The worst reason to place your baby

So, it wasn't much of a break from writing about adoption, was it?

I go back and forth about the issue of pre-placement matching between pregnant mothers and adoptive parents.

On the one hand, in my situation it was definitly coercive. Once I met them, I couldn't dissapoint them. I couldn't dissapoint their son. In the end, I made the decision for them.

An adoption decision must be made independant of the needs of the pre-adoptive parents. Their needs and emotions shouldn't even factor into it. The decision to place must be made solely on the emotions and abilities of the birthparents. Anything else is coercive.

It's impossible to make a decision before the birth of the baby. While one may be exploring options, it's impossible to know how you're going to really feel until after the baby is in your arms. Many women, by the time they meet their babies, have already committed to an adoption plan to the point where they feel it would be impossible to reconsider.

I had no idea that I would fall so in love with my baby. I had no inkling of that kind of moving-mountains kind of love. #1 I thought it was a myth. #2 I thought I would be exempt from that. I thought my "unfitness" would have me keep my distance.  I really thought that she would come out looking kind of like a large red raisin, and I would wrinkle my nose and hand her over. What a shock I had.

When I was making my plan, I worked very closely with the agency. They strongly encouraged me to choose parents and develop a relationship before the baby was born, although they gave me the choice not to. It was thought that I would be able to consider parents more slowly, interview them more thoroghly, and get a good idea whether they would be a good "fit"  for the kind of adoption I had in mind. They thought it would foster more permanent openness. That might be true. But I can't say I found out so much about C. and J. that made the pre-placement matching worth it. Clearly, I didn't find out that much about their views on open adoption. I wouldn't have chosen someone for whom openness was simply an obligation. But how much can you really tell about anybody in a few weeks under conditions like that? An hour of interviewing would be just as good, for all you really find out.

On the other hand, I can't imagine having a baby and picking parents and planning the adoption all in a few days. Although I heard of people who didn't request profiles until they were in the hospital. Looking through binder after binder of waiting couples was so overwhelming...I can't imagine what it must be like to do only a few hours or days after giving birth. It was possibly the most demoralizng experience of the pre-adoptive period, wading through pile upon pile of parents more deserving than me, and choosing the one I would bless with my child, and feeling guilty that I could not help them all.

But there are times when the pre-adoptive relationship flowers into something really special. Like Dawn's. And that's open adoption at it's most beautiful. There are a lot of risk worth taking for that kind of environment for a child to grow up in.

A mother needs to have a strong advocate if she is going to meet adoptive parents before the baby is born. She needs to have someone to constantly whisper in her ear, "You don't owe anyone your baby. You can always change your mind".

Comments

[t]

I just discovered your blog thru getupgrrl.

Thank you for sharing your experience as a birthmother here. I don't think this part of the story is told often enough.

I am an adoptee and although it was a closed adoption, I now have a relationship with my birthmother as an adult. I know she had difficulty with her decision as well, in part because she and her husband (not my birthfather) were not able to have children of their own. Your experiences have helped me to understand a little bit of what she must have gone through after I was adopted.

Try not to let the trolls get you down!

[sster]

The thing I like best about our agency is that there is no such thing as a 'match.' If the potential birth mother and potential adoptive family want to meet, the social worker will facilitate it. But no money changes hands and no promises are made. As our SW says, "it's not a match until the baby is in your [adoptive parents'] arms." I really like that way of looking at it. I like that they recognize potential birth mothers as true mothers both before and after the papers are signed. Our agency is part of a community health organization that provided health care for women in crisis long, long before there were adoption services on site. Before a woman comes to adoption she has full access to all of the resources of the community that might be necessary for her to parent. Of course, no situation is totally coercion-free, so I'm still cautious.

Related question: what is your advice for any pre-birth contact so that the situation is as coercion-free as possible? What should potential adoptive parents say or do to make it clear that they don't yet view themselves as parents and don't view potential birthparents as their personal baby-factories?

