Becoming a parent is an exciting, terrifying and unpredictable time in anyone's life. Whether you are a birth parent or adoptive there are two universal truths: 1) A lot of well meaning people will give you a lot of good intentioned advice, and 2) No two stories are alike. The following is one woman's story of her journey into parenthood and becoming a mom:
The first time I met my daughter, Madison, she wasn’t mine yet and I
wasn’t sure she would ever be. I stared into her solemn face and looked
shyly at her mother, Jessica.
“Can I pick her up?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said proudly.
There
was nothing about her that was familiar — not her round face, her tuft
of hair, the heft of her body. When I gazed at her, I felt enormous
tenderness and the quiet stirring of potential love, but I didn’t know
her. And I was afraid to look too closely because I knew that, just as I
had felt the shift and click of my son’s life falling into place after
his birth seven years before, so Jessica was coming to know Madison. All
those months, she had thought she was carrying just any baby when all
along it was Madison. She was saying to her daughter what I had said to
my son: “Oh, it was you!”
Adoption social workers say that every
woman needs to say hello to her baby before she can know if she can say
goodbye. But I wanted to say hello to Madison, too. I wanted to let
myself fall in love with her. I wanted to unwrap her and examine each
little limb, bury my face in her neck, let my fingers trail across her
features. But she wasn’t mine. I grieved her even as I knew she wasn’t
mine to grieve.
Three days after Madison’s birth I watched my
husband buckle her into the car seat, and then I climbed into the back
seat beside her. I thought about Jessica, who we’d left sobbing in the
maternity ward. I knew her arms were aching for her daughter, the
daughter that was now ours.
“She’s beautiful,” I said to my
husband. He glanced into the rearview mirror. “I know,” he said. We sped
through the gray morning, heading home.
“I feel like a kidnapper,” I told him.
“I know,” he said.
- – - – - – - – - – - -
My
husband and I came to open adoption filled with hopeful naiveté. We
tried for several years (and several miscarriages) to have a second
child, but when our infertility doctor said we might need more extensive
treatment, we decided to walk away. A few months later, we began to
explore adoption. Foster-to-adopt, we decided, would be too emotionally
risky for ourselves and, more importantly, for our then 6-year-old son.
International adoption was too expensive. But when we found domestic
infant adoption through a local nonprofit agency, we realized that we
had found our way to be parents again.
We
knew that our adoption would be at least semi-open. We would be sharing
our vital statistics — first names, ages, religion, as well as
carefully chosen pictures — with birth mothers, as per the agency’s
requirements. But we wanted more. We wanted a fully open adoption with
an ongoing relationship and continuing contact. We wanted holiday
visits, regular phone calls and even — dare we hope — contact with the
extended birth family. We felt our baby-to-be would benefit from knowing
his or her origins; we considered it a birthright. We also strongly
believed birth parents were due some kind of relationship with their
children and with their children’s adoptive parents — if they wanted
one.
We weathered the fear-mongering tales of well-intentioned
friends and acquaintances, people who had watched nightly news stories
of toddlers snatched by their birth parents from adoptive families who
had cared for them since birth. We listened as they wondered aloud what
kind of woman would have the strength to walk away from her baby and
then come back for occasional visits. “What if she kidnaps the baby?”
they’d say. “What if she treats you like babysitters?”
Other
adoptive parents we knew chose to go abroad in part because they were
alarmed by the trend toward increasing openness in domestic infant
adoptions. “Won’t you feel jealous?” they’d ask. “Won’t it confuse the
child? What if your child likes her more than she likes you?”
I
dismissed their concerns with all of the blind optimism of someone who
had waited through four years of infertility for a baby and now finally
thought she might get one. “Don’t be surprised if you get placed
quickly,” our social worker told us. “Most adoptive parents aren’t ready
to be that open, and it’s something a lot of birth mothers look for.”
Our
agency asked that each hopeful adoptive family put together what they
called a profile and other adoption professionals sometimes call a “Dear
Birth Mom” letter. (The reason they call it a profile, our agency
explained, is that a pregnant woman considering adoption is not a birth
mother; she is an expectant mother and should be respected as such.)
When a woman came to the agency saying she was considering placing her
child for adoption, they gathered at least five profiles to share with
her. The profiles were pulled on the basis of any requirements that she
might have. If a potential birth mother said she wanted an adoptive
family where one parent was a teacher, only the teacher profiles would
be pulled. If none of the profiles appealed to the woman, she could ask
for more.
The profile contained information about us, about our
path to adoption and our intentions as adoptive parents. And the
profiles are usually printed out on pretty paper.
“Pretty paper?” I asked Denise, our social worker, when she gave us the instructions.
“It matters,” she said. “You’d be surprised.”
