Reunion With Birth Mom - FAQ For Family And Friends

Very soon we're reuniting with our son's birth mother ("J") and her parents. Rather than continuing to have nearly the same conversation with various and sundry family and friends (eight times and counting), I've decided to post this FAQ for easy reference by all interested parties.

Q: Why are you going to meet with them?
A: Because we told them we would. We discussed it before "J" left the hospital; it's important to her, and therefore, important to us.

Q: What does she want from you? She must want something...?
A: She wants respect. A warm hello. Probably a burp cloth when she holds him.

Q: Aren't you afraid?
A: Most definitely. I'm afraid of what college will cost when our kids finish high school. I'm afraid of finding a lump. I'm afraid of reaching under the house to clear out some leaves and feeling a snake wrap around my fingers. I'm afraid of being home alone when there are Dove bars in the freezer. That's what I'm afraid of.

Q: Why does she want to see him?
A: Uhhh... well, I've never carried another human being in my body, but from what I understand, there's a bit of a connection that develops between mother and child. Don't you look forward to seeing people you were once close with?

Q: Is it legal for her to want to see him?
A: As far as I know U.S. citizens are entitled to want whatever they please. The law generally applies to actions, not emotions.

Q: Won't it be painful for her to have to say goodbye to him again?
A: I'm not her, so I don't know. I'm sure it was no picnic to carry a child for nine months knowing she wasn't going to raise him. She was able to make the decisions for adoption, so I'm sure she can make this one.

Q: So, you don't think she'll want him back?
A: I can't know for certain what anyone else wants, but a few minutes after he was born she told me she wants him to have a stable home with a loving mother, father, and big sister; she wants him to have a better life than what she can give him; she wants him to be safe, happy, and important; and she wants him to always know why she chose adoption for him - because she loves him. He's our son, by love, law, and destiny. She made that happen.

We really enjoyed the time we spent in the hospital with "J" and her parents, and I'm looking forward to our reunion. Baby Boy has come to look so much like "J" and her father... I can't wait for them to see him!

Sally Bacchetta - Freelance Writer
Freelance Writer
Parenting
Motherhood

WSJ Article "Targeting Feel-Good Benefits" Doesn't Feel Good

I like most of the writing I read in the Wall Street Journal, so I was surprised to find parts of a July 9, 2009 article "Targeting ‘Feel-Good’ Benefits" at www.online.wsj.com really insensitive. It may be a lack of understanding or poor choice of language on the author's part, but it's an example of how easy it is to play into negative stereotypes about adoption, and I think anyone who writes or edits on the topic should be more careful.

The article points out a cost-cutting trend among employers to reduce or eliminate post-adoption benefits for employees. In the section subheaded Domestic Adoptions, the author writes: Such private-placement adoptions, which typically cost $10,000 to $30,000, may be on the rise, based on anecdotal reports, Mr. Johnson says, as financial troubles may be causing some women to offer for adoption children they might have raised in the past.

First of all, I think it's too easy to read that as "Women who place their babies for adoption make $10,000 to $30,000 on the deal." Not so. Birthmothers may receive financial assistance for basic necessities related to their pregnancy and adoption, like medical care, housing, transportation, and counseling services. They do not receive a fee for the adoption!

Secondly, women don't "offer" their children for adoption. Women, with and without "financial troubles", deliberate and question and hope and pray... and finally they take a leap of faith. They decide to make an adoption plan, in many cases they choose the adoptive parent or parents, and often maintain some contact with the children they created. To say that they "offer" children for adoption makes it sound like they post a notice on Craig'slist and unload the kid to the first person who comes forward with the cash.

The decision to make an adoption plan is sometimes obvious, but it's never easy. This section of the article perpetuates toxic misunderstanding of birth mothers and adopted children, and I'm disappointed in the WSJ for printing it as such.

Sally Bacchetta - Freelance Writer
Freelance Writer
Parenting
Motherhood

Blogging About Adoption: Adopter's Guilt

I'm ready to admit that I struggle with blogging about adoption, and the struggle surprises me. I have no mixed feelings to get in my way... no ongoing grief or frustration to impede me. In fact, I have been twice-blessed with adoptions that exceeded even my wildest hopes. Twice-blessed with healthy newborns adopted domestically after meeting their birth mothers, who are two of the most fabulous young women on the planet, and an adoption attorney who is compassionate, wise, and professionally impeccable. No drama. No trauma. No hardship worth counting, other than financial, and that burden is universal among adoptive parents.

So, what's my problem? I've thought about it a lot, and I finally realize my "problem" is exactly that I have been twice-blessed with adoptions that exceeded even my wildest hopes. I call it Adopter's Guilt.

My "problem" is that when I go on the website of the adoption agency we used, I see faces and faces and faces of people waiting to adopt, eager to adopt, some desperate to adopt. Some of these faces I know personally, others I know from reading their profiles online. Though their smiling pictures beam, "Notice me! Pick us! We'd be great parents!", I know that as day after day slips away Doubt plods in with a heavy step and whispers, "Why has no one noticed you? Why has no one picked you? Perhaps you're not meant to be parents after all. Ever."

