my favorite."

Jane barely spoke to me for a year. She needed to prove that she was worthy of her adoptive mother's love and the way to do that was to cut me out of her life. It was a hard time.

--hugs to every single adoptee out there reading. We first mothers are sometimes so screwed up ourselves that we can't connect with you...of course I'd like to give all those rejecting first mothers a smack on the head...but that's another post.

--lorraine