It’s taken me a long time to get to this post mentally. I knew before I had the Snapper that I would be writing it, but I had no idea–absolutely none–of the strange shapes my thoughts would take in the days and weeks after his delivery. I knew, intellectually, that my thoughts about adoption, and relinquishment in particular, would be challenged by our birth experience. I thought, though, that I would give birth and immediately have insight. I thought birth was a one-time event, a moment. My pregnancy was a process, certainly, but would culminate in the singular event of childbirth.
Laboring with the Snapper and ultimately delivering him was a harrowing experience. I was prepared for hard work, as the Bradley method instructed me, and even for what they call “hard pain.” I was not prepared for being in transition for most of my labor (I started saying “I can’t do this anymore” at least twelve hours before delivery). I’d love to blame the pitocin they finally gave me after being in labor for 27 hours, but I was in agony long before that. My body was telling me I was fighting off certain death when I was really only having a baby. I could breathe through the contractions but I could not convince myself that it was my body working beautifully to bring my son into the room. When he finally arrived I was so out of it (even without pain meds) I hardly knew what was happening. Unfortunately, his birth wasn’t the end of my pain. It took 40 minutes to deliver the placenta; I also had to endure hours of stomach-mashing to work out several large clots. So there I was, trying to nurse and bond with my son and still in searing pain.
I didn’t stop hurting until four or five hours after the birth. By then I was trying seriously to nurse him and he wasn’t having any of it. He would lick and nuzzle but wasn’t interested at all in latching. I hadn’t slept in two days so between nursing attempts–I had to call a nurse for every latch–I tried desperately to sleep. This time that was supposed to be a beautiful one of bonding and celebrating was painful, exhausting, confusing, and scary. By the end of my hospital stay he latched, finally, and they let us go home.
I didn’t love my son until he was six weeks old. It’s not that I hated or disliked or resented him. It’s that I didn’t have a sense of his separateness. When he first came out, floppy and blue and needing help to breathe, it was as if something in my body wasn’t working. The same was true of the latch. It was like my knee or my leg wasn’t working and I was trying to get it to. When our home visit nurse came two days later and told us he was dehydrated and not gaining well, I was dehydrated and not gaining well. Of course, the reason for his predicament was a delay in my milk arriving, so it was about my body. But I also didn’t have a sense that it was his body that was in trouble. We were one. I began to gain a deep understanding of the symbiotic relationship of a mother and child. When he was crying I needed to nurse him, needed to hold him.
Gradually, as his nursing stabilized and he started to play more and then to smile, I began to love him, until finally at six weeks I was overwhelmed by a rush of emotions. He was my son! I felt the power of parental love. I started to really like him and to enjoy being with him. I felt all of those things parents are supposed to feel about their children. I wasn’t able to love him until he was truly his own body in space.
Looking back, I can’t imagine having reliquished the Snapper for adoption in those few weeks, especially in the first hours. In the hospital on the second night I briefly sent him to the nursery so I could get some sleep. As soon as he was gone I had the oddest–and most realistic– sensation that he was still cradled in my arms. I could physically feel his little body on mine. I called the nurse to bring him back and wheeled the bassinet as close to the bed as I could get it. Psychologically, physically even, I couldn’t exist without the Snapper. If he had been reliquished then I would have had undergone a kind of death so real-feeling I don’t know if I could ever have recovered.
Long before I ever intended to became a mother through childbirth I held to one very crucial principle: you can’t (or shouldn’t) adopt until you can acknowlege that such circumstances could arise that would compel you to give up your own children. People who say, “I could never do that!” should not adopt. Women who relinquish are ordinary women of all ages, races, and social classes who face difficult cirumstances. To assume that you yourself could never find yourself in similar cirumstances is the height of arrogance and naivitee. And this goes for domestic and international adoption.
It wasn’t until I knew love for this separate person, my son, at six weeks, that I knew in my heart I could give him up if I needed to. The issue is complicated of course, and who knows where I would draw the line. Having known the love of an expectant adoptive parent I knew it was possible–gut-wrenching, horrific, but possible–to trust someone else to raise my child. But I needed to love him first.
So all this is making me think hard about relinquishment periods in domestic adoptions. I can’t speak for anyone else’s experience, but I know that for me it would have been crucial to parent for those six weeks. It would have at the very least been necessary to have a relinquishment period that long even if I had handed the Snapper over at birth. I just don’t see how I could have made a good, clear-headed decision before I had a sense of his being separate from me, of what the size and shape of my love for him was. I would not have felt free to give him up out of love and not coercion–and this goes for the pregnancy, too (even in labor I was scarcely aware that there was an actual baby in there). Two years ago our social worker said, when I timidly brought up the possibility of the birthmother breastfeeding, that no woman will give up her child once she breastfeeds. How simple-minded I was then, to think that denying her the choice of breastfeeding would make the experience better for everyone!
I’m not trying to universalize my experience but I am thinking about how adoption agencies can be more mindful of potential birth parents’ needs and more flexible about how to go about the process. It could be that some parents will need six weeks to parent, or longer than that to decide. And I don’t know that it’s possible to anticipate those needs, because every birth experience is different.
So what do you think? How could agencies and potential adoptive parents practically introduce more flexibility into the adoption process? Is the six-week period typical, or is it just me? Do birthparents need to have a sense of their separateness from their children before signing the papers? Is this developmental stage disrupted when their babies are removed right after birth? Is there a way to more thoughtfully handle the disruption (such as delaying it)?
You raise some great questions here. Not having given birth, I can’t speak to how long it “typically” takes someone to have that sense of this being a separate person. But, though we were attached to Roo almost instantly, love took longer.
