Dear April

Roni asked for some perspectives for a young expectant mom who is trying to figure out what she will choose for herself and her unborn child. This is my offering, poor though it may be.

Dear April,

You don’t know me. But I was once where you were. Basically alone, pregnant, broke, and terrified. I was a little older than you, at 22 years old, but I was frantic.

Everything I did seemed to end up in disaster. I was in a bad relationship with a guy who didn’t want to be a dad and I was estranged from my family. As I felt the little life grow inside me, all I could think of most days was “How on earth can I be someone’s mother?”

I still remember the exact moment she was born. I remember looking into her wide-open dark eyes and I remember one little hand reaching out to touch my face. And then the nurses wrapped her up and took her away, and I shut down. I just stopped thinking.
I chose to relinquish my baby girl. She went to a loving home with two people who were longing to be parents and who adored (and still adore) her. Luckily for me, they were also open to me being a part of her life, and they have kept that commitment for 15 years now. For a very long time, I never thought about how she might feel about adoption, how it might affect me later on, how it might affect future children. I was convinced I’d made the right decision, the only decision, and I was angry when anyone questioned me about that belief.

Time passed. I left my daughter’s first father when she was about 5, and eventually got married to a loving and caring man. My husband and I wished for a baby very much, but we experienced 3 years of wrenching unexplained infertility, even going through the process to adopt, when I got pregnant with our son in 2005.

After my son was born, I became confused. I felt sad unexpectedly. I felt anxious. I was so, so happy to have him, but it was mixed in with the sadness, guilt, and pain I couldn’t really explain. I felt like I’d abandoned my first child. I love her adoptive parents with a genuine depth of emotion; they are part of my family now too. I don’t wish them away; I’m not angry at them. I think they’ve done a great job raising her. But part of me, part of my heart that feels very empty and strange, wishes I’d chosen differently. Wishes I’d picked myself up and done what I had to do to parent her.

There are a million little things I’m missing out on. I don’t know her favorite foods or colors or which pajamas she loves best. I don’t know what boys she likes at school. I don’t get to help her with her homework or help her pick out an outfit for a date. It’s not my bathroom that’s littered with teenage beauty products. Not my sweaters that are missing because she “borrowed” them. Not my telephone that’s ringing off the hook with girls asking for her.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy and thankful for what I do have. It is a lot.

My daughter is the same age as you are right now. I know fifteen is a very young age to be thinking about becoming a mom. I think that it feels very overwhelming to you. Probably most people you talk to are telling you the only choice you should make is adoption.

To that I reply: What do you want to do, April? Do you want to parent? What is your heart telling you?
I’m not going to lie to you. Parenting is hard work. Babies and children are demanding creatures. They need constant attention. It can be lonely, it can be scary, it can be enough to drive you crazy some days. Instead of going on dates and shopping with girlfriends at the drop of a hat, you will be juggling school and working and child care. You may find that you have little in common with some of your girlfriends after a time. You may feel tired and discouraged and you may just lay your head down and cry sometimes.
BUT. But, but but…there are rewards that are stunning, as well. The first time you look into your baby’s eyes. The first time that little pink mouth curls open in a sleepy yawn and your little one snuggles into the curve of your arm to sleep. The first time your baby looks at you and smiles, just for you. The first little laugh you hear after a tickle. The first hug you get. The sweet baby smell after a bath, when you bury your nose in your baby’s downy hair and just feel the warmth running through you. The first words. The first time my son said “Mommy”, and I knew it was really said to me, oh, I thought my heart would burst from love. It still happens every time.

There are going to be people who tell you that it isn’t enough to love your child, that you can’t possibly be a parent, that keeping your child is selfish and unfair, because what can you give a baby? Please don’t listen to them. There are resources that can help you keep your child and stay in school. Babies need diapers, food, clothes, a warm and safe place to sleep, and love. The rest is just gravy. I can’t even tell you how much baby gear I bought or received that I literally never used.

