Category: Adoption

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When Mom is a Mom Blogger

I have three kids.  One is a newborn my husband and I adopted last month, one is a four year old who is brilliant and sweet (of course), and one is dead, the victim of an aggressive brain tumor at four years old.  That’s my family in a nutshell.  To me, these children are the most precious creatures that exist on this earth, probably a lot like yours are to you.  I treasure them and wonder how I got so lucky in this life to be surrounded by such love and joy.  I am blessed.  Truly.

The child I write the most about is my beautiful daughter, Donna.  Anyone who reads Mary Tyler Mom knows of my girl, as she is a central figure in both my life and my writing.  She guides me through my days, reminding me to choose patience, choose joy, choose hope.  These are lessons I need each and every day and my dear Donna is my constant teacher.  I am grateful to have been her Mom and miss her utterly, completely, thoroughly.

Donna

My four year old is only referred to as Mary Tyler Son in my posts.  He is a bright, beaming, curious, funny, smart boy.  He is every inch four years old, which means he can be challenging at times, aggressive at times, endearing at times, playful most all of the time, and so, so beautiful.  This boy saved me after Donna’s death.  Rather than run down the rabbit hole, he reminded me, every day, with his ten month old self, that I was still a mother of a child that needed me desperately.  He deserved no less than I gave Donna, which was all of me, everything.  Mothering him pulled me through the thick of my early grief.  Mary Tyler Son will always be my light.

School

And now, through adoption, we have been chosen to parent again.  I honest to God can think of nothing more sacred than asking another human being to care for and love and raise your child.  Think about that and just let it marinate a moment.  We honor our selection, being chosen, and this beautiful boy by parenting him, just as we did Donna, and just as we do Mary Tyler Son.  We are all in.  All in.  Mary Tyler Baby is what I will call him here and you will come to know him through my words.  I don’t know much so far about Mary Tyler Baby, other than he fills me up, makes me smile, blesses me every day, and needs me to love and care for him.  I am his Mom.  That’s heady stuff.

Feet

That’s how parenting works, yo.

Right now my kids are of an age or a circumstance where they don’t give a fig about me being a mom blogger.  Mary Tyler Son is intrigued by it and knows that when I am sitting in front of the computer screen I am blogging or Facebooking, which these days, is almost an extension of blogging.  He calls me a writer and that’s just about the coolest thing I could imagine.  Sometimes, he wants me to post about him, “Tell your blogging friends X, Y and Z,” he will demand of me.  What can I say, it charms me.

There are strangers around the world who are charmed by Mary Tyler Son because of what I share in my blog and Facebook page.  And I gots to say, it’s a great feeling when others find your kid charming, right?  It happens in your life, too, even if you’re not a mom blogger.

What’s not so cool are some of the other things that happen when you’re a mom blogger.

  • Sometimes, when I write about the more challenging behaviors of Mary Tyler Son, strangers call him a brat or “full of himself.”  Who in the hell says that about a four year old boy?  Strangers tell me what I am doing wrong and that my poor parenting choices will absolutely result in raising a future law breaker, jail bird, loser.  Oh!  And how could I forget the woman who damned poor Mary Tyler Son’s soul to eternal hell and the gratitude she expressed at having children whose soul’s were not black like his.  Sheesh.  Fire and brimstone ain’t my thing.  
  • Some folks don’t understand why I still write about Donna four years after her death.  She has been called worm food and I have been told to “get a new angle,” as the Donna angle was “wearing thin.”
  • Earlier this year when something I wrote about adoption was featured on the Huffington Post, I was on the receiving end of two weeks of strangers lashing out at me, consistently and repeatedly, in the comment section from hell.  I was called a baby thief, rich white bitch, narcissist, entitled, opportunistic, manipulative, and a few other choice words.  I’m not gonna lie to you.  That episode really ran a number on me and contributed to a depressive episode that made me question our wish to adopt.  
  • A couple of years ago I posted a photo of Mary Tyler Son on Facebook that involved a parenting mistake I had made at the end of a stressful week.  I captioned it with the words, “Worst Mother Ever.”  A rabid pack of fellow mothers saw that and rather than acknowledge, yeah, that Mary Tyler Mom made a mistake, they wished for my son’s death.  They then described the death they wished for in great detail, in hopes that I would learn a lesson.  After that didn’t get a rise out of them, the image of my son was stolen, copied, and several Facebook pages were started with him being the poster boy/profile shot of new pages focused on what a bad mother I was.

