Published by PaintingChef on 21 Feb 2013 at 05:50 pm
Sometimes a text message from your manicurist changes everything…
There was a brief moment this afternoon where someone was trying to give me a baby. A little three month girl whose mother was overwhelmed and had made a very difficult decision to give her up for adoption. For a few minutes today, I thought it was possible that I could find a way to have a child soon…
And then I realized that I was in no way ready for adoption, we don’t even have a home study done. Of course, even if this woman was dying to give me her child, I would have had to say no. (This was all second hand and probably one of those things that would have ended up being a fiasco although I did, later on, learn that the child in question had gone to her adoptive home on Monday and information was just a little slow to travel… very unusual for the South, I assure you…) Reality. That bitch.
So as I’m sitting here in the aftermath of a VERY emotional couple of hours, I kind of had an epiphany… I’m dragging my feet because of the overall impending judgment of it all. Home study. Background checks. Letters to people I may never meet. Waiting and waiting and waiting.
I thought infertility treatments were going to be hard. I can tell you right now, that shit was a cakewalk compared to even THINKING about adoption. Infertility treatments depended on me and Patrick and a doctor. I didn’t have to plead my case to a third party. Or a fourth or a fifth. It was all step A then B then C and cross your fingers.
But now I am paralyzed with fear. I can’t even bring myself to READ the paperwork because the thought of opening up my life and my home and my marriage to the judgment of someone else renders me speechless. What are they looking for? What do they want to find? Am I going to look like the type of person who will buy shoes before diapers? Because I’m NOT… I’ve just… never had to make that decision.
I’ve fallen more times than I can remember. And no matter how hard I try, I can’t convince myself that it isn’t the falls they are looking for. They want to see how well I got up and how it changed me for the better. Because I DID get up. Every damn time. And I’m not perfect. But I like who I am… most of the time. I’m messy. I’m difficult. I’m sometimes selfish and I always take things too personally. But I did a lot of work to get here.
It’s just that, until now, I never feared it not being enough…
Ruta on 27 Feb 2013 at 2:42 pm #
We are almost a year out from our son’s placement with us and, I’m not going to lie, the process can be a total bitch…nothing like coming off your body’s failure (in our case recurrent miscarriages and a single extremely high-risk pregnancy that resulted in our daughter but made getting pregnant again a dangerous proposition) to then open yourself up to more people’s judgement/input.
BUT, I found that once I threw myself into the paperwork, that that is mostly what it was – paperwork, for better or worse. The agency wasn’t judging us – they were making sure we didn’t live in an unsafe environment for a child (you know, no crack pipes on the coffee table) and had some idea of what we were getting into. We had the luxury of already having a bio-child, so we could articulate our parenting style and values with more specificity, but we were definitely new to negotiating the whole open adoption relationship. I was worried that we wouldn’t pass the physical – I have rheumatoid arthritis – but basically all they wanted to know was that I have a normal life span and don’t have any conditions that would keep me from parenting. My agency’s social worker summed it up nicely – they are much more reassured by normal people with normal houses and normal lives (and normal pasts!) than by couples who do a good job of making sure everything looks perfect on the surface and think raising a kid is all about rainbows and butterflies, but are really not ready to parent.
I had a hard time putting myself and Kirk and our daughter “out there” with the Dear Expectant Mom letter and our website. After stressing over pictures and wording and everything, it turns out that our son’s birthmom picked us because we “looked normal.” When asked to elaborate, she said, “You know, nice.” I’ve started to believe it is just totally freaking random. Sometimes that comforts me, and sometimes that makes me crazy!
Please feel free to email me if you have any questions about the process (we’re one state over in NC) or our experience!
Nikki on 28 Feb 2013 at 6:57 pm #
I don’t think I ever told you this, but I helped a friend give a baby up for adoption about 10 years ago. She was going through a terrible divorce from an abusive husband who quit his job and was working secretly for cash so the judge wouldn’t sock him with big alimony and child support. My friend, Tracy, she had a fling, and the fling resulted in a pregnancy. She was plenty old enough to know better, plus she had two kids, ages 4 and 2, who she was supporting on her own, but she had a stupid moment and ended up in a really bad situation. I was the one who took her to get an abortion, but during the ultrasound the baby kicked and they found out she was much farther along than they thought and couldn’t do the procedure. So, I took her to the adoption agency, helped her make this huge decision, helped her pick out the parents, took her to the hospital when she went into labor, and hung out with the baby’s parents while Tracy was drugged asleep. We talked a lot, actually. They were terrified; and they were lost. They were trying so hard to be the picture-perfect people they figured Tracy needed them to be, for fear she’d take the baby back. I tried to assure them she was not going to do that, but I did tell the baby’s mother one thing: be yourself. Tracy picked you because you have much to offer this baby. No one’s perfect, and your mistakes and experiences will make you a much better parent. Don’t hide your insecurities and fears and run from your past. She chose you for a reason! She’s not perfect, she doesn’t want the baby her body created to go to someone who *is* perfect. She wants her son to have a normal life, a better life than she could give, but a real one. Don’t plasticize yourself out of fear. Be you. That’s all she wants.
Tracy was smart and picked the parents who had some struggles in the past, had straightened out their lives, were making decent money, and seemed to have wisdom to impart.
Susannah, if I ended up pregnant today, I can say with confidence that I would not want to be a mother, but I would not want to have an abortion at this stage in my life. Tracy taught me a lot about love and children and parenting. If I ended up pregnant somehow, I would give up my baby for adoption. And you are EXACTLY the type of parent I would seek out. Exactly.
Be yourself. Good people will know what a treasure you are.