Category: Adoption

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First Kisses

There are only so many first kisses that a long term married person enjoys in their life. I got one a few weeks ago.  I had been waiting for it, anticipating what it might be like. Often, the anticipation of a thing can make the actual thing feel less than your hopes had built it into.  This was not the case for the first kiss my youngest son gifted me.  It was sweet and a wee bit messy, liquid.  It was joyful and intentional.

When Mary Tyler Baby was just a few months old I remember Googling something along the lines of, “When do babies start to kiss?”  Most of the guidelines left a broad window for baby’s first kiss, anywhere from seven to seventeen months.  On the mothering boards, lots of broads were bragging about their overachieving three month olds who were already planting wet ones on them.  Pffft.

I waited patiently.  I waited impatiently.  I was finally rewarded.  My heart burst into a thousand pieces.

Adler's lips

I don’t write about adoption much.  There are a lot of reasons for that, but mostly because when I am writing about something that extends beyond my own experience, I think long and hard about how my words might impact the other people in my life, including my son and his Birth Mother.  But more than that is the reality that our adoption has just been so much more complicated than I could ever have imagined.   There is not much to say about that specifically, other than I am learning how to put mothering first, before all other concerns and needs that come with adoption.  My son needs that and I need that.

So, blah.  Blergh.  Aarrrggghhh.  Adoption.  For better or worse, getting that first kiss felt somehow like a mothering badge of honor for me.  I was worthy of my baby’s kiss. There was no taking that kiss for granted, I’ll tell you that. Such a sweet and simple gesture from a baby that somehow heals me, validates me, reassures me.  I am his mother, I am his Mom.  No matter how complicated adoption can be, that is our truth.

So three cheers for first kisses.  Three cheers for motherhood.  Three cheers for creating a safe space to mother.  Three cheers for understanding that some relationships ebb and flow.  Three cheers for messy, liquid, juicy kisses from a loving baby boy.

Hip hip hooray!

Happy Valentine’s Day, good folks!  

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Adoption and Surrogacy and IVF, Oh My!

Seven months into Donna’s cancer treatment, we learned that the docs were recommending a stem cell transplant for her.  The toxicity of the chemo required to kill off her immune system was so potent that the transplant team informed us that Donna, just three years old at the time, would never be able to bear biological children.

We were still firmly in the camp that Donna could survive her brain tumor, and so I grieved a little grief over my two year old’s future fertility.  And then, with our daughter,  headed into one of the most arduous phases of cancer treatment a human can ever experience.  When you are parenting a child with cancer, you learn quickly to do what you need to do and keep moving forward.  It is shocking to learn what choices you are capable of making when your options are so grim.

It was during that period when I first initiated a discussion about adoption with my husband.  “When treatment is over, we should talk about adoption.  If Donna won’t be able to carry children, I want her to know that families are made in all different kinds of ways.”  Our adoption plans eventually became moot, as Donna’s cancer proved so tenacious.

Fast forward a few years, after Donna’s death and the three miscarriages that followed within 18 months.  Adoption was back on the table.

At 42, I wasn’t interested in seeking treatment for infertility.  Despite the miscarriages (4 total, as I had had one earlier), I never thought of myself as infertile, having birthed two full term babies. And my OB/GYN never seemed too curious about what was causing my miscarriages.  Old eggs, we presumed.  Honestly, with my knowledge of what was involved with IVF, I wasn’t interested.  Close friends had been through the process, both successfully and unsuccessfully.  I didn’t think I could take the heartbreak or the medical aspects of it.  A medical trauma like cancer will do that to you.

So in June 2011, just six weeks after my last miscarriage, we initiated the adoption process.  Two years and one adoption agency change later, we would finally connect with the woman who would choose us to raise the son she did not feel capable of raising herself.  We hold this woman very dear to us, as we view adoption as a pact with her, even more sacred than marriage.  She made a brave and selfless choice for her child, one that we honor daily by showering our son with love and care.

I don’t write too much about adoption.  If you poke around the Internet around adoption issues, you will quickly be introduced to the anti-adoption movement.  I don’t know how large or organized or effective the actual movement is, but I do know, from deeply personal experience, that they can be a bullying, angry, and hateful contingent that clearly has “adoption stories” hard wired into their Google alerts.

While I can understand the pain that must precipitate the anti-adoption venom, I cannot condone the tactics or absolutism they employ where adoption is concerned.  It seems almost inconceivable to anti-adoption advocates that healthy, mutually agreed upon adoptions exist.  I have learned I don’t have the stomach for the vitriol that surrounds it.  It is emotionally painful to be judged because of how my family was created and I fully reject the routine accusations of having bought or stolen my baby.

MTM Meme

Historically, that same kind of venom and prejudiced thinking applied to babies conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other reproductive advances.  The science was scary and, well, sciencey.  People questioned if it was God’s will for babies to be made in a test tube. Even now, it is easy to find websites dedicated to condemning the practice and using fear tactics which suggest that babies born through IVF are much more susceptible to birth defects, including an increased risk for cancer.  More reputable sites, i.e., those lacking a religious agenda, state that those concerns are statistically insignificant.

There is also a moral argument made that people who utilize IVF for their family plan simply want “designer babies,” or the ability to choose their child’s gender and even the number of babies per pregnancy.  Twins are so chic this season, don’t you know!  Conversely, the accusations fly that when twin, triplet, quadruplet, or even larger number embryos are the result of a successful IVF, couples are aborting an extra child or children willy nilly.