So being the child of a mom blogger is not all it’s cracked up to be, you see.  That is why I protect my kids.  That is why I don’t post photos of my living children with their faces exposed.  That is why I don’t use the names of my living children openly attached to my blog.

They didn’t ask me to be a mom blogger, to have their exploits, both good and bad, publicized for all the world to see.  It’s not my place to call them names or endlessly complain about how they are ruining my life.  Other mom bloggers do that and it’s super cool for them, but it just isn’t my cup of tea.  And that is okay, cause you like what you like and there’s all sorts of fish in this mom blogger sea.

If you don’t care for what I’m doing, like the Facebook commenter this week who asked what the benefit of my page was if I only show my baby’s feet and don’t even give his name out, well then, it is easy as pie to hit the “unlike” button and go about your day.  There are literally thousands of other mom bloggers who will fill up your news feeds with adorable photos of faces instead of feet.  I promise, I won’t mind in the least.  Most likely, I won’t even notice you left.  That sounds harsh, but honest to God, I am sleep deprived these days and don’t drink coffee.  I don’t keep up with the numbers like I used to.

For those of you who do stick around, who don’t mind a parade of baby toes in your news feeds, or a series of hilarious and wacky questions from the back seat that Mary Tyler Son asks on an almost daily basis, well hells bells,  I am so happy to know you!  You make my life richer in a thousand different ways that are hard to convey.  I so appreciate your company and your respect and your empathy.

This parenting is tough stuff.  My husband and I do the best we can.  For us, that means no photos and no names of our boys.  Other mom bloggers make different choices, which is A-OK!  Hey, you can enjoy as many of us as can fit on your feed, and no doubt, that will involve a whole lot of feet and faces.

 

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Feeding Your Adopted Infant

As a two time mom myself, I am grateful to have breastfed two babies.  For me, the experience was uncomplicated, fulfilling, empowering, lovely.  I wrote about it here in one of my favorite parenting posts ever.  Long story short, it’s hard to argue that breast is best.  Scientifically, it just is.  GO BREASTS!  GO LACTATION!  WOO to the HOO-TERS!

That said, breastfeeding is not always easy nor possible for all women.  I assumed that with our third child, a child we knew would be coming to us through adoption, that bottles and formula would be the only options.  And I was A-OK with that.

Breastfeeding never defined my being a mother, and it was never a huge part of my mom identity.  It was just something sweet and intimate and amazing I got to do with my kiddos and I felt lucky for it, all 28 months of it.

Then a few days ago, I read this piece from Huffington Post about an adoptive mom breastfeeding.  What the what?  The headline alone kind of grabbed me.  I knew somewhere, in the back of my mom brain, that breastfeeding an adopted child was possible, but assumed it was the tube taped to your nipple and the plastic bag of formula thrown over your shoulder kind of breastfeeding.  More like “breastfeeding.”  Nope, not for me.

But the gal in the article (Catherine Pearson) described her own experience of breastfeeding her newly adopted infant.  It involved inducing lactation with prescribed synthetic hormones.  Now mind you, these prescribed hormones are not approved by the FDA for this purpose, so are not covered under insurance.  Inducing lactation also involves days to weeks of prepping with manual breast stimulation and pumping to simulate an infant’s sucking.  The author describes it best:

I pumped every three hours for the six weeks before our son was born, even at work. I got up in the middle of the night. For the first week, I made literally drops. But slowly, I was able to increase that to about 5 ounces each day.

She goes on to describe that she was never able to pump enough herself, so had to rely on supplements for her baby to get the proper nutrition necessary for proper growth and development.

