How an Open Adoption becomes 'Closed'

Ken Robbins, Houses by the Bay, Archival Digital Print

A few months ago we heard from a young woman who had recently relinquished her child. She was full of pain when she wrote to us, five months after surrender of her daughter. Her "open" adoption turned into a nearly closed one after the adoptive parents of her baby read about her sorrow on her blog. She went through an agency, American Adoptions, based in Kansas, but deals with placements all over the country. Their website shows many pictures of happy couples, with dogs, without dogs, whatever you are looking for. It makes the process of giving up your child seem like the ideal solution.
It did not turn out that way for her. Here is her account of her relationship with the agency social workers, in her own words:

Around my fifth month of pregnancy, I decided on adoption. The baby’s father and I had no real relationship, and he wanted me to have an abortion, We were students at the same Catholic college in upstate New York, and after graduation in May, he was moving back to his home country of Nigeria. He would keep his daughter a secret from everyone. He would keep on partying and hooking up with random girls the remainder of my pregnancy, and then move back to Africa, and I would likely never hear from him again. I didn’t think I could get child support from him since he wasn’t a U.S. citizen and to top it off, his father was a lawyer. It was February. 

 

If he didn’t want anything to do with his child, I wasn’t going to force him to be in our lives. But at the same time, I didn’t think it was fair to my daughter to grow up not knowing any family members because one entire side of her family wouldn’t even know she existed.

BEING TOLD 'YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH' TO BE A MOTHER'

My own family was cutting off ties with me because they were ashamed of me, and to make it worse, a  number of them were telling me I wouldn’t be a good enough mother, that I would be selfish for keeping my daughter, and that I would be on welfare for the rest of my life. Though I had originally planned on keeping my baby, they wore me down, having convinced me that as a single mother, I would not be enough. I came to believe that the only way I would be a good mother would be to give my baby away. In February I contacted American Adoptions, and met with an adoption counselor. I was still on the fence about adoption at that point. I never wanted to give my baby away, but I felt that I had to.

Before I knew it, the adoption counselor was referring to me as a birthmother (and I referred to myself as one too), and by March I had found an adoptive family. They seemed picture perfect. They seemed to go everywhere and do everything. They had a gorgeous house. They had horses. They were involved in their community. They talked about taking my daughter to Disneyland one day, and teaching her how to ride horses, and taking her to the beach, and I thought, “I want all of that for her.” 

After the agency worker talked with them, they agreed to an open adoption. We started talking via email every day up until I gave birth in the beginning of June. When I got to the hospital, I was supposed to call the adoptive mother and my adoption counselor and let them know I was in labor, so the adoptive parents could catch a flight from where they lived, seven hours away. They got there three hours after I gave birth, and over the next few days in the hospital, I let them take care of my daughter a little bit, feeding her and changing her. 

WHEN IT ALL CHANGED

They still seemed to be great people, and the day I was discharged from the hospital, they texted me asking if I was okay because they saw me fall apart in their rearview mirror as they drove away with my baby. They sent me pictures and updates the next few days. My college roommates and I had dinner with them the day before they left to fly back home with my daughter. 

A few months later, everything changed. They had stumbled across a blog I had been keeping from the time I decided on adoption, and they were completely taken aback by an entry that talked about how much I missed my daughter. In my blog I said,   

“I feel like I served my purpose by giving birth and by completing someone else's family for them, and now they don't need me any more than my daughter does. I stopped texting the adoptive mother as frequently and asking for updates on my daughter, because I don't want to be reminded of how the one person I love more than anything in this world is doing just fine without me. Do I regret the adoption? Right now, at this point in my life, I would have to say yes. Don't get me wrong-I don't regret making the adoptive parents happy beyond belief, and I don't regret completing their family for them. But I do regret that in order to do that I had to sacrifice my own happiness and destroy my own family that would have consisted of myself and my daughter.”

