One of the questions I get asked a lot as a birth mom is what I would tell a woman who is considering placing her child for adoption. What do I wish I had known before I made that decision? What do I wish I had known about what came after the decision was made? I’m never quite sure what to say. I’m just a birth mom. I’m no expert.
I used to be an expert on being a birth mom, back before I actually was one. I thought I had placement all figured out, and I knew just what to expect. I felt certain that adoption could hold no surprises for me.
I attended a birth mother support group on and off throughout my pregnancy. There were a few other pregnant women in attendance, but the group was mostly women who had already placed. I wasn’t sure if I was going to choose adoption or not, but I did feel that I had a really good idea of what to expect if I did choose it, because every week I got to hear what things were like for these women who had placed. In addition, I had read a few blogs written by birth mothers, and so I felt that I had a terrific understanding of what placement entailed.
Here’s a partial list of what I knew about adoption back then:
- If adoption is the right choice, it’ll be easy to make. It will be obvious. There won’t be any doubting or second-guessing. It’s black-and-white, yes-or-no.
- Choosing a couple doesn’t take long. Look for a couple with whom you have a lot in common, people who are like you, only better. The right couple will meet all your criteria.
- When you meet the right family for your baby, you’ll know. There will be heavenly choirs, beams of light, and the feeling that you’ve all known each other for years
- The couple you place with will be your best friends, and you’ll all be one big happy family and see each other all of the time.
- Placement is hard, but knowing the choice was right will take the edge off.
- You’ll grieve after placement, but if you put your faith and trust in a higher power, that higher power will heal you.
- A few weeks after placement, you can get back to business as usual, and you’ll be just fine. It doesn’t take too long to move on.
- You’ll have an instant bond of sisterhood with every other birth mother you meet.
- Placing makes it easier to forget about the birth father and your relationship with him.
- Openness helps.
Then I placed my baby girl with her family. She was nine weeks old. I discovered then what an idiot I was. Absolutely nothing was what I expected. Those things that I knew about adoption were crap. I felt in some ways that the things I’d heard in the support group had been misleading. I thought for sure that people had lied to me. Maybe some of them did, but I doubt it, because here’s what I know now about adoption:
- Every single adoption is a unique experience. You can’t expect yours to be like anyone else’s – even if you’ve placed before, or if you’re placing with a couple who has adopted before. Each child is different, and so is each adoption.
- Adoption is never an easy choice, even if all signs point to it being your only choice. It’s very, very hard. It’s not always the obvious choice. Even if it’s the best choice, it’s an agonizing one.
- There is no mathematical formula for choosing a couple. It can take minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months. The “right” couple might be just like you, or they might be your polar opposites. They might meet very little of the criteria you had in mind, but that’s not always what’s important.
- Don’t expect a feeling of reunion to tell you you’ve chosen properly. For every birth mom who hears the hallelujah chorus, there are twenty who picked a couple because of location or openness or simply because she knew they’d be good parents. Choosing a couple doesn’t have to be love at first sight.
- The couple you place with will love you and appreciate you forever (if not, they need some sense beat into them). You may have a great relationship with them, and I hope that you do. But that doesn’t necessarily translate to a weekly lunch date or Facebook friendship or vacations together or borrowing each other’s cars – and that’s perfectly okay! It doesn’t mean they hate you. If they want that sort of thing and you don’t, that’s okay to. Boundaries are second only to communication in importance when it comes to the couple you place with, and the two usually go hand-in-hand.
- There is absolutely nothing in heaven or earth that can prepare you for the blow of placing your child for adoption. In my experience, it is the most excruciating, physically and emotionally painful thing a woman can do. I don’t have words for what it’s really like. But it hurts, and the fact that it is the right thing for your baby is cold comfort indeed.
- There are no hard-and-fast rules about grief after placement. Some birth moms bounce back in days, others take years, and some never quite get past it. Prayer didn’t do much to ease my pain. The only way out of it was through it. I grieved for longer than some people thought I should, but I am glad I did. I’m much better for it. Likewise, if your grief is short, don’t feel the need to apologize to anyone. Grief is personal.
- You can go back to business as usual, but it’ll never quite be as usual, because you’re not the person you were before placement. The adoption supervisor at the agency I used is fond of the phrase “adoption is a process, not an event.” You don’t ever stop being a birth mother. It’s a lifelong commitment, and it never goes away. For the birth moms I know, that’s a good thing. If placement is done willingly for the right reasons, a birth mom will be a stronger woman for it, better than she ever was or could have been. “Moving on” is subjective. Some people will talk about “getting over it” but I don’t like that phrase. I never want to get over placement. But I have moved past the trauma of it. It just takes time.
- Birth moms are a diverse population. I’ve found that, more often than not, having placement in common with a woman doesn’t make us instant friends. There’s an unspoken respect, but we’re still human, and not everyone is going to like everyone else, especially when some people’s adoption experiences are so much different. Birth mothers who placed many years ago sometimes feel they were coerced and that adoption cheated them, and they’re not always friendly to birth moms whose experiences were good.
- There’s no quick and easy way to forget about the birth father. You made a child together, and that’s a connection that will always be there whether you like it or not. Therapy is good for forgetting (or at the very least, forgiving). Placement doesn’t do a thing for it. I found that it made it worse. I had this exquisite grief and he played Halo. Placement can complicate feelings toward the birth father. It doesn’t make them go away.
I was right about the last one, though. Openness really does help. Not every birth mother wants openness, and not every birth mother who wants it will get it. But when it’s there, and when it’s done properly, it is a wonderful thing. I don’t have to wonder or worry about my little girl. I’ve seen for myself that she is happy and healthy and smart and quite possibly the cutest little girl in the universe. I know what kind of people her parents are. I know what kind of parents they are. They know me. They can answer whatever questions their youngest daughter has about where she came from, and if they can’t answer them, they can ask me. Openness makes life easier for all of us.
It’s impossible to know what placement is going to be like until you’ve actually done it. You just can’t prepare. Even if you think you know what to expect beforehand, things change after placement. But if you’re honest with yourself and with the couple you choose, adoption can be a positive, rewarding, and healing process.
I would do it again in a heartbeat.