My "problem" is that adoption has brought people into my life. People like Michelle, who of everyone I know is among the most full of love and life and promise, yet she waits and waits and waits, with growing despair. People like Charlene, who waited 7 years for an adoption match and has suffered - since the day she brought her daughter home - with debilitating depression and self-doubt. People like Dara and Jeff, whose post-adoption experience has been a devastating legal nightmare. People like the birth mothers who write to me about feeling remorseful or inadequate or shut out.

My "problem" is that adoption means gain for some and loss for others. There are winners and losers, chosen and unchosen, the triumphant and the defeated. Some of us are made whole by adoption and others are broken apart by it.

My struggle to blog about adoption is really a struggle to reconcile the irreconcilable. Why me? I have no idea. Why not you? I have no idea.

I can't change anyone else's timeline any more than I could have changed my own. I do believe that everything happens in the right way at the right time (whatever that means), and that we almost never understand that until we're looking back.

I'm supremely grateful to be one of those looking back. I trust that you will be too.

Sally Bacchetta - Freelance Writer
Freelance Writer
Parenting
Motherhood

Birth Mother Voices

I expected to be emotionally moved by the Birth Mother's Day celebration. In fact, it was more like a tectonic shift.

Birth mother grief... I never imagined the depth or scope of it. I didn't know, I just didn't know, how it felt from your side of time.

Our childless counselors and the celibate priests, and those married with children said, "Go on with your life. You will be able to have other children", and turning away they spoke only of the joy of those who received our children as though it was now the only story. (from Breaking the Silence by Mary Jean Wolch-Marsh)

There is a child somewhere,
Lost in earth,
Or time,
He was mine.
There is no other feeling
Like the movement of an unborn child,
It's closer than someone touching you,
From the outside.
It is purely and cleanly,
And clearly,
Your own moment.
For those few months we were together
Alone against the world
But society,
That grand cheat,
Took him away
When we needed each other most.
I cannot say why I could not keep him.
Could there be a reason why?
Did I reject him in my guilt?
Because he wouldn't let me give up
When I wanted to?
I carried him, and he carried me.
Through a time when we could not go alone.
And I've been lost ever since.
(Lost by Cindy Sheff)

I know now that I will never know, but now I understand.

Sally Bacchetta - Freelance Writer
Freelance Writer
Parenting
Motherhood

Birthmother's Day

Tomorrow (Saturday, May 9) is Birthmother's Day.

I pray for birthmothers everywhere:
That you feel at peace with your decision
That you feel honored and respected by the adoptive parents
That you walk proud, knowing that you gave the gift of life

I pray for birthfathers everywhere:
That you are at peace with the birthmother
That you are silent or invisible by your choice, not by someone else's
That you have the emotional and social support you need

Extra special thoughts and prayers to M and J, my children's birthmothers. It is because of you that we have our family, and our gratitude grows with each passing day.



Sally Bacchetta - Freelance Writer
Freelance Writer
Parenting
Motherhood

Foster Care Families - Genesee Valley Parent Magazine

I've been reading the Genesee Valley Parent since before I was a parent. It's a great resource for all things parenting.

I wrote the feature story for the May 2009 issue - Foster Care Families: Safety, Support and Care for Children in Need. I hope you'll check it out!

Sally Bacchetta - Freelance Writer
Freelance Writer
Parenting
Motherhood

Foster Care Adoptions on the Rise

Statistics show that rates of foster care adoption are increasing in the U.S. USA Today recently reported higher rates of foster care adoption in Michigan, Arizona, and Colorado, specifically, and the trend is apparent across the U.S.

Sharen Ford, of Colorado's Department of Human Services is quoted by USA Today: "The pendulum is swinging," adding that the lower cost of foster-care adoptions helped bring about the apparent trend. Ford also tabbed more stringent adoption policies embraced by foreign countries regarding international adoptions as a key factor in the adoption shift.

I'm glad to see this kind of pub for foster care adoption. Many people who are open to adoption don't even consider foster care and foster care adoption, and certainly, it's not for everyone. Kids adopted from foster care are often difficult to place because they are usually older, often special needs, and often in sibling groups, and many of them struggle with attachment and other emotional issues. Most of these kids are far needier than the average domestic newborn.

And the legalities of foster care adoption can be trickier than adopting an infant through a private or agency adoption. Birth mothers often maintain contact and some visitation during a foster care placement. BMs either relinquish their parental rights or have their rights legally revoked in order for a foster care placement to move forward to an adoption, neither of which happens easily.

But the kids in foster care need and deserve loving, stable, supportive families as much as any other kid does. I celebrate any positive attention on foster care adoption, because I think the more people hear about it, the more they want to learn about it, and the more likely it is that foster care adoption will feel "right" for the "right" people.

Sally Bacchetta - Freelance Writer
Freelance Writer
Parenting
Motherhood