[Amanda]

Wow. This post just brought back a flood of emotions. I got pregnant at 16 and decided to place my son up for adoption. I hid the pregnancy from my mom, stayed with my dad and worked with an agency. The agency would have been a closed adoption. In the mean time I met a wonderful couple who thought they might have wanted to adopt my child (outside of the agency). In the end they said no and I continued with the agency. After the birth of my son I had 10 days to make my final decision. On day 3 I was so devastated by my decision and confessed to my mom and she said to get my baby back. There had not been a family chosen at that time so I felt no guilt in backing out. I got my son back. I raised him as a single mom for 10 years with great parental support. It was hard...very hard...but I knew I made the right decision for us. However, I often think what would have happened if the couple I met had wanted to go through with the adoption. I'm positive I would have gone through with it because I wouldn't have wanted to disappoint them. I wouldn't have wanted to take away their chance to have a little boy. Saying no to an agency was easy, there was no face to the hurt.

I am now 30..my son will be 14 in a few days. 9 months ago I gave birth to my 2nd son.

I haven’t read anything other than this post, but I am planning to. I got here via grrl and never expected to see these words.

People like you really make me ill! I can't believe that you would consider parenting about how you felt at the time of, a few days before, six weeks after the birth of your child...

Adoption is not a luxury you fertile girlwoman bless us infertile freaks with...ITs about raising a baby with the child's best interests at heart...

Pregnancy and parenting should be because :
a)you are able to afford it,
B)take care of its needs (love enters this category) and
c) You are mature enough to understand that love is a choice a decision not a feeling...

You last post rambles about changing your mind and not wanting to annoy the A-parents (and no birthmothers are not B-parents... - My hand gets tired of typing out the full name)

You delve into not picking the right set of parents, or how forced into the whole adoption process you were. Its a pity you did not think before you fucked your boyfriend that you were not capable/ready/wanted to raise a child.

You are a fickle, poor parent - mixed up kid...

The choice to place your baby should never be about how red and prune like you child looked at birth, or how terrible a process it is to decide on new parents...

God, you shit about Brooke Shields depression, most experienced mother's know that the first time you set eyes on your baby you MAY NOT think its a match made in heaven... You are so shallow....How your baby looked at birth is not a reason for placing the child into an adoption plan.

If you fell in love with your child at birth, that is not a reason for keeping her either, because love won't feed her, cloth her, set a good example for, and raise her to not become a tax payers/medic aid nightmare !

When oh when will parents realize that education for children about sex=pregnancy may just save us the TAX payers a lot of headaches...

You pissed me off in your angry rantings about adoption, you bored us with your bull shit story about beds and vacation homes, and you so require the attention that you return to the topic of adoption.

This will be my last post to you, you are not worthy of my attention.

[Phyllis]

What a painful story to tell. I'm sending tons of sympathy your way.

A child's best interests are hard enough to determine when you're on the spot. A self-righteous troll isn't about to understand what a wonderful mother you are!

Phyllis

On any given day, there are roughly 500,000 children and youth in the
foster care system in the United States. Source: Adoption and Foster
Care Analysis and Reporting System.

About 2/3 of these foster children had birth parents who abused drugs
and alcohol. Of an estimated 67,000 infants born in California each
year with some sort of alcohol or other drug exposure, up to 80% will
come to the attention of child protective services before their first
birthday.

More than half of the children who encounter the child welfare are age
5 or under.

Many children cycle in and out of foster homes, and often live with
several different foster families. Of the children who entered foster
care in 2000 and remained in care for 12 months, 35% experienced three
or more placements.

Foster children as young as 18 years old emancipate, or “age out” of
the foster care system, leaving former foster youth to make it on their
own – many with little or no resources. Many former foster youths have
no family, no caring adult in their lives, and few resources to make it
on their own. As a result, of youth who emancipate from foster care:

50% of children enter Foster Care before the age of 5 of those children
83% in Los Angeles are held back at least one year before fourth grae
50% do not complete high school
45% are unemployed
33% are arrested
30% are on welfare
25% are homeless.

In 2002, 7% of California’s children were African American, but
constituted 1/3 of the children in foster care.

The Federal government pays States more for keeping children in foster
care, than it does for preventing abuse and neglect, or helping
families stay safe and remain together. This funding system creates a
perverse incentive to keep children in foster care, rather than
reuniting them with their families or preventing the need for foster
care in the first place.