It
was a lot of pressure to take to the stationery store. My son and I
spent a long time analyzing our choices. I rejected the pastel baby feet
as too pushy, the blue sky and clouds as too ethereal. I finally
decided on white with a tasteful abstract green border. We made a dozen
copies and dropped them off at the agency.
While our agency
allowed “matches” as early as the seventh month, they stressed to us
that a match was nothing more than a woman expressing her right to
consider an adoption plan. It was not the promise of a baby, it was not a
guarantee that we would be parents again.
“There is always a 50
percent chance that a woman who chooses you will change her mind,”
Denise made clear. “A real baby changes things and no matter how sure
she is while she’s pregnant, she will need to make that decision again
once she has the baby.” It was a common refrain from the agency during
our wait: “Guard your heart,” they told us. “The baby isn’t yours until
the papers are signed.”
Seven months after completing our
adoption homestudy, our social worker called. “There’s a woman who seems
like a good fit for you, and we would like to share your profile with
her.”
Jessica was 19, they told us, and African-American. The
birth father, who was choosing not to be involved, was white, like us.
The baby was healthy — Jessica’s prenatal care had been good. “And it
says here what she’s having,” Denise added. “Do you want to know?”
We did. A girl, she told us, due April 4. A week later we got another call. Jessica wanted to meet with us.
Our
agency facilitated our first meeting at a downtown restaurant. Jessica
brought three of her closest friends, and we all sat across from each
other fidgeting awkwardly. Jessica was polite, guarded but not shy, and
greeted us with sonogram pictures of the baby she was carrying. She was
due in two months and feeling good.
I liked Jessica right away. I
liked her confidence and sense of humor. I liked her wide smile. And I
liked how direct she was with us. “I’m going to name the baby Madison,”
she told us. “You can change it later but that’s the name I’m going to
give her.”
When it was time to go we exchanged phone numbers and
last names. Over the next few weeks she and I talked regularly — not
just about Madison but about other things, too. Politics, music,
Jessica’s plans to travel and go to school. One day I hung up the phone
after a particularly long conversation and told my husband, “If she
decides not to place Madison, she’ll be a good mother.”
We talked
about the adoption, too, about what her plans were and why she chose us
to be part of it. Those reasons are complex and not ones I feel I can
share here.
“You already had a son,” she said. ” I liked knowing
Madison would have a brother. I also liked what you said about including
me. And the paper. I liked your paper. It was tasteful.”
At the
first meeting at the restaurant, Jessica told us that she knew she would
want to be alone with Madison for the three days before she could
legally sign the surrender. We said we understood. But the morning that
Madison was born she called to say that she had changed her mind and
wanted us to come in.
“I need to see you with her,” she said simply.
- – - – - – - – - – - -
Even
after we arrived home with Madison, I could not get Jessica’s tears out
of my mind. I felt numb. I didn’t know how to answer when people
congratulated us. They saw only the happy event, but each time Madison
cried I felt sure that every one of her ordinary infant sorrows was
magnified by the separation from her birth mother. This was not the
gauzy, soft-focus motherhood I had envisioned.
Jessica was
everywhere because she was in my daughter. The shape of her brown eyes,
the curve of her face — they became mixed up in my mind. During every
diaper change I’d gaze at Madison’s small body and imagine how Jessica
must have looked at one week old. They mirrored each other; the
vulnerability of the mother who had given up her child and the child who
had lost her mother.
“You need to move on,” friends said. “You
need to let Jessica move on. Quit taking her phone calls. Step up and be
Madison’s mother!” But no one could tell me how to be her mother when
she already had a mother. I could care for her — rock her, feed her, and
sing her to sleep — but something would not allow me to claim her.
Was
it the phone calls? Jessica called about once a week to hear how
Madison was doing and to tell me what was going on in her life. I kept
my stories sweet and lively. She was working hard to put her life back
in order and was forthright with me about her struggles. She missed
Madison, she told me. The decision was the right one but oh, she missed
her. I welcomed our talks even as I shrank from them. I felt it was my
duty to hear her cry. It was the least I could do, I thought, because I
had her baby. My guilt was a necessary purgatory, an inadequate payment
for my privilege.
Each time, I would hang up determined to
embrace Madison as my own. Jessica wanted me to be Madison’s mother,
didn’t she? She chose me. She signed the papers. She had released her to
me, and now I was failing her trust.
So I went through the
motions. I sang to Madison so she would learn my voice. I strapped her
to me and walked in circles so she would learn the rhythm of my
movements. I hoped proximity would breed devotion. But I felt like a
liar when we went out and people said what a pretty baby I had. Not my
baby, I wanted to tell them, anxious not to take Jessica’s credit.
“She
even looks like you!” some gushed. Of course this wasn’t true. Her
smooth coffee-with-cream skin is nothing like my own rosy complexion.
Such was their strong determination to fit her to our family.