Honestly, a third of the way into the article, I knew that inducing lactation was not a choice I would ever make.  There is something decidedly unnatural about taking synthetic hormones to induce lactation.  And, for me (not you, me), inducing lactation after adopting an infant seems as if I would be fighting nature.  There is more to motherhood than breastfeeding.  There, I said it.  Yep, I did.

But still, Catherine Pearson’s article grabbed me, and I was having a hard time letting it go.  I am a huge advocate for live and let live.  The fact that Ms. Pearson was willing to do things that I was not in order to breastfeed her adopted child should not impact my life in the least.  Maybe it was this sentence that did it:

Within the first hour, I was able to breastfeed him, and I stayed with him and breastfed him every time he woke just like any normal mom would.

Yep.  That’s the one.  What, on earth, I wondered, was a “normal mom”? Seriously.  And because I am hoping to be an adoptive mom, is that somehow less than normal?  It seemed as if Ms. Pearson was working awfully hard to help herself feel like a “normal mom,” and in doing so was casting judgment on other adoptive moms who opt out of round the clock pumping and taking synthetic hormones.

I posted a link to the article on my personal Facebook page (yes, along with my outrage) and one friend made the point that the author wasn’t disparaging other moms, just writing about her own personal experience, which is true, but as I always say, language is powerful.  POWERFUL.  POWERFUL, people!  By suggesting that she felt like a “normal mom” by breastfeeding, just like she had with her other children, anything other than breastfeeding would be less than normal.

Yeah, whatever.  I don’t need to breastfeed to feel like a normal mom for a few reasons:

  1. I know there is no such damn thing as a “normal mom”
  2. Motherhood is about more than genetics and biology
  3. I feel secure enough in myself and in my mothering that I don’t need to go to such extremes to prove my maternal worth or my mothering abilities
  4. Bonding is about more than breasts

The other thing that got me is more an issue specific to moms who parent children who come to them both biologically and through adoption.  I will be the first to admit that part of the reason we want to adopt an infant is so that we have baby stories for ALL our children — that we can share as much with our kids as is possible.  I would hate to talk to them in a few years and be able to share intimate details of Mary Tyler Son’s very early days and when it comes time for our youngest, not have that information or experience. Selfish?  Yes, absolutely.

But it leads to a larger issue I grapple with myself on many days.  I know our children will be different.  They just will be.  Our oldest is dead and buried. Different.  Our middle is biological and looks just like Dad.  Different.  Our youngest will have two moms and two brothers, only one set of which will live with him.  Different.  Not less than, not more than, just different.

Adoption is its own unique and amazing and lovely experience.  Isn’t that, even minus the biology and lactation, inherently worthy and special?  I hate the notion that if biology cannot be duplicated or simulated, it is somehow less than normal.  Why can’t adoption be celebrated for what it is — the coming together of adults who make the most sacred of pacts to honor and ensure the health and well being of a child.

And that, my friends, goes so far beyond a bottle or mammary glands or synthetic hormones that I haven’t figured out how to put it into words yet.  But, yes, my bottles are ready and my nursing bras are long since gone.  And I’m okay with all of it and so very, very grateful.

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Guest Post: I Never Imagined I Would Be In the Same Situation As My Birth Mother

This is a guest post written by the Birth Mom who has chosen our family to adopt her baby.  We are beyond humbled.  The weight of the relationship we are embarking on, not just with a new baby, but with the mother and brother of the baby who will become part of our family, is new and heavy and promising.  Adoption is complicated, just like life.  Heartbreaking and hopeful, too.  Here are Sarah’s words:

This adoption journey is an experience like no other. Being adopted myself, I never imagined I would be in the same situation as my birth mother, having to make the same difficult decision as she did 25 years ago. When I learned I was pregnant, I wasn’t even considering adoption. It was only later, after I thought long and hard about the struggle it would be as a single mother with a four year-old and newborn, I knew what I had to do. It is painful enough that my son has had to go without, I couldn’t bear to put another child through that.