Children in low-income families are over 22 times more likely to be
abused or neglected. Families with annual incomes below $15,000 were
over 22 times more likely to experience some form of maltreatment than
children in families with annual incomes above $30,000.

Child abuse and neglect costs taxpayers over $120 billion a year.
Conservative estimates show that abuse and neglect costs the U.S. $25
billion annually in direct costs (such as foster care funding, child
welfare services, and health coverage), as well as $95 billion for
indirect costs such as juvenile delinquency, adult criminality and lost
productivity to society.

Nearly 1 million children were victims of child abuse or neglect in
2001. Source: Child Maltreatment 2001,” from the National Child Abuse
and Neglect Data System.

http://www.fostercarekids.com/facts.htm

WOOHOOOO....Lets hear it for the innocent birthmothers of the world!!

Let band together to NEVER EVER see a child adopted again.

Lets join hands and drink and be merry while we surround the glorius tipsy and high birthmother in shout out our support for her to keep her daughter.

Lets pretend to ignore the facts and statistics that child ARE not always taken care of when situations are not ideal...

Lets ignore the bruises, tears, broken hearts, souls and lives of all those under 4'...

Lets keep a blog boasting about our ignorance and hatred for the babystealers who are raising our children to the best of their ability.

Did anyone read this blog, did anyone notice she said barely drank during her pregnancy, was high got drunk and took an ill child out to a superbowl party, am I the only one who is actually reading this bullshit.

Shame on all of you, try volunteering at a group home and look into the eyes of a seven year old girl, and tell her she belongs back with he birthmother, her role is to be beaten, kicked and tied up while the birthmother drinks and smokes pot.

I give up...

[Karen]

I don't get it either - Why is such a big fuss made over the birthmother and how sad it is for her. It's her choice to raise or not raise her kids - we all struggle to raise our kids, its no tea party.

Millions of single poor black/white/green woman fall pregnant, work three jobs struggle to raise good law abiding citizens and volunteer their time to help others...

Please tell me again why we should feel sorry for little white Mam with her vacation home in the mountain, and her sweet little house on the corner street?

[The Land of IVF]

YOU WROTE: "I wanted to have sex with this guy. I was dying to be rid of my pesky virginity. He used this opportunity to gratify his back-end urges, to my shock and dismay. He must have finished in the regular way, though, because two weeks later I missed my period."

I write: "...you have nothing to bitch about, at least you are getting pregnant even when its in the rearhole and you seem to be somewhat missing from the event with your "He must have finished in the regular way"...were you not there?

Anyway you at least have carried with choices to term and not to term by your choice, three children and soon to be four!

I have had the dildo cam, RE R us, TestTube City babe to not be, closet city wankerville for dh, and we still can't produce much more than a couple of vagina farts...

I would count your blessings before you bitch!!!

[Manuela]

I read your whole blog from start to finish... and I read it as an infertile adoptee who was never told that I was adopted. I only found out when my birthmom tracked me down when I was 25 years old.

First, thank you for sharing your story.

Second, I'm absolutely baffled by the ignorant hatred displayed by some of your commenters. Particularly those who appear to be infertile... young pregnant mothers are not private baby factories! (Yes, yes... I KNOW nobody said that... but it was darn near implied) I hear this strange sense of entitlement because they think they are more worthy of parenthood. Well... that course of logic is only one step removed from a fascist state of selective breeding.

Yes, adoption can be wonderful... yes there are children out there who aren't properly cared for... yes there can be 'happy endings'... but why why why is the birth mother so frequently treated as irrelevant? Why is the pain of infertility (I know... I'm infertile) supposed to be so much more valid than the pain of birthmother? You think that doing something that is deemed to be 'right' (whether it actually IS right is a different matter altogether) means the pain of giving up a child is eradicated??

Why can't all parties involved acknowledge that adoption can be a painful process for all involved in some, way, shape or form.

People who go out of their way to say mean-spirited things truly truly scare me. Who lives with such hate?

Anyway... I now have a wonderful relationship with my birthmother... and guess what... my upper middle class adoptive parents are a far cry from saints... child abuse is NOT relegated to the underprivileged.

Sorry... this is a very disconnected comment... your blog has triggered so many different thoughts for me that it's a bit of a mes.