Posts Tagged ‘Birthmother’

I cannot tell a lie, visits to the ob/gyn are my least favorite doctors visits – they are horribly uncomfortable, so I’m going to gloss over the gory details. My first OB visit went much like every GYN visit I’ve every had, after I endured the indignity of being weighed “in public” (okay in public means by the nurses station where no one is really paying attention but the number is always higher than I think it’s going to be.) I was put into the stirrups where I closed my eyes and tried to send my mind some place more exotic.

The new aspect was that instead of leaving at that point, I was taken to the doctor’s office where I sat patiently waiting for him. I looked at the pictures of the doctor and his beautiful wife and children. He had warm kind eyes and I noticed that his children seemed to have inherited his warm kind eyes. (As someone that is adopted I am always fascinated looking at how biological parents and children are similar.) The doctor bustled in with my file, and patted my shoulder as he passed me on his way to his desk.

“You’re into your second trimester,” he said “and I would say your due date is June 11. We need to get you scheduled for an ultra sound. Are you taking any prenatal vitamins?”

“Over the counter ones,” I responded.

“I’m going to give you some samples of prescription prenatal vitamins,” he paused and flipped through some of the pages in my file.

“You are placing your child for adoption?” he asked, looking up at me.

“Yes,” I said simply.

“I want you to know that I applaud you in your decision, and my staff and I will do whatever we can to support you.”

I opened my mouth to answer him, and I thought I squeaked out a thanks, but eyes started to fill with tears at this unexpected statement. I was moved beyond words.

“We’ll work out the financial arrangements with your attorney, please don’t worry about anything on that front. Focus on taking care of yourself and the baby.”

He came around the desk and handed me my paperwork to take to checkout and patted my shoulder as he passed again. Graciously, leaving me with a moment to compose myself before I left his office.

Perhaps it was my imagination but I felt a genuine warmth from his staff as I checked out and made my appointment for the next month.

Back at work, I talked to the receptionist about blocking out my doctor’s appointment for next month. While we were chatting I noticed that Cathy and her business partner Charlie were out of the office for the afternoon. I still felt rattled by Cathy’s reaction to my news but I knew that I was not going to be able to hide my pregnancy for long so it was time to bite the bullet and tell my coworkers.

I supervised our art department, there were three guys in there. Ken who was the team leader and two years older than me and then Tim and Josh who were both much younger. I walked back into their office and as is often the case with creative people there was some nerf ball rolling across the floor. I glanced at the job board, frowning – a common occurrence in that office, but in fact I was buying time, trying to find the words.

“Guys, there’s something I need to tell you.” I said as I turned to face them.

The radio was turned down, heads popped up from the back cubicles kind of like prairie dogs popping out of holes and Ken leaned around his monitor to look at me.

“I’m pregnant and since Rob and I are hardly able to be in the same room together, we obviously can’t parent a child together, so I’m placing the child for adoption.”

At this point I didn’t think I had any expectations because everyone I had shared this news with had reacted so differently, but I was surprised again by the reaction.

“Thank God,” Ken said to me and then he turned to Josh and Tim. “see I told you there was a logical reason.”

“A logical reason?” I asked, puzzled.

“Yea, for all the throwing up,” Tim said with a slight tone of exasperation as though it should’ve been obvious what they were talking about. Ken and Josh nodded in agreement. “we were worried you were developing an eating disorder.”

“But you didn’t seem to be losing weight,” Ken said with a solemn expression and a twinkle of mischief in his eyes.

My cheeks colored slightly, as I didn’t realize that everyone knew I was throwing up but of course, the walls were thin and the bathroom was rather centrally located so I imagine I had been heard in there more than once.

If you had told me that those three men that I so often thought of as “man children” with all of the toys in the office, late night movies, and long talks about video games would have taken the news so in stride I would’ve been flabbergasted. However, there was a slight shift, as they took me under their wings and tried to protect me. In the days that followed they learned that french fries didn’t make me sick, and so they often brought me some back when they ran to get lunch whether I asked for them or not. I was also presented with ginger ale and ginger candy as someone had read some article that told them ginger was good for upset stomachs. There was, of course, teasing now – after a bout of morning sickness I was told that it was the watery eyes that made pregnant woman seem to glow, but I was touched by their kindness more than I was harassed by their humor.

There was still a coolness that I couldn’t explain between Cathy and myself, but I refused to settle on it for any length of time. After all I was under the advice of my doctor to focus on myself and my baby and the blessings of friendship were far outweighing the small bumps in the road I had encountered and I knew I would still encounter.

The wisdom and advice of my parents settled in over the next few days. Monday morning I called Dr.A’s office first thing, as I promised my Dad I would. Dr.A was recommended to me by a friend who had a very difficult pregnancy, I thought it boded well that he was able to get her and her baby through her pregnancy despite all the complications.

The receptionist seemed friendly enough as she asked for the usual information – name, date of birth, contact info and then she asked the question that probably got her more than she bargained for – “insurance?”

“Well, I don’t have any insurance, but I’m placing my baby for adoption and I’ll be working with an attorney, but I haven’t met with her yet, so for now I guess I’m a self-pay patient.”

My long answer was greeted with silence, and then after a pregnant pause, I was asked to hold for a moment. I felt a little confused, I couldn’t imagine what I had said to get this reaction.

“Ma’am?” the voice said.

“Yes,” I answered.

“There will be no charge for your first visit, we’ll work all of that out later when you chose your attorney.” She said.