The adoptive parents told the agency they wanted to cut off contact with me for the next six months, and I said that was not okay. I emailed or called my adoption counselor every single day for the next two months before anything was finalized. I had asked for updates once a month. Still a far cry from the visits, emails, phone calls, text messages, and everything else I was promised. Instead, they agreed to send me updates once a month for the next six months, but after that close the adoption. They claimed they needed time to be a family, and that I was taking that away from them. 

Among other things, the adoptive parents told me I was no longer my daughter’s mother, that I could just have another child someday. They lied to the agency and said I was harassing them along with my friends, they blocked me and everyone else they once had called “family” online on Facebook, they continued to stalk my blog and report back to the agency what I wrote. I finally took the blog private. They also said I can’t share pictures of my daughter with anyone , and have implied on more than one occasion that I never deserved to be a mother. The agency’s response to this was to tell me that I was asking too much from the adoptive parents, that I needed to get into therapy and move on with my life, and that I seemed resentful. I took down all pictures of my beautiful daughter.

BUYING INTO 'PREFERRED' AGENCY LINGO

Just now, five months after placement, I am finding out more unethical things the agency did. They had me sign relinquishment papers over a month before my actual due date. They had me waive the number of days I had to change my mind from ten down to five. They lied to me about the original birth certificate, telling me it would be shredded, and that I wasn’t allowed to have a copy of it or see it. The called me a birthmother before I ever gave birth, implementing in my mind that's who I was. As I was figuring out what was happening with contact with the adoptive parents--they had deleted me from seeing their Facebook  page--I also had asked them who told the adoptive parents to change their phone number.  My adoption counselor said she'd talk to their social worker to find out. The next day that SHE told me she was the one who told them to delete me on FB, but that she had never told them to change their phone number.

Although I had requested the adoption counselor be there when I was discharged with my daughter from the hospital, only the adoptive family was there. The counselor did not call to find out how I was doing until a few days after I left the hospital. And for all the therapy the counselor encouraged me to go into, acting like I could have all the therapy I needed, she failed to tell me until after placement that they would only pay for three sessions. My father is now paying for it.

As far as I am concerned, the social worker at the agency pretended to care about me. After placement--if you’re still in that place of “I’m so selfless and noble and peaceful” about the whole thing--she asked if I would become a poster child for adoption. If you say one word against them or the adoptive parents, they  tell you to "get over it."

I do not feel comfortable at all with the adoptive parents anymore, especially since the adoptive mother told me that every time she looks at my daughter she “has to be reminded” that she couldn’t give birth to her herself. I wish I had known that I was good enough for my daughter. Just because the adoptive parents had horses and money does not make them saints. As for the future at this point I really have no idea...I doubt things will be patched up between the adoptive parents and myself, unless I throw myself under the bus and take blame for everything, which I have no plans on doing.--a natural mother

FMF would love to hear from other mothers and their relationship with the social worker who handled their case, and their relationship with the agency involved and how they feel about the agency today.
__________________________

From FMF, related posts

How adoption agencies 'turn' vulnerable women into spokespeople for relinquishing Former Bethany "recruiter" speaks up
Mea Culpa to Julia and others who give up their babies today

Birthmothers: Women Who Have Relinquished Babies for Adoption Tell Their Stories The book is one of the early ones about first mothers, and the writer, though not involved in adoption, tells their stories with empathy. The writer, Merry Bloch Jones had me hooked in the introduction when I read: "...I began to realize that, to birth mothers [yes, that term, but hang on], relinquishment was more than merely a life-altering turning point. For most, it was an invisible barrier separating them from the bulk of humanity."

I still can't read that--or at least not tonight--without tearing up, just a bit, after editing this young woman's piece and understanding all too well her heartache. And to have that awful truth of our lives acknowledged by an outsider is so powerful. Bloch understood there was no "getting over it" and "moving on." Life goes on yes, but everything about our lives has changed, and not for the better.

"I just last night finished this book. In some places of this book which I underlined or marked it was as if I myself wrote it. I felt a lot of the things described and still do. I am a birth mother of 2 daughters from the 70's so I lived in the era that condemned, shamed and lied to us. It is a relief knowing it was NOT me who..."--from Amazon