What the heck does a birth mother know about infertility?
One of the questions I was asked was,
“does it matter to you if who you chose has infertility issues?” To me, it
didn’t matter. I didn’t want my daughter’s parents to feel they were forced
into adoption; I wanted her to be their first choice, not a second less desired
option.
I’m probably not the norm in that. Infertility issues do
matter to birth parents. Birth parents want to give adoptive parents the thing
they have want most, a child. Of course not every couple resolves their
infertility by seeking to adopt, nor should couples automatically believe it’s
their best or only alternative.
There’s a myth that
comes with infertility. Some couples don’t consider adoption as a last
alternative, but more of a way to obtaining a baby of their “own.” It is widely
believed, “once you adopt, you will relax and have a child of your own.” Rather
than acknowledging infertility, adoption is viewed as a temporary measure in a
quest for their own baby.
People put my mom was in that category. She and my dad tried
to have children for years, they each had every surgery you could think of. The
emotional toll was crushing. They tried to adopt a little boy from Mexico and
were scammed out of thousands and thousands of dollars, that’s a lot of money
now but it was really a lot of money in the 1980s. It makes me so angry to know
they were taken advantage of in such a vulnerable way.
My birth mother wanted a semi-open adoption. Semi-open
adoptions were unheard of at that time, especially in Idaho. My parents were
desperate for a baby and decided they would agree to anything. (Not the best
way to go about that, as they later reflected on that). I was brought home as a
new born and three days later my mom found out she was pregnant. She was so afraid
that the state was going to take me away if they found out. She hid her
pregnancy as long as she could. Social services did not take me away and the
case worker was very happy for my mom.
It drives my mom crazy anytime someone says to her, “Oh that
happens all the time! People adopt and then find out they are pregnant!” It
doesn’t happen all of the time and it dismisses a lot of what she experienced
and it dismisses everything they came to accept about semi-open adoption, as if
it was a means to an end to have their own child and brushes the importance of
the adoption off to the side.
My parents really struggled with infertility. If you are
struggling with infertility there are infertility support groups. RESOLVE is a
National Infertility Association. Get counseling. It truly helps when couples
are able to accept the loss of their unborn child before they begin a
relationship with an adoptee. It’s just as important for adoptive families to
get counseling as it is for birth parents to get counseling. Graceful Adoptions
provides counseling to both adoptive parents and birth parents, that was really
important to me.
Adoption is a lifetime experience that doesn’t just go away.
Adoptive parents can’t give the biological heritage or genetic future to their
child. Birth parents cannot raise a child born to them. Both sets of parents
experience an incompleteness and loss.
When both set of parents are given support and counseling,
the outcome is amazing. People who had been complete strangers are united in a
deep bond of love for a child and put aside their fears of open adoption to
provide the most love possible for the adoptee.
A couple of my other posts:
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