Denial

Update: Hello to everyone who has never visited before! This post is a rant which means it's pretty angry. And I'm pretty opinionated. I'm sort of getting bothered by the fact that people might read just this one post and think it sums me up or that I always go visit people's blogs and dissect their personal adoption story. I don't. Usually I just use this blog to write about my own adoption story along with the occasional general adoption talk. I was pretty hurt and angry when I wrote this. But anyway, after you read this entry, please know that I wrote a follow-up that is far less harsh and much more coherent and if you click on my blog title you can read that.

Fair Warning: This post is unlikely to be coherent or organized or anything else.

I'm coming to hang out on my own front porch so that I can resist the temptation to get rude on someone else's. My apologies to Kateri for starting to do my business on her front porch.

I need to start by saying that a woman who detaches from her pregnancy, who asks potential aparents to call the unborn child "their son", who wants to be moved off the maternity ward after birth and gets mad when the nurses ask her what she wants, who has had two kids and two abortions prior to this additional pregnancy and before the age of 22, and who regularly gets into almost or actual fistfights is not only not a typical birthmother but is also not one who is really in a place to acknowledge or deal with adoption.

I will also say that a woman who embraces this detachment, who refers to any genetic roots and family as DNA, who acknowledges how a hubby is family but totally can't see how a birthfamily is family, who thinks visits will make her a glorified babysitter, who thinks it is up to the child to express a desire for contact, who is more concerned with the pain of hopeful aparents than that of actual birthparents, and who emphasizes that the mommy is the one who kisses boo-boos and changes diapers etc., is probably unlikely to be able to speak sensitively to birthparents.

What I can't figure out is why anyone in this situation would feel the need to comment on a thread on a birthmother's blog about insults to birthmothers with a note about how not all birthparents see their child's adoption as a loss. Or why, when I pointed out that few would describe me as unhappy in my day-to-day life but that I still grieve for my daughter makes me someone who is trying to push my own experience on others.

The thing is, like most of the birthmoms in the blogosphere, I've read an awful lot about adoption.

The birthmother described above sends up hundreds of red flags. So does the adoptive mom.

Still, I'm going to assume that their relationship is working for them and that they will be able to continue these satisfied feelings and hang on to their beliefs for the rest of their lives. People do that. In fact it happens all the time.

And I'm going to acknowledge that there are adoptees like the ones that show up to speak in this woman's comments who think open adoption is disgusting or who have no desire to contact their birthfamilies. I will even refrain from saying that I think those folks probably haven't worked through their adoption reality yet.

I am going to suggest that adult adoptees from the closed era may not be the best sources for whether or not open adoption is confusing to children and that there are plenty of sources that talk about what it's like for the children of open adoption. I'm also going to suggest that this woman take some of her own advice and not take a few people's opinions as the gold standard of how it works and how people feel.

I'm also going to suggest that both these moms do some research just in case the little child they both love so much doesn't quite fit into their picture-perfect scenario.

Because loss is the central theme in adoption: for all three triad members. And someday it may catch up with them. Especially that child who may not want to hear their version of his story: that birthmom didn't want him and that she never felt bad about placing him and that his adoptive mom preferred to deny him access to his birthfamily rather than allowing them to be a natural part of his life so he could have seen firsthand who he looked like and that he was placed because he was loved, not because he was some kind of burden.

And those of us who spoke up- it's because we worry about the day when it all sinks in.

Oh and there are some studies that suggest that woman don't really deal with the placement of their children until 5-7 years after the child's birth.

And all those anti-adoption folks? They feel strongly, not just because of their experiences, but because of the countless research showing how traumatic adoption is to the participants. Most of the literature says it's worse than losing a parent or child through death and that it's lifelong and far-reaching.

And one other thing, I know there is a lingering question about whether there are no (or few) happy birthmoms in the blogosphere because they don't feel the need to blog. I don't really want to deny that these birthmoms exist, I just want to say that the research supports the fact that adoption is traumatic for everyone and that denial (and the sheer trauma of the experience) often causes birthmothers not to really deal with the truth of placement. That and the fact that it's so incredibly hard to admit that you're a birthmother even on an anonymous blog.