AUTHOR: M. DATE: 9:54:00 PM ----- BODY:
I've been thinking a lot recently about all the ways people become parents. It's not as simple as what we were taught: a man and a woman who love each other and have rings on their fingers make love, get pregnant, grow a baby. No kidding, most of us figure out by the age of 9 or so that there are variations on the theme. But recently the variations are hitting home for me again. We're adopting domestically. Other people I know are: adopting internationally, pregnant for the fifth time, pregnant for the first time, planning surgery so they can (hopefully) get pregnant, buying frozen sperm and having it shipped from California, taking a monthly road trip to get sperm-in-a-cup from a friend, adopting a teenager from foster care, becoming foster parents, parenting as a single-parent-by-choice, parenting as a single-parent-not-by-choice, and becoming a surrogate. How come they don't teach this along with the birds and the bees? Recently there's been a lot of discussion out in the baby bloggers world about birth parents, birth moms in particular. There are some very smart people out there with some really good things to say about what it means to be a birth mom and what it means to be an adoptive parent in an open adoption. I guess that, prior to the current blogland discussions, I hadn't been thinking about birth parents as Parents. I may take some heat for that, and it wouldn't necessarily be undeserved. It's not that I didn't think about a birth mom's role in growing and giving birth to a baby, or even the loss a person must feel in that situation. It's more that I thought about making an adoption plan as something that, by design, makes you *not* a parent. I guess that's a bit like saying that a parent whose child has died is not a parent. Maybe they aren't in the ways we tend to think about day-to-day parenting, but there's more than one way to turn that stone. ********** I've been thinking about a college friend. We spent a few years co-leading workshops on campus about birth control, abortion, HIV prevention, date rape, multiple orgasms, and how to find the g spot (bring on the google hits). What she never told me, what I found out by accident, is that she was a birth mom. She had made an adoption plan for an infant she gave birth to when she was 17. We never talked about it - I wasn't supposed to know, and I didn't ask her. All I could think about was that she was carrying around a giant weight that she NEVER talked about. There was an entire dimension of her life that this person who I felt I knew so well - who I had conversations with ad nauseaum about all things, taboo and otherwise, related to sex and reproduction - never hinted at in my presence. The fact that she never told me says volumes about the stigma and also, I think, about pain. ********** I'm learning. I feel compelled to understand as much as I can about birthmom's perspectives and experiences so that I can be the best mom I can possibly be for my kid. When we first started looking seriously at adoption, I read a whole bunch of stories about open adoption from the perspective of adoptive parents. They were all positive, since they had been chosen by various agencies promoting open adoption, but the situations ranged from letters and photos exchanged through an agency twice a year to shared Thanksgiving dinners and vacations. I was floored by the Thanksgiving end of the spectrum. I couldn't imagine how either the birth or adoptive parents could handle it. And even though the writers were, to a person, absolutely glowing about these relationships, all I could think was: I don't think I could ever do it. On the other hand: in Dan Savage's book about his son's open adoption, he talks about the moment when he and his partner walked out of the hospital room with their new son, leaving the birth mom sobbing on her bed. He wrote that this was one of the best arguments he could imagine for open adoption: when his son asked why his birth mother didn't choose to raise him, they could tell the story about her sobbing and how much she loved him and how difficult it was for her to lose him. She made the decision she made because she DID love him so much. *********** One of the first people I told we were planning to do an open adoption, someone who I trusted and who has worked in the adoption world, responded by warning me that "many birthmoms have no boundaries." As we talked, I had an image in my head of me standing with an infant in my arms next to the shelf with the ringing telephone, peering at the Caller ID box and groaning, "she's calling AGAIN?" like I do with certain other people who call us all the time. I'm not proud of this, but there it was. *********** Earlier this week, Lisa said this in response to a post on boomerific:
I can’t imagine not having them as a part of my life. It would be like not knowing Bert's family. They are a part of him.

This puts open adoption in a different context for me. My relationship with my in-laws is not smooth sailing 100% of the time - but whose is? I love them, AND they drive me crazy - just like the family I came from. And they were and are the basis for the person who I chose as my partner and best friend. Even if I didn't like them, that's a pretty compelling reason for busting my ass to create a reasonably harmonious relationship. And given that, unlike I., our baby will not be a self-actualized, independent human being when we meet him or her, I think the reasons for building a relationship of any stripe with our child's birth parent(s) that much MORE compelling.

I believe very strongly in open adoption but I'm just beginning to understand why. All of the birth parent and adoptive parent perspectives I've been reading have helped tremendously. I feel grateful again to have such a by-definition-thoughtful process to prepare to become a parent. Now I just need to figure out where to go from here.

-------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Blogger Barb COMMENT-DATE:5:09 PM COMMENT-BODY:i'm echoing cubbiegirl. thank god you posted this...my mood just changed 180 degrees. thanks! -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Blogger Poor_Statue COMMENT-DATE:8:33 AM COMMENT-BODY:Wonderfully said.

Dan Savage's book is one of the best I've read about adoption or otherwise. I loved it.

I wish you and your sweetie the best. --------