It would have been better, I’ve now decided, not to have become friends with the quite lovely couple who are adopting my children’s brand-new baby sister.
It would have been better because watching them, even from a distance, is increasingly uncomfortable in a way that makes me feel like a very very bad example of a human being. A smarter person would turn away from those emotions or not expose herself to the possibility of experiencing them in the first place, but as has been demonstrated more times than I can count over four and a half years of blogging, I am not a smart person.
That’s why I keep searching for some inexplicable thing in the masses of group emails and Facebook messages that stream past me and on to the new parents. In all the offers of congratulations, proclamations of how “very lucky” this baby is and talk of “blessings” and “meant to be” I would so love to see some acknowledgment of the birth mother’s role in bringing forth this very lucky blessing who was meant to be. But in every message she is absent, just as absent as I found her in the photos I took directly after the birth where her face in every shot was eclipsed by a cheese-covered child or a beaming new parent. She no longer exists. Her role is over and no mention is made other than the suggestion that this baby is “very lucky” because she is away from her less than ideal first family.
In a traditional pregnancy, the woman carrying the child is coddled. She is fretted and fussed over because she is growing someone else’s brain. She is making bones by the power of her own body and whatever fairy-dust the universe contributes to the equation (as well as, you know, sperm), and in a wanted pregnancy this is a big fucking deal. In a pregnancy which ends with the mother raising her child the attention passes from belly to infant and the mother is left to bask in the reflected glow. I remember that transition. I remember quite painfully clearly how odd it felt to go from the focus of all happy attention to a second thought. But I had an infant to take care of and a modicum of maturity. Any feelings of loss were quickly put aside.
But in a young woman who possesses neither child nor maturity but instead owns ten lifetime’s worth of repeated, brutal loss, how hard must this loss hit? How must it feel to be the center of the fretting, fussing and coddling one week and the next, dispossessed of her burden, to be nothing more than the one the meant-to-be-blessing is “very lucky” to be away from?
Is it any wonder that she keeps falling pregnant?
I think the silence comes from the desperate fear that the birth mother will change her mind and take back the precious gift that they have been given or that the child will turn from them and return to his or her ‘rea’ parents. I was 5 when I was adopted and 27 years later I still haven’t talked to my parents about how hard it must have been to deal with that. I know that it was there because even after 13 years my parents still feared that I would run away and return to the woman who I had never known but knew was my ‘real’ mother.
I think its a bit unfair to expect everyone to treat the adoption process just like you do. I’m sure that its a highly sensitive, personal, emotion thing to go through for all parties involved, and one can’t expect another family to deal with it and view the whole process in the same way that you have. If it really bothers you, then you can always hide their status updates.
It is very unfair of me, I know.
I have always considered these women considerably stronger than I. I do no have the capability to carry and deliver a child and then hand it to another woman….I simply do not. It would break me into a million pieces and I would be lost. I can not imagine the physical and emotional pain she is experiencing…bless her heart.
Interesting perspective on why she keeps getting pregnant.
I’m kind of at a loss to understand this whole thing, but it seems to me that the object, the goal of the adoptive parents is the child. Everything they do before the birth is in service to the child. I imagine they actively avoided getting attached to the birth mother because it’s too confusing and, as Da Biatch pointed out, scary to keep her in the picture.
Damn complicated situation. Everybody wins and yet no one does at the same time.
AAG, your strength, perspective and compassion are amazing.
I think you’re extremely smart, and it really sounds like you’re confusing openness of heart with stupidity here. From the things you’ve chosen to share with us, your readers, over the years, it does sound like you open yourself to similar chances to be hurt time after time, but please don’t think of that as stupidity!
Your willingness to love is something that seems so simple, and is often so difficult. Instead of dwelling on the choices this young woman has made, you look at the qualities she possesses, and view her with compassion instead of judgement, but that makes it possible for you to be hurt by other judgements, direct or indirect, about her. (Like how “lucky” this new sibling is to be taken from her.)
Thank you for continuing to share your thoughts and experiences with us. You have a gift for expressing yourself that I admire, even when the things you share are hard to read. (and if they’re hard for an uninvolved stranger to read, I can’t imagine how much harder they must be for you to go through!)
I think you’re an amazing example of a human being.
I was glad you included her in your pictures. To be honest, I was more interested in seeing her than the new parents. She’s a beautiful young woman whose eyes tell a million more stories than the ones I know.
It may be hippychick of me, but I sat in front of my altar the night I saw the pictures and said a little prayer to Kuan Yin to safeguard her heart as much as the new baby’s. Even if she does make bad decisions, even repeatedly, I cannot imagine it makes that separation one iota easier.
I wonder if it’s a misnomer to say “fall” pregnant too..
If this isn’t “politically correct” so be it–I am so fucking tired of adoptive “parents” insisting on a baby, preferably a newborn that they can project all their fantasies onto. “This is OUR baby!” Meanwhile there are literally hundreds of thousands of kids out there who would love to have a home with a mom and a dad but since they’re no longer that cute widdle baby they languish in the system and turn into screwed-up adolescents and adults. I know, as a pro-choice woman I shouldn’t pass judgement on others’ choices but situations like you describe get me. “Pro-lifers” always claim that adoption is the “nobler” choice but don’t consider the pain involved with carrying someone else within you for nine months then turning him/her over like a library book you have to return. And the title of this entry is apt because “The Handmaid’s Tale” remains the scariest book I’ve ever read. You’re right, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that N keeps getting pregnant because I would bet that during the pregnancies she received the only positive attention she’s ever gotten. What a mess.
I hear what you’re saying.
Do keep in mind, however, that often kids in foster homes don’t turn into screwed up adolescents. Sometimes they’ve already been very badly hurt by the time they are placed, and the resultant attachment disorders would require the love, patience and resources of an exceptional parent to manage.
I couldn’t have parented a child with an attachment disorder.