Speaking for us again

You know..... I see articles like this and I go through such a range of emotions. I want to scream, I want to cry, I want to punch somebody, I want to laugh, I just smh. Once again an adopter is speaking for us. Once again an adopter thinks she knows what we think, what we feel and what she thinks we should do - such as "move on" from our grief.

First of all, I wish they would stop calling us "birthmothers". They are mothers, I am a mother. Period. She writes of a mother's experience after giving birth....

"They may feel a surge of connection to him, as well as pride, sadness, and grief."

May feel? Ya think? Yeah, maybe she'll be sad that she's losing her first born child. Maybe, just maybe, she'll feel connected to this little person she just grew in her womb. The child she shares cells with, a child who carries her DNA, a child she's nurtured and loved within her body for the last 9 months. It's utterly baffling to me how people can make such statements. 

"Adoptive parents who experienced the grief of infertility may use that experience to empathize with their baby’s birth mother. One mother told her child’s birth mother at the delivery, “I am sorry you are going through so much pain. I wish I could go through labor for you.”

I've talked about this before and some people may not like what I have to say but.... gonna say it anyway. When grieving infertility the grief is real, it hurts, I get that and I'm not trying to minimize it but it's grieving what could have been- what will not happen. It's grieving an imaginary child, the child that will never be. When a mother is grieving the loss of her baby to adoption she is grieving the loss of an actual child- a living, breathing human being. They are both grief, they are both real but they are completely different. I don't know what it feels like to feel the grief of the infertile and I won't pretend to. An adopter who is infertile has no idea the level of grief a mother deals with. She can't grasp what it is to carry a child and feel that child kicking and moving within. She can't grasp the sacred connection a mother has to her own flesh and blood. She can try to empathize but she will never know. I appreciate an effort to empathize but not when she still feels entitled to take the baby from his mother.

"I wish I could go through labor for you"?  She says she cares so much about the mother that she wishes she could go through the labor for her. BS! If she cared so much about the mother she would ask that mother what she could do for her to clear whatever obstacles are in the way of that mother taking care of her own baby! But of course that won't happen. That would interfere with her being able to take that child from the mother. She says things like this so she can show concern but still she thinks she's entitled to take the baby home and raise him as her own.

"Following a period of emotional chaos and grief, most birth mothers reach a level of acceptance in their lives. As your child’s birth mother becomes more at peace with her decision, she may gain renewed energy for her current life, and more clarity about her role as a birth parent and her relationship to you."

Reach a level of acceptance? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. How does she know what most mothers do? Mothers don't reach acceptance, they learn to hide the grief, they learn to hold in the tears and let them go when no one is watching, they learn to function so they can go to work everyday. In an open adoption they learn to cover up and keep silent so the adopters don't see it and decide she shouldn't have contact with her child anymore. She learns to be the good girl so she can, if she's lucky, stay in the adopters good graces because they hold all the power.

"While each contact may reawaken some of her feelings of loss, most birth mothers report that these contacts help them to move on from the sadness and be more productive in their lives."

The loss isn't reawakened, it's always awake. Every minute of every day for the rest of a mother's life. That doesn't mean a mother doesn't have a productive and fulfilling life, even a happy one. It just means that the loss is always with her. The lost child is not replaced with the birth of more children or a fabulous career or anything else the mother might do. There is no getting around that and reunion doesn't fix it. You don't just "move on" from the loss of a child. 

And why do they feel the need to tell us to move on? Did they just move on from the loss of their fertility? Did they say- "well it wasn't meant to be that I have children so maybe I should focus on volunteering or fostering children"? No. They jump through hoops, pay a lot of money to the industry, have business cards made that they can hand out to pregnant women who aren't wearing wedding rings, hire people to design slick full color brochures advertising themselves as better than mothers who are poor, in a bad situation or are just unsure of themselves, place ads on Craigslist and use crowd funding to get other people to help them buy a baby. 

Adopters, please stop. Stop telling us to move on. Stop telling other adopters how to help mothers leave their children.

A PAP is asking....

I just read a blog post that made me smile. That's something I needed too. I've been having a hard time with the whole spirit of Christmas thing this year. Just not feeling it. The last few months have been an emotional struggle for a variety of reasons. That's why I haven't been posting here much. It's also why I haven't been reading much about adoption. There's only so much heartbreak I can handle before I have to take a step back, take a breather and then jump in again. Anyway, last night I finally got lights on the Christmas tree and my son and granddaughter come over to help me decorate. What a great time I had showing a little 18 month old how to put ornaments on the branches. Watching her toddle back and forth between the box of ornaments and the tree while learning to say the name of each one was such a kick! Nothing like an adorable little girl to light up my spirit again.

So back to the post that made me smile..... A PAP was asking where the babies are.

