I want my baby

I read a post on Adoption Truth (the post is Tricks Without Treats if the link doesn't work) that reminded me of something.  My kept daughter (can I just say how much I hate having to differentiate between my two children like that?)  was born nine weeks early, weighed 2 lbs. 15 oz. when she was born.  I was really sick when I had her.  I didn't get to see her for almost 48 hours after she was born.  I was kept in a room with no lights, no music, no tv, no phone, no stimulation until they could stabilize me.  The first time I saw my daughter was at midnight, two days after she was born.  They wheeled me in on a gurney and I saw my beautiful, half- baked daughter, tinier than anything you can imagine. She was beautiful.  I had toxemia, and all things considered, we were very, very lucky.  Here's the thing though, the whole time I was in  the hospital (five days on the mag bag with no stimulation allowed, around the clock cbc's , constant blood pressure monitoring and way too many ultrasounds) I kept thinking the worst.  Something horrible is going to happen to this baby because I gave away my son.  This is what I deserve.


Isn't that awful?!!  Yeah, I know, it's ridiculous.  But I always felt that I was being punished for the choice I had made so long ago.  What better way to punish me than to hurt the thing I loved most in the world, again.  Twice in my life I've had children and twice I've left the hospital without them.  My daughter stayed in the NICU for six weeks after she was born.  I was there every day, twice a day for hours.  I  got released from the hospital about a week after she was born.  I remember standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes and just starting to sob hysterically. My parents were out from Chicago to help us manage and my father asked me "What's wrong with you?"  I  sobbed/screamed "I just want my baby!"  Boy, if that wasn't history repeating itself!


What Cassi wrote about the other day regarding her granddaughter's attachment to her mom while in the NICU struck a huge chord with me.  Everything you are taught in the NICU is the polar opposite of what you are told in adoption.  In the NICU they stress the importance of the mother/child bond.  So much so, that there is something called kangarooing where you put your preemie child against your bare chest and cuddle them, so they can feel your heart beat and smell your scent, which helps their physical and emotional development.  Hmmmm.


In adoption, you are told that the best thing for your child is to give them to someone else, who is better able to care for them.  Oddly, I was encouraged to visit my child, hold my child.  I was also asked to carry my child downstairs and hand him over to the new parents attorney.  I could do none of these things.  I had already instantly bonded with my son when he was born.  The first time I held him, I went from scared teenager, to mother.  I knew that if I saw him again, or held him, I would never be able to do what was "right" for him.  I would never be able to walk away and give him a "better" life.  I certainly was not going to hand him over to someone else to take home.  I guess the big disconnect for me then, was that nobody would really acknowledge that I was his mother.  Everyone danced around it.  I was his mother, but I wasn't considered capable of being his mother.  Hold him, but make sure you hand him over to people who are older, more capable, better than you, to raise him.  Hold him because that is what is best for him, then break your heart and hand him over because that is what is best for him.


I guess the glaring difference from the NICU and adoption, is the long term bond that is allowed to be formed.   In the NICU, the goal is that you are prepared to take an incredibly small, somewhat fragile child home and that you are fully bonded and empowered to care for that child.  In adoption, you are asked to do what is "best" for your child.  Hold him, bond with him, because that is what is best for him and at the same time prepare him to go home with someone who is better than you are to raise him.  How can both of these theories be correct?  You are the most important person in his life, you must be fully prepared to care for him and you are the least important person in his life and you must prepare him to be raised by someone else.  How can you expect mothers to do this and not acknowledge their immense grief?  How can you ask a new mother to develop that bond, only to have it broken a few hours or days later and not expect it to deeply affect both mother and child?  Maybe it's because in the NICU, the mother isn't dispensable.  In adoption, we are temporary, disposable, only there for the birth and then shoved aside and erased for eternity.  A bookmark until the "real" parents show up.


By the time my daughter left the NICU, I could change a diaper the size of a cocktail napkin on a baby covered in wires.  I could burp a baby that was so small that my hand covered most of her body.  I held a baby so small that her hand could not wrap around your pinky finger, and I gave a bath to a baby that fit in the small little bin they put by the side of your bed in case you throw up.  I was a well prepared, empowered mother.  If they had done all those things for me when my son was born, he would have come home with me.  That is the difference between the NICU and adoption.

I'm Coming Out!

Okay, I was on another natural mom's blog offering whatever support that I could.  All the responses to her were compassionate, except one.  Not a word of compassion offered to her about what she wrote, instead this person decided to slam another responder for offering compassion to this particular person and not offering compassion in other places.  Really?  What's the point of that?

I've been hiding behind a moniker in my responses.  I'm not sure why I decided to use it in the first place.  Maybe a little self protection from possible attacks?  As if the words someone might hurl at me under a different name might feel better than being hurled at me under my own name.

I've noticed over the last few months that I've joined this blog world, that many of the nasty-sayers, drama stirrers, post under "Anonymous."  That's kind of like playing cyber ding-dong ditch, don't ya think?  "Let me go stir things up, insult people, get a public reaction and then I'll go hide behind "Anonymous" when people come back and want to have a real discussion about whatever it was that I was so bent out of shape over."  I don't play that.

So, here I am, Laurie.  Proud enough of what I say, how I feel, and how I treat others that I can attach my real name to it.

Doing the Best With What you Have

It's been a while since I've written anything.  We've had quite a lot of upheaval happening lately, none of it adoption related.  Five years ago we had a very large fire at our house.  We were home and everyone was okay, but we lost 1/2 our house.  We hired a contractor who decided to royally rip us off.  We have never been able to recover financially and this past month have short sold our house and moved into an apartment.  It has been an emotional, humbling experience.  For me it has been a lesson in letting go of the past, accepting where I am and sorting through the things I've had control over and the things I haven't had control over.  I've made some serious mistakes that were compounded by someone else's greed.  I've realized that simply acknowledging my mistakes is not how I will fully learn from them.  I have to actually act differently, make a concerted effort to change my behavior, stand straight and communicate.  I must learn the lesson that sticking my head in the sand gets me nowhere but in deep doggy doo-doo.  I must start at where I'm at now and do the best with what I have to move myself and my family forward.

Is any of this sounding familiar?  These are the same issues I need to deal with regarding the role of adoption in my life.  I can't correct the mistakes I made in the past.  I have to acknowledge that I thought I was making the best decision with the choices I had at the time.  Would I do it over again?  No.  Would I want my daughter to make that same decision?  No.  But I can't change the decision I made then.  I have to do the best with what I have now, which is his name, address and a picture from his Facebook page.  I have hope that one day he'll send an answer to my letter.  In the meantime I can do my best to prepare myself for that day by getting myself as emotionally ready as possible.  I can write and share and learn.  I can make doing the best with what I have now, my mantra.  I can start with what I have, use the things I gain along the way to get me to me dreams.