“She
looks just like her birth mother,” I’d reply. I wanted them to see
Jessica, to acknowledge her. I couldn’t stand to have her obliterated,
even in casual conversation. It was if they were trying to deny the
truth of Madison, the fact of who she was beyond being my adoptive
daughter. I didn’t want to pretend that she came to us without her own
history. But at the same time, polite society seemed to want to dismiss
her origins. Per United States law, Madison’s post-adoption birth
certificate even listed me as the woman who gave birth to her.
The
next time Jessica called, I tentatively told her how I was feeling. “I
can’t stop thinking about you and how hard this must be,” I said, my
voice cracking. “I know how sad you are…”
“I don’t want you to feel guilty,” Jessica admonished me. “I want you to love her. I need you to love her and be happy.”
“But how can I be happy when you’re hurting so much?” I asked.
“It’s
easier when I think of you cherishing her,” she said. “I need you to do
that for her and for me, too. I don’t regret this.”
I wanted it
to make better sense. We didn’t find Madison languishing in a destitute
orphanage. She didn’t come to us with a history of abuse and neglect. I
didn’t know how to justify this great gift of her presence in our lives
at the expense of her mother. If there just something I could hang it
on, an obvious reason that Madison was better off with us — but there
wasn’t. There was just the word of her first mother who said, “This is
what I need to do.”
In my lowest moments, I would browse the list
of adoptive parents on our agency’s Web site. One night, I happened
upon a profile of a fantastic family, African-American professionals who
ran a newspaper and had a daughter the same age as my son. They should
have gotten Madison, I thought. They were better educated than me, had
better jobs — and could give Madison the one thing I never could: a
connection to the black community.
My friend Elisabeth, who used to do patient support at an abortion clinic, took me to task.
“This
is a choice issue,” she told me. “You keep telling me how strong and
smart Jessica is, but you’re second-guessing her. That’s not fair.”
“I just want us to both be winners in this,” I said.
“There is more than one way to be a winner here,” she replied. “Stop denigrating Jessica’s decision.”
I
had been picturing the two of us balanced on opposite sides of a
tipping scale. If one of us was the real mother, then the other one was
not. If one of us was happy, then the other must be sad. But when I hung
up with Elisabeth, I realized that I couldn’t ease Jessica’s struggle
by taking it on as my own. Besides that’s not what Jessica wanted; she
did not want her sorrow to color these first months of Madison’s life.
It was my guilt that betrayed her, not my love for Madison.
When I
stopped feeling so consumed by what Jessica had lost, I was able to
find joy in what I gained, the everyday pleasures of parenting again —
dressing my daughter, giving her a bath. Certainly, with that joy came
vulnerability and the insecurity my worried friends predicted. Sometimes
I don’t want to share Madison. Sometimes I want to feel that I am the
only mother she has and will ever need. But even at it’s most
challenging, I still believe in openness. How much easier it will be for
our daughter, I think, to never have to search for her roots. She will
never have to wonder why her first mother chose adoption; she can ask
her.
Jessica lives in our city and visits when her busy life
allows, which ends up being about once a month, and we e-mail and phone
more often. A few weeks ago she came over and made us jerk chicken with
mango salsa; she is studying to be a chef. We joked that now we know
where Madison gets her enthusiastic love of good food. After dinner I
shared the beginnings of this essay with her and we cried a bit
together.
“I didn’t know it was so hard for you,” she said.
“Well,” I shrugged, helplessly. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Last
summer Jessica and I took a trip to Washington together so Madison
could meet her extended birth family. Jessica was hoping, in part, to
show them that it had all worked out OK and that her decision to place
Madison with us was a good one. As an interracial family already, the
transracial aspect did not grieve them; it was the loss of this wondrous
first grandchild to strangers. “When they see us together, how things
are, they’ll understand,” Jessica assured me. Still we were both
nervous.
The family reunion took place at a country club on a
beautiful cool summer evening. It was amazing to meet people who looked
like Jessica and thus just like Madison, too. I kept my camera ready.
Madison, open and sunny, charmed everyone, and several people took me
aside to thank me for making the trip. “It’s my pleasure,” I said
honestly.
“She looks like her mother,” said someone admiringly,
and I felt the discomfort the comment left in the room. “Yes, she does,”
I rushed to say. “She has Jessica’s beautiful smile.” And they were
generous with me, too. “Better ask your mommy,” said Jessica’s father
when Madison reached for another slice of cake. Then he handed her to me
although I know it pained him.
When the party spilled outdoors,
Madison and Jessica wandered away to play in one of the sand traps on
the club’s golf course. I stood on the edge and snapped a series of
pictures — first Madison and Jessica crouching together to poke at the
sand. Then Madison with her head thrown back to look up at Jessica while
Jessica gazed down at her, smiling with great tenderness. Then a shot
of Madison laughing and running away. Running toward me.