Your parents may be shocked and angry right now. They may be telling you that you’re not going to live in their home as a teen mom. You may be feeling pressured by other family members, or church members, or your own friends. Your baby’s father may be denying the whole thing, talking badly about you, or just acting like a creep, because he’s scared too. I know it’s hard to look past this crisis mode you’re in right now. I remember that sense of panic all too well. Often, once you decide on adoption, people begin to praise you, you have social workers and hopeful adoptive parents trying hard to please you, wanting to help you, paying attention to you. You feel special. You feel like you’re doing something right, for once. You feel relieved because you have a plan. Those are hard things to resist.

However, once the baby is born, the attention and praise trickles off. Your social worker is kind, but busy. Your calls often go unreturned now. Your baby is with their new family, and their attention is (necessarily) focused on Baby. They don’t have as much time for lunches with you. Even if they are wonderful, caring people, and the adoption is fully open, it can be hard to arrange visits that are suitable for everyone. Pictures come sporadically sometimes. That’s just life. And you have no power to really change any of that. Actually, you’re mostly afraid to speak up, because you don’t want to make them upset at you and risk having things get worse.

Your friends will be very supportive at first, but if you are having a hard time a few months later, or next year, let’s just say, perhaps they’ll get impatient. They’ll roll their eyes. They’ll change the subject. Maybe your parents will be able to talk about it with you, and maybe they won’t. “Get over it” will be the new mantra you’re expected to absorb. Even if you think you’re fine, and you feel deep in your heart that you did the right thing for your baby, your feelings may change. Or you may feel like you’re going crazy because the pain is still there, that you’re not “moving on”. Sometimes, it takes years before you are able to process what happened fully. Sometimes it hits like a freight train immediately and you can barely breathe. Sometimes, and I accept that this is possible, but not as often as adoption agencies would have you believe, you have some regret but you’re basically okay with adoption.

I’m not telling you these things to try and force you to choose parenting, although I will admit that I am biased toward that choice. Only you can make this decision. I’m telling you these things because I have seen them happen. I have had some of them happen to me. Adoption is not a one-shot deal. Once you relinquish, you are always, always a “birth mother”. Forever. The short-term gains, and even the long-term potential gains of adoption, are still propagated by an essential, basic loss: your loss of your child, and your child’s loss of you. It can be dealt with, it can be healed (to some extent), it can be dulled. Your child can attach to a new family and in many cases be happy and healthy…but in many cases, there is a sense of longing and loss even for the happiest adoptees. A sense of needing something more. A sense of missing a piece of themselves.

Please don’t misunderstand when I talk about pain and loss in adoption. I got on with my life, yes. I function well. I don’t spend my days at the office curled up under my desk crying for my relinquished daughter. Most of the time, I feel happy, content with life, I get busy, there are days that go by when I think of her with only smiles. Then I will see a sappy commercial about a mother and daughter and spend 20 minutes sobbing hysterically on my kitchen floor. No one sees these episodes, unless you count the cats, who are blissfully unaffected as long as the food dish is full. I pick myself up and dust myself off, blow my nose, and finish the dishes or tonight’s dinner. But the hurt is still there, do you see? It simmers there, below the general pleasant normalcy of my days, waiting. It is mostly bearable, but a lot of times, I would just give anything to go back and un-choose adoption.

This is the main thing I want to try to help you understand: whether you choose adoption or parenting, things will never just go back to how they were before. They can’t. You will always be a mother.

Now. If you truly feel that adoption is the choice for you and your baby, I am urging you to wait until your child is born to really make that decision. To not participate in a pre-birth “match”. To insist that you have your support system with you at the birth, and to spend time alone with your baby. Breastfeed your baby. Hold your baby. Name your baby. Really, really think about this.
You do not have to sign anything at the hospital or at all prior to TPR, which is termination of parental rights. You do not have to have parents “in place” to take your baby home from the hospital. I chose my daughter’s parents when she was 3 days old; my regret from that time is not asking to see her or spend time with her enough before I signed her away.

Whatever you decide, you will be in my thoughts and prayers. If you choose to parent, there are many of us who will celebrate that news and offer our help in any way we can. If you choose adoption, I for one will be here to support you. So will many of the rest of us first parents, but in our hearts, we will still be sad to see you join our ranks. Not because you will not be embraced and welcomed, but because we know what pain may come for you.

I wish you the very best.