Surrogacy, too, does not escape the judgment police.  Last week I was engaged in a friend’s Facebook thread about the morality of surrogacy.  An article was posted about a young woman who learned at age 17 that she was born through a surrogate and now works hard to endorse legislative restrictions against the practice of surrogacy.  I left a comment that the young woman could use a therapist (not sarcasm, but a clinical judgment) and that if the worst thing that should befall her is having been born to a surrogate, well, she should count herself lucky.

I had no idea the thread would quickly turn into a condemnation of the practice of surrogacy as being nothing more than “transactional” in nature, no different than a business deal, and lacking the love of conception.  I’ll be honest, this touched a nerve, as I, too, have been accused of exploiting a woman for my own personal gain because of financial privilege.  When I made that argument, that people considered my adoption a transaction, nothing more than a baby bought and paid for, I was quickly reassured that NO!, adoption is a beautiful thing and how could anyone ever think otherwise?  

My argument, that many people did think adoption was a transaction, and were against the practice because of that, was completely lost in the discussion.  In this particular thread, surrogacy was “morally bankrupt,” and adoption was a loving gift, as if the people who had judged my adoption were wrong, but judging surrogacy was grounded in some higher truth.

It turns out, with a wee little bit of a Google search, there is a fairly strong religious (Catholic) and political (conservative) agenda against surrogacy these days.  A growing anti-surrogacy movement, that I personally feel is another means to prevent gay men from parenting, but that’s just me.

I am reminded of my immediate thought after grieving my daughter’s fertility, ” . . . families are made in all different kinds of ways.”  It was so important to me, even in the midst of nursing my girl through her cancer treatment, that she knew and understood that.

It is just as important that those blessedly untouched by infertility or those not in same sex relationships understand the concept as well.  Not all of us are able to procreate easily and without intervention.  Less judging, more loving.  Families are made in all different kinds of ways, and if those ways are ethical and loving and sincere of intentions, then stop the judging.

If it’s simple enough for a two year old to understand, surely us adults can get there, too, right?

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Honoring Birth Mothers on Mother’s Day

A few months ago, in a glorious daze of caring for our littlest child — a newly adopted baby boy — an article I wrote was published in Chicago Parent magazine.  You can read it here.  I called it “Invisible Pregnancy,” but that title was changed by the magazine.  The article focused on the few months between when we were contacted by an expectant mother who wanted to talk with us about adoption and when the adoption actually took place, two days after our son’s birth.

It was written just a few weeks after bringing our baby home, but even now I cringe a little when I re-read my words.

I’ve only been an adoptive mom for eight months now, but I have already learned some things.  In the article, I refer to our son’s Birth Mother as “our” Birth Mother.  Well, that’s just not accurate.  She is not our Birth Mother, she is our son’s Birth Mother.  It might seem like semantics or a small distinction, but it is not.

And many people in the adoption community refer to the “gift” that Birth Mothers make to adoptive families — the gift of a child that would not be possible for them, most often because of infertility.  While my husband and I struggled with secondary infertility, I have never thought of our son as a gift bestowed upon us.  Never, not once.

Instead, my husband and I entered into a pact, a sacred pact, a pact that for me is more sacred than marriage (which has, for better or worse, the out of divorce available) with our son’s Birth Mother.  We agreed, with love and gratitude and trust and hope, to care for her child for all of his days as our child.  To love him, to feed him, to clothe him, to keep him safe, to educate him, to nurture him, to watch him fall and help pick him up, to tell him the story of how he came to us, to let him know that he is loved by another mother.

Our son has two mothers.

On Mother’s Day, I will be the mom who gets to hold him and smile at him and tickle him under his chins just so, until his belly erupts in laughter.  There will be pancakes and flowers and love and joy and probably a homemade card or two.  (And, for me, a heaping dose of sadness, too, as one of the days that Donna’s absence hits hardest is the mid-May ode to motherhood.)

My baby’s other mother, the one who conceived him, grew him, cared for him enough to bring him into this world, will not be with us in any way other than Skype and spirit.  She will be clear across the country.  This breaks my heart to this day, as I am certain it does hers.  I know, more than most, the pain of not being with your child on Mother’s Day.  It is a cruel, bitter pill.

Mother’s Day is hard for many of us, for many reasons.  It saddens me deeply to know that a person I so respect and admire, our son’s amazing Birth Mother, feels the deep pain of a Mother’s Day without her child.  And yet, this too is adoption.  It is not all joyful gifts freely given and happily ever after.

The bravery of Birth Mothers astounds me.  The heart and courage that is required to place your child, your loved child, in the arms of another, precisely because of the love you hold for that child is wrenching and affirming all at once.

I shake my head, because after the death of my mother and my daughter, I never thought Mother’s Day could get more complicated.  I was wrong. Mother’s Day has gotten more complicated.  For the rest of my Mother’s Days I will hold three so close to me — my mother, my daughter, and my son’s Birth Mother.

I see you.  You are not invisible to me, though others may not know you are also the mother to my son.  He will know and he will see you, too.  He will always know that he has two mothers who love him deeply.  Not one, but two, and that two includes you.

Happy Mother’s Day to all Birth Mothers.  

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