In the state where Roo was born, there is a 3-day wait before relinquishment and then a 10-day revocation period when the baby is usually in foster care. We felt good that there WAS a revocation period but I’m not convinced it would be long enough for most people.
I wonder if any of this looks different for a woman who relinquishes her first as opposed to a woman who relinquishes a child who is not her firstborn?
My feelings were very different than yours and truthfully, I can’t relate to a lot of what you wrote here. (Let me say emphatically that every experience is valid no matter how different they are and I am by NO MEANS saying that your experience trumps mine or vice versa.) I’ve been reading about maternal development (for my infertility book) and it’s so individual and so dependent on outside factors and situational issues. Every woman’s experience becoming a mother by birth is true, period, and there are some commonalities but there are so so so many exceptions that even the commonalities start looking less common.
I don’t think it’s possible to plan for every possible adoption contingency. I think thirty days is the *least* there should be re., revocation. I don’t think parents should be *made* to parent but I think there should be more encouragement and support. I think agencies should be more full-service.
I have trouble figuring out when it’s empowering and validating to support a woman in her adoption choices and when it’s coercive. I also don’t know when it’s empowering and validating to encourage a woman to parent despite an adoption plan and when it’s coercive.
The other thing is that when I was interviewing various folks for the open adoption article for Adoptive Families, I realized how very very very different every family’s circumstances are. I base a lot of my adoption thoughts on what’s happened with us and with Jessica and it means I’ve made a lot of assumptions that don’t work with other people’s adoptions. I try to find a common thread (and I’m still trying) to figure out what I think about policy and damn, it’s hard. But I cling to a change in revocation periods — also I think it’s absolute CRAP that different states do things differently so that women and babies end up being sent to, say, Utah to give birth so that people can skirt the laws in her home state.
What I want to know (and I hope this isn’t getting too personal) is how Snapper makes you feel differently (if you feel differently) about not-Boomer and his mom. Has your motherhood experience changed the way you look back at what happened? Does it give you a different insight?
LisaV and I have talked about this because I think it’s so interesting. I would have been a very different adopter had I adopted first, I think, although I can’t say concretely how.
This is very personal and thoughtfully written. I think I’ll have to think on it for awhile before I can join the dialogue. I never even thought about this “separateness” that you are describing. I wonder if I went through the same process without realizing it? I’m not sure that I did. Let me go think some.
there’s no way i could have parented, even for one day. not physically, not emotionally. it just wasn’t feasible.
i had detached myself from the Kiddo before birth. for my own safety. he was born from me, but i made him belong to someone else.
I tried that detachment method as well, barb. How is it working out for you? (I ask this very earnestly.) It has caused me nothing but pain. Every single day I am reminded that if I had just been stronger, just said “let me be with my baby” that our adoption plan would have gone out the window. If I had felt like parenting my son before signing the paperwork was even an option for me, I would have and he would still be with me. There was so much pressure and “advice” from everyone involved (agencies, lawyers, adopters, my parents) that I do not believe at all that I made a wise, informed decision that was truly 100% mine.
I think there should be a mandatory 6 week period that each mother has an opportunity (if she so chooses) to parent her child without constant interference from anyone who will benefit from the seperation of her and her child.
It was so different for me. I was in love with my twins instantly. I was in love with both of my husband’s and my children instantly (why isn’t there a word for our children after we reliquish?) If I had spent 6 weeks with my twins I would have never been able to let them go. Ever. As for all four of my children I feel like they are part of me that I gave them part of my soul. They have part of me and that will never change. Does that make sence? But then again I had suffered from secondary infertility and had a lot of time to come to terms with a lot of things before I was able to get pregnant again.
Sorry for the rambling . . .
Lauren- i had the same 6 week period as well. i just couldn’t fathom parenting. in fact, at the time, i thought 6 weeks was too long.
My experience with Little Bun was very, very different from yours. He was a separate being always, I think, by virtue of the medicalization of my pregnancy. But he was also physically dependent on me and in a normally unrecognized way, I became dependent on his survival for my own. The moment he was born, I thought I was dying, but that it was okay — he was well, and then I could let go. He was surrounded by so much love, my own included. He would be okay. (But as you know, then I didn’t die, and I thought “Now what?!”)
In those first weeks, not only could I not have let him go, but I couldn’t let him out of my sight. I would wake to make sure he was breathing.
Between six and ten weeks I was a crazy mess, still experiencing medical complications of the pregnancy and delivery, completely sleep-deprived and unable to make a decision about anything, including what I wanted to eat. That would not have been the right time to choose another life for my child.
From my own experience, I am unconvinced that there is ever a physically or emotionally right time to make this decision.
I’ve said before that I hold now to the “burning building” theory — I could toss my children to safety if we were in a burning building, even if this meant losing them forever. But honestly, nothing else could or should separate me from them.
I suppose that the time that you become really aware that it really is burning and that no one can put it out is the right time. But how often is that building really hopelessly burning?
Noncoersion seems exceedingly rare. A couple weeks isn’t really going to change that, is it? (but it sure beats three days).
It’s just different for every parent. So… every parent ought to have the chance to have the time and the resources they need. That’s the thing.
Cloudscome–I agree. It’s not about FORCING each woman to parent for 6 weeks, it’s about making that option AVAILABLE and FEASIBLE. I never once thought that it would be acceptable to take my son home with me for 6 weeks.
And the truth is, as much as everyone loves the “burning building” theory, how many of our children REALLY would have suffered if we had kept them? Not mine. I would just be a poor, single mother (just like I am now–and my daughter is happy, healthy, and wonderful).
Adoption is a permanent solution to an often very temporary problem.