"We have her name picked out. We are ready to go. Except for one thing..... there are no babies up for adoption with either agency. There are not even any pregnant women/girls considering adoption with either agency. HUH????"

I think that's the first time I've read something adoption related that made me want to go woo hoo!! There are no babies available? The supply dried up? Excellent! I can just hear the agencies now...the demand is there so why aren't they producing? We have families here ready to give us a lot of money! Families have taken second mortgages, held fund raisers, borrowed and begged from friends and family, paid for advertising, did the home studies, taken cute photos with their dogs and picket fences, filled out tons of paperwork and yet there's no product to buy.

Yesterday someone asked me - but what about the couples who can't have children and want them? My response to my friend was "that doesn't entitle them to someone else's baby". So, what about those couples? They should have no bearing whatsoever on the issue of newborn infant adoption. I know that may sound harsh and my friend probably thought I sounded harsh too but as another friend said - "If someone lost their leg in an accident that doesn't mean it's someone else's job to cut off their leg and give it to them." Yes, there is a lot of pain for these waiting couples. I understand that and I'm sure most of them are perfectly wonderful and loving people. But, their wants do drive the market and the agencies are there ready and willing to give these couples that sense of entitlement. The agency is anxious to hold their hand and feign concern all the while taking lots of money from their other hand.

"I had a long conversation with my adoption coordinator last week. She is just as stunned in the low number of adoptions as we are. While I hope that number is lowering for positive reasons, it's hard to say. When I asked her what she thinks may be a contributing factor to such few children being placed for adoption, she said the MTV show "16 & Pregnant" is definitely NOT helping by glamorizing teen parents."

Really? Does she really think that a TV show is causing the number of available babies to drop? I also hope it's dropping for positive reasons. Reasons like better education about birth control, more people seeing through the lies of the agencies, more education about the damage that separating a mother and child does to both mother and child, more families stepping up and helping their family members, more people fighting for family preservation.

"Our only real conviction is that we are to adopt a GIRL. My dreams have been about a girl. I want another girl. Our boys want a girl. My baby girl wants a girl. My husband just wants me to be happy. So we are unanimous on the "girl" part."

It's all about what they want. Their wants have blinded them to the tragedy that's at the heart of how adoption comes about. Their gain begins with a terrible loss for an entire family. Wishing for babies to be free for adoption means wishing for other people to grieve for a lifetime. The news that there are no babies available at 2 agencies is sad for this woman but encouraging to me. It's another little something to lift my spirits this holiday season.

Resolve to keep talking

I learned about this organization Resolve - The National Infertility Association from a post on Facebook. They are lobbying to get tax credits for people suffering from infertility because the cost of treatment is so high. I find that a wee bit frustrating. Are there tax credits for those of us who have been through cancer? I'll be paying on those medical bills for years. Cancer is a life threatening crisis. Is infertility a life threatening crisis? They call it a crisis on the website. Now I'm not trying to minimize the pain that people feel when faced with this problem, yes I know it's painful, but how about a little perspective. The catastrophic and dramatic language that they use to get their point across can be a bit much. You're not going to die if you don't have a child.

Of course this group is also pushing adoption, it's all over the site. Adopters already get a huge tax credit to help them with the cost of adopting yet most natural mothers who surrender their infants are doing so because of lack of financial support. Why is that? If the adopters were really concerned about doing what they could to help children they would be adopting an older child from the foster care system who really does need a home. And....those adoptions cost very little if anything. Suppose a baby's natural parents aren't able to be there for the child and a family member is raising that baby. Where is the big tax credit for them? If they're really concerned about children why don't they do something to help single mothers instead of taking their children away from them? They don't because the adoption industry and groups like this push the adoption agenda which is of course money in their pockets and because they're more concerned about their own crisis of childlessness.

Resolve is having a family building conference next month. This is from the site....

So, You Want to be a Parent? Nothing can Stop You! The keynote speaker at Southwest Region’s 19th annual family building conference is Bill Grundfest, an award-winning writer and producer. “If what you want is to be a parent, nothing can stop you," Grundfest said. "And, once you are, the ‘how’ you became a parent will make no difference to anyone, least of all to you.” (bold my emphasis)

Well Mr. Grundfest, I beg to differ. Do you really think that if a couple become parents through infant adoption that it will make no difference to anyone?! How about the mother who will be grieving for her child for the rest of her life. How about the child who has been taken from his natural family, has been cut off from his history, has had his birth documents falsified, who as an adult is still treated like a child and not allowed to have his own personal records. What about all that?

When are adults going to start showing more concern for children and less for themselves? Everything I said above may sound like a broken record but every time I come across another site like this and attitudes like that of Mr. Grundfest I get pissed off all over again.