I first looked at same-sex couples, as I feel these couples are well deserving. I found an adoption agency online and received many couple profiles to look over. I hadn’t told many people at that time about my decision for adoption, so I decided to tell my Facebook friends and family. I got an overwhelming amount of support and love that I hadn’t expected. One of my friends had seen a video and adoption page of a couple from Chicago. I had no idea, just by looking at them, that we were meant to be. I went to their adoption website and watched their video. They seemed like really down-to-earth people. I liked that they had a four year old son, so that the baby would have an older brother to protect him and play with him. I was touched and heartbroken that they had a daughter who died of cancer four years ago.  Although very different situations, I at least knew they had an idea what the grief would be like for me when I am to be separated from my unborn son.

The couples I talked to before [them] had no other children and it seemed to me they were interested in the novelty of adopting a baby, but I feared once the “cuteness” wore off and the child grew, they wouldn’t be in it wholeheartedly. I also was very fearful of the other couples I talked to that they said they wanted an open adoption, but would end up shutting me out. One couple said they would “do what is in the child’s best interest” like an open relationship would only work if the child wanted it. Well, how is the child capable of determining that when they are a baby and throughout childhood? I felt that unfortunately, many adoptive couples out there misrepresent themselves in order to have the adoption go through. They tell you what you want to hear or use vague terms in order to adopt your baby.

I never for a moment felt that [S. and J.] were misrepresenting themselves. They were very open and honest when we talked, and when talking for the first time, I felt as though we had known each other for years and were just catching up. The type of relationship we want for this baby is very open. They want my four year-old and I to be an extended family. I realize that every adoption is different and the level of openness varies. Our unique situation could be viewed as unconventional, but I know first-hand that it is confusing and painful for an adopted child not to have a relationship with their birth mother. No matter how wonderful the adoptive couple are and how well they parent and provide for the child, there will always be a void in the child’s life if they don’t know their birth mother.

Modern family, adoption style. This photo was taken just a couple of hours into our first visit.
Modern family, adoption style. This photo was taken just a couple of hours into our first visit.

I don’t want my son to feel that he was unwanted or that I don’t love him. I also want him to understand I don’t love his brother any more than I do him. I love my boys equally. I recognize that tomorrow is never promised to us. I lost my birth mother well before her time. We never had the opportunity to really get to know one another. I don’t know anything about her childhood or teenage years and when we were together she didn’t open up about a lot of things. I know that is due partly because of how adoption was viewed in the past, as a dirty shameful secret. Something you did because you were irresponsible and without morals. I know her parents made her feel that way, because my aunt and uncle who adopted me told me my grandparents wanted nothing to do with me. They wouldn’t even hold me when I was a baby. That is extraordinarily painful for me to think certain people viewed me as unwanted and discarded. Something to be shameful of.

I am so thankful my unborn son will never have to feel that way. I know my birth mother wasn’t ashamed of me, but ashamed of herself. It is a goddamned tragedy that society could ever make birth mothers feel that way.

Our plan is to visit at least once a year. I would get photos and updates, and if I get a computer with a webcam, we could Skype as well. I am already writing a journal for my son to read when he comes of age explaining why I chose adoption. It has helped me to handle my emotions as well. It is very hard for me to explain to my son why his baby brother won’t be with us. I still am having trouble figuring out how best to explain it. He will be going through his own grief and sadness over the loss of his brother. Of course, it isn’t a true loss, as we will have contact throughout the child’s life, but it will be painful and difficult nonetheless.

I have several more weeks until the baby’s due date. I am trying to prepare for the emotional whirlwind it will be when the baby is born and we are separated. I don’t believe there is any way to truly prepare for the heartache that is sure to come. I don’t want to fall apart. I can’t fall apart because I have my son to care for. I just hope to survive it without it destroying me. I’ve got to find strength from within.

You see?  Adoption is heartbreaking and hopeful all at once.  My husband and I extend continued gratitude and are amazed at Sarah’s strength, openness, expressiveness, and awareness.  We choose hope for all of us.  

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