What did it feel like?

I’ve been open about birthmotherhood lately. I told a few people just in the last week. One person, a woman my age, turned out to be adopted and we had a long conversation about it.

This is what she asked: what did it feel like?

I couldn’t formulate thoughts on it. I copped out, and said I didn’t remember much. This is true, I don’t remember much. But I didn’t answer her question.

At first it didn’t feel like anything. I left the hospital, got into the car, went to the shore (it was January, but unusually balmy), slept for 15 hours straight, put together photo albums to bring when we went to their house to sign the papers.

I was in high spirits. I felt awesome about what I did.

It’s taken me some time to come to terms with how euphoric I felt. There wasn’t any doubt, not yet. I was sure I had turned the sourest lemons into the most splendid lemonade. And I was proud of myself. I sat on the beach and told my mom that I’d never have low self-esteem again.

I was gorging on adoption’s kool-aid. I bought into the happy ending fantasy. I believed I was giving myself a new life as well as giving the E the best of everything.

De-mothered. No one’s mother. Hit the reset button, reboot and start again. Motherhood erased. That’s how it was supposed to be.

My body had other plans. From the months immediately following placement I have fragmentary memories of panic and ache, imaginary injuries (I thought the epidural had caused a tumor to grow on my spine, for expample), nightmares, paranoia, minor visual disturbances that had me convinced I was schizophrenic. Bear in mind, I was a high-functioning crazy person: I got A’s that semester in school, the semester that started six days after E’s birth.

My consciousness frantically erected a hall of mirrors around the source of my body’s acute distress. Survival made this necessary. The success of my plan to retake my life hinged on there being that maternal reset button. To think of myself as postpartum, to think of myself as a mother and entitled to the grief of losing one’s child, this would have been an admission that could have brought down the whole illusion.

Thinking about the baby is something I did not do much. My diary doesn’t reflect more than a passing thought of her. Dissociation was complete.

As time went on, the manifestations of this indirect grief evolved. Hypochondria was a favorite device, as was the single-minded hunger to have another baby, an insistent urge to replace what was lost, to complete the motherhood interrupted.

This where I found common ground haunting the message boards populated by other mothers of loss: mothers of stillborn babies, mothers with recurrent miscarriages, these women expressed the same sense of missing a piece of themselves, of primal longing for completed motherhood. The difference, in my mind, was that they came by their grief and the resultant longing honestly, and there was something illicit and inappropriate about my sense of frustrated maternity.

It set my mind to wondering: if E had died instead of being placed, would I be considered a real mother, or still just a birthmother? The world of message boards was perfectly clear: birthmothers are NOT mothers. They don’t stay up late with sick children, they don’t kiss boo boos or wipe tears. But what about mothers whose babies had died? Are they unmothered too, or do they get to hold on to maternal status even in childlessness?

I was caught in the unexpected riptide of bodily grief. When I think of her, the first image that surfaces is of amputation, a visceral limb-chopping.

Almost four years after placement, getting into a car after a visit, torrents of bodily grief poured forth from the cells that created her, the part of me that knew nothing of adoption or the social conditions that unmother a woman. The part of me that recognized her as Daughter screamed in torment while my socially conditioned mind reeled in surprise. The anesthetic had worn off, and I was raw, naked, freshly separated. My body unleashed the primal force of loss so that I could not speak, I could not make a sound. I could not sob. I could not think. The hall of mirrors collapsed in shards stained with the blood of my psyche. Within a month I was suicidal.

My motherhood was undeniable in that moment. I had committed a crime against nature, and I was paying dearly for my sins. As carefully as I had thought about my future, E's future, and J and C's dreams, I did not factor in the price of loss through relinquishment to be paid by my body, my soul. The steep cost would nearly be my ultimate downfall.

Comments

[Jenna]

Hmm, yes. I've never written about this so specifically. You did a good job. *hugs*

[Bee's Mom]

As an adoptive mother, please let me tell you that not everybody thinks of you as not being a mother. My angel came from two mothers. One was unable to take care of her, and bravely thought more of her child than of her own grief. But that doesn't mean that we discount her in any way. We think of her all the time. We talk of her all the time. My daughter knows full well that there is another woman in her life who loves her and always will.

My daughter came from a place where we can have no contact with the biological mother. And that brings me grief, because I know that if she had some contact with this angel child, even if it was only a letter or a photograph, it would help to ease her pain. How much greater it would be to have regular contact, through phone calls, and visits. But that is impossible. At least for now. We both hope for someday. And I believe that she does too.

At least my daughter knows that she has two mothers. And that they both love her very, very much.

But honey, don't grieve too long. Your child will always be a part of you. And while you need to let yourself mourn for that loss, you also need to realize that she is living, not lost. And that adoptions are so much less of a closed book than they were in the past. Let yourself love your child, and let yourself believe that life is good for both of you. You have to. Because you're still alive, and you deserve to live.

[bg]

I have just found your blog.

This really is an soul baring post. I admire your courage in telling your story.

What I read here also scares me. What can a hopeful adoptive wishing-to-be mother do to make sure that her part in the adoption process doesn't do this to another woman?

[Rach]

Wow. This also sounds like what I've heard from people who have had abortions. Thanks for this.

[Lynn Callister]

I just read Kateri McCann's comments in the Chicago Tribune article "The Trouble with Juno". I am completely sympathetic to the mental anguish suffered by some birth mothers. However, to suggest that this loss affects you "in the same way as if you lost a child to death." is uninformed!! I have had a child die. I don't believe that grief can be equated to the grief one experiences when the decision is made to place your child in the arms of adoptive parents. Please respect the many bereaved parents of the world.

[Lynn Callister]

I just read Kateri McCann's comments in the Chicago Tribune article "The Trouble with Juno". I am completely sympathetic to the mental anguish suffered by some birth mothers. However, to suggest that this loss affects you "in the same way as if you lost a child to death." is uninformed!! I have had a child die. I don't believe that grief can be equated to the grief one experiences when the decision is made to place your child in the arms of adoptive parents. Please respect the many bereaved parents of the world.