Before We Were Separated by Adoption
This is my favorite picture of Max and me from when he is a baby.
It’s the day he was born. He was born in the early morning. I had gotten into the hospital around 2AM and labored into the night. This was after I had rested up. Recovered. I remember laying in the bed, just totally mystified and stuck down dumb by the incredible force of nature that I had just experienced.
His coming forth, out of my body was beyond all reason. It was a place of pure feeling and stamina, raw and primal. Feeling the force and hours long struggle endured, having no choice but to endure it, and then quickly flipped oposite to a gushing slip of life as my body heaved and produced….perfection. I will never forget the feeling of him falling out of me.
My Favorite Picture of My Baby Before I was His Birthmother
I have always preferred this picture, but now I can see why. As I hold him, cradled near my heart, still almost one, not yet apart, the look of love is so evident on my face. My eyes stare into the camera as if saying “Mine, still mine.” Then I put those maternal feelings aside and took on the mantle of being a good birthmother. I learned to say “theirs, not mine” and swallow the pain. Oddly enough, the night I knew coming home from work, that he had acknowledge my presence in some small way and something could be waiting for me, all I thought was “mine, my son, my baby, mine”..over and over my brain repeated the mantra that I had forced deep down so many yeas ago.
We Didn’t Need to Be Separated; We Didn’t Need Adoption
I look at this face of my own and think, “How could anyone not have seen it and not felt the absolute cruel injustice of separating me from this babe? Why did no one say ‘just don’t'” And I have this faint recollection of Joan, the adoptive mom that I lived with, asking me just that..was I sure I had to, wasn’t there a way? I don’t think I entertained her way of thinking. I believe I shut her down immediately. Fool, that I was.
I had this incredible urge to call Joan, just now, thinking of this kindness, this understanding and compassion she shared, but the number I have was no longer in service. I have thought about her so much recently. I long to share with her what I know of Max now. She was there in the beginning, I want to tell her the ending.
I think of her daughter, Kari, who I held as a baby, pregnant then with my own. Kari is 18 now too. Did she search? What of her mother, this sister in loss whose child I touched. I saw their ending, what of a new beginning?
I am sad that the number was disconnected. Now I will search for them too.
Look at his beautiful head of hair. You look so young and so pure and full of love. It was like being in a train crash that couldn’t be stopped at least that is how I see it now, like I thought it was the only choice I had. Love your blog, love your posts.
Thank you.
I am having huge issues looking at the close up right now..maks me cry terribly..lol.
All I can do is just look at myself and say “Look, we did it. I found him. I found your baby. I got our baby back.”
The sadness is overwhelming. I hate it when it spills forth into tears.
sniff
Don’t block the tears, they are a good release and will help you heal. The sadness is overwhelming and what that says to me is that you have a huge capacity for love.
For me, finding my daughter and having her back in my life brought up a huge amount of grief and anger and an overwhelming sense of loss. Right now I feel ok inside, by ok I mean not in horrible pain. But it comes and it goes.
You will get people who expect that finding him means you feel better but finding them doesn’t fix everything, there is no closure with adoption loss, you just find ways to survivie it. I see you doing that in a really powerful and creative way.
Oh, I am so not a blocker!! But I still hate it when it happens! SOmetimes,it still feels so shocking…still so raw, so new, and all too real. But I know not to expected it to ever be trully gone from my life. I am so lucky to have such a clear road map ahead with others shring their stories and expereinces..so in that, I am pretty grounded in what to expect.
Still it is depressing some times. Who knew that weare detined to have these feelings for the rest of our livees? And when a new one joins our sad little club, and asks in thise first months, after the xhock wars thin, “When will it feel better, how long will the pain be like this?” I hate having to be the one to say..Get use to it, you will have this here now for the rest of your life. It is never over.
I have heard it called trumatic loss, or unresoved grief, but I think it is continual loss. With adoption, every new day gone is more loss to add…so it’s non stop..continiuos loss and grief.
What I do do is try and put that enegry to good use..with the writing and work to reform and sometimes a good save….
Oh Claud…
I have that exact same picture. Of course, different because it’s ours, but my expression is much the same. And my emotion is exactly the same. Thinking, ‘Mine,’ but becoming the good “birthmother” and switching to ‘theirs.’
Though, holy cow, that’s a lot of hair.
in “my” photograph, i just look awful, with a weird grimace/smile thing going on. i wasn’t quite sure what to do, if that makes any sense.
I also have a very similar picture. In it, it’s very clear that I am simply my precious baby’s only mother … I was putting the possibility of adoption out of my mind and, by that evening, called the faciliator (aka my “unbiased” counselor and said “NO” to adoption.) This is when the facilitator began late-night negotiations on behalf of the “waiting couple,” dangling the more and more “open” adoption carrot, leaving my mind whirling.
In photos taken the day of the “entrustment” … when I finally gave in and said “okay,” I have an odd don’t-make-anyone-uncomfortable grimacy smile, too. My sister tells me I even tried to make people laugh (a family trait in times of great sorrow). But I have this beet red nose, tear-stained cheeks, and puffy eyes. I look at the photos and think … will my daughter think I was happy/okay with our parting? I also think, wow, I simply couldn’t walk away with that young woman’s child.