Back to “normal” life, but nothing would ever be the same normal again. That was always the bit of irony about adoption. You went through this experience, this incredible perceived “sacrifice” and certainly a heartache for the ultimate plan to not have your life changed, but no one tells you how unavoidable that is. You can’t have a baby and place it for adoption with the experience changing your very…
This is hard. I hate it, but I’m coming clean. I hate that I am feel seen as some kind of super strong birthmother because I am suppose to be immune to this sort of thing in my head. Guess what..I’m human. I’m not perfect. In fact, I am probably just as messed up as everyone of us. I just hide it well. Periodically, people ask me how my reunion…
This story begins here:” How to Begin a BirthMother: Chapter 1“ As an unmet, joyful and excited couple marveled and cooed over my precious baby, now theirs.. I was then packing all my meager belongings, waiting for my mother, sad goodbyes, uncomfortable silence, more feelings of shame. As they fussed over the first diapers changed, and made happy phone calls, I was on the cold drive back..5 hours due to…
Sometimes adoption just confuses me. Not in the regular old sense like “how does all this corruption continue and why won’t so many people bother to see the so logical truth” or “how exploitive and sleazy will agencies have to get before moms see through their tricks?”, but in the tradition of the Talking Heads: Well how did I get here? The fact remains that the relinquishment of my son…
Judgement. Choices. Lack of True Choice. Variations of this theme have been running through my head for a long time. To some the birth mother is a saintly figure. Wise. Sacrificing. Selfless. A builder of Families. A deliverer of dreams come true. Adoptive families want to thank her. Poor girl, she is just in a sad situation, but through her wisdom she can make the best of the situation and…
I find motherhood to be very repetitious. As in; you repeat the same things over and over again: Did you brush your teeth? Say thank you. Don’t touch that. Close the door. I know you know exactly what I mean. Our ongoing “issues” with Garin were fairly repetitive as well. The same things that caused problems years ago, were still bones of contention. Nothing got solved, it just morphed. Like…
So at 3 o’clock every afternoon, I walk down Wall Street to go pick up the kids from school. Today, being Wednesday, Scarlett gets dropped off at 4:20ish after Brownies, so I was looking forward to some quiet walking time with Tristan. Tristan is in Kindergarten, so his teacher brings the kids for release up to the audorium. Each of the three kindergarden classes have their own door and as…
Quite a few years ago, I gave up on NOT sleeping with the TV on all night. I use to make a huge point of taking the “I-have-no-function-but-for-the-sleep-timer” controller, and using the sleep timer, since Rye HAD to have the TV on to sleep, but I hated to wake up at 3 am to an infomercial. Eventually, I lost both the battle, the clicker and lost the light sleeping that…
I received this question in my comments in this last post regarding my Adoption Today Article: “congrats on getting published, but i must ask: did the magazine insist, that you denigrate yourself by calling yourself an incubator for this article? somehow i thought that you, Claud, considered yourself to be Max’s mother, not just a walking uterus (i.e. “birth mother”) who produced him for his “true parents” 🙁 it is…
In the midst of the conversation, we touched upon that just bad feeling that we both have, that we in a certain way, did this to ourselves. Though she was up here at the time, and I on LI and in NYC, being the same age, getting pregnant at the same time, having boys 5 days apart, it was the same time frame and the same social order that we experienced. The greatest difference is that I went the agency route and she fell in with a private lawyer/ private adoption. And as she said “I did this.. I found them”.
“So did I. I called my agency. I sent myself away”
Pearl S. Buck Uses the Term Birth Mother in 1956 The first known use of the word “birth” as a descriptive and identifiable adjective for a woman who has lost her child to adoption is attributed to Pearl S. Buck in 1956. In the June issue of Women’s Home Companion, Buck wrote a piece called “We Can Free the Children”. Buck, clearly talking about unwed mothers and the feelings of society…
Annual Birthmother / Adopted Child Birthday Blues Today is the last day of the “Max’s Birthday Week..let me live in the past..thank you”. Unfortunately, it is now piggybacking on real PMS and, as always, Thanksgiving blues. Coupled with Holiday Blues Thanksgiving always makes me miss my own mother really, really bad. It is not uncommon for me to be cooking the brussel sprouts or stuffing from her handwritten recipe book…
A Case of Birthmother Blues Sitting here now.. feeling all nasty. I din’t know why. Feeling on edge.. like something is about to happen..got so much to do, but not really… should be doing more, but what? Rye is after me to find some job that I can do one handed… I want to laugh.. every thing I find that is work from home sounds like a pyramid scheme and…
Bare with me becasue I think I am still trying to fiqure this out. After I wrote out last nights post, I was still thinking a bit about it all. Especially that conflicted feeling that I have…the thrill that Max and I do have this connection, yet coupled with the sadness that even for three seconds he felt out of place in his life. Now I have had internet “discussions”…
Now I know she is asking for infertility and still born stories..and I don’t mean to smarf all over their chance to get heard. So nothing personal here ya’all. This isn’t a grief contest, just a chance too for us birthmothers.