My eyes unexpectedly welled with tears at the gesture. I thanked her, hardly able to keep the emotion out of my voice, as I wrote down the date and time for my appointment.

After careful consideration, I decided that while I was feeling a little drunk on the milk of human kindness and I had a doctor’s appointment, it was time to tell my boss about my pregnancy. The company I worked for was a small marketing company, there were ten of us in all. I was comfortably in the middle of the food chain, reporting directly to the president of the company with three designers underneath me. It often felt like we were a little, somewhat dysfunctional family, rather than coworkers.

I knocked on Cathy’s door, even though it was open. My boss and mentor, gestured me to sit in a chair in her office while she finished a call. Her eyebrows raised when I closed the door behind me.

“What can I do for you?” Cathy asked, smiling warmly after she had hung the phone up.

“Well Cathy, as you know Rob and I broke up, our relationship is done.” She nodded in agreement, her dark eyes were confused. I very rarely brought my personal problems to work.

“It would seem that there’s a little unfinished business,” I said and now her entire expression reflected confusion, “I’m pregnant and I’m planning on placing the child for adoption.”

“How far along are you?” she asked and I was shocked at how expressionless her face was suddenly.

“About 12 weeks,” I said. I wondered if my voice sounded as confused as I felt. She nodded. “I have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday so I’ll be in a little late.”

She nodded again. There was an awkward silence, and so I stood up to leave. My hand was on the door knob when she called out to me.

“Joy,” she said and I turned to look at her, “you will never be able to go through with this.” she said and looked down at the papers on her desk.

The warmth I felt after talking to the doctor’s office was replaced by dozens of emotions crashing over me. One minute I was angry, then I was sad, then I was hurt, then I was scared. I admired Cathy, we had worked together for several years, how could she say that to me. I felt like I had been standing there for a long time, searching for something to say, but instead I just left her office. I just didn’t know what to say.

On my way back to my office, I stopped by the receptionist and had her block the extra time off in the book on Thursday, but I didn’t tell her why. My strength had left me for today, I decided to save the rest of my coworkers for later.

I don’t think that there’s ever a good time or a good way to tell your parents that you’re pregnant, but I have to tell you before you read any further – the way I handled it was probably the worst way to go about it. It’s not any easier when you are in your 20′s than I imagine it would be when you are in your teens. The only comforting thought was that I could retreat to my own apartment when it was over instead of us all being in the same house, having to face each other over and over again every day.

It was a 20 minute drive from my apartment to my parents’ house and the whole way there I ran through different scenarios. I tried to picture what I would say and how they would react. The reactions I imagined ranged from tears to outrage. My heart was fluttering wildly and that “morning sickness” (that for me was all day sickness) seemed closer to the surface that usual. I blame my nervousness entirely on what happened next.

As soon as my Mom let me in the house, I followed her to the living room, plopped down on the sofa and in one breath I made my announcement, “I am pregnant, I’m placing my baby for adoption and while I don’t need your financial support, I would appreciate your emotional support.”

I cringed at the awkward way I had made my announcement and I was further upset when I saw the dazed expressions on their faces. I had done this all wrong, I knew it. I was griping the backpack with the profiles in it like I was ready to run screaming from the house at any moment. It was my Dad who recovered first, he blinked his green eyes rapidly and began asking questions.

“Have you seen a doctor yet?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted, and smiled despite myself. My Dad was a hospital administrator, health care was, of course, his first concern.

“Are you taking prenatal vitamins?”

“I drink a glass of orange juice and a glass of milk every day,” I responded.

My Dad gave me a stern look, and I almost laughed despite myself. This is the response I should’ve expected, this was pretty typical of my Dad. This is where the deeply logical part of me comes from.

“We could adopt the baby and raise it,” my Mom said in a quite voice, and despite the fact that my parents raising my child was the last thing I wanted, my heart swelled and I loved her so much for being willing to do that.

“Jane, we would be in our 70′s when this baby graduates high school,” My Dad said very gently.

My Mom frowned and her hazel eyes welled up with tears as she looked at me. “I’m just worried that no one else will know how to raise your baby, just as I haven’t always known how to raise you.” She said.

Tears sprung to my eyes. My Mom and I have always been very different, I tended to take more after my Dad, but I never dreamed that she attributed those differences to some fault with her or how she was raising me. It was like the Earth shifted under my feet as I looked at my Mom with new eyes. I wondered how many bratty teenage fits she blamed herself for, thinking it was some short coming on her part, and it broke my heart.

“Mom,” I choked out between sobs, “you’ve been the best Mom I could ask for.” I said as I hugged her and together we cried. We cried for things that had apparently gone unspoken between us for too long, for the baby that we would welcome into the world and then have to say goodbye to. We cried for each other, both of us imagining the heartbreak that laid ahead, not for ourselves but for the other one. Even my Dad’s eyes welled with tears. When we were all cried out, we discussed things calmly and rationally.

My Dad was adamant that I needed to call and make a Doctor’s appointment first thing on Monday, and I promised I would. When I told them about the meeting with Mary from the Attorney’s office, my Mom said she would be there to offer her guidance and support. These were the easy things to sort out, more complicated was who else would we tell?

On both sides of my family I had cousins who were currently involved in the adoption process, trying to adopt, so we decided not to tell our family, beyond our family immediate circle. I wasn’t comfortable having my baby go somewhere so close to home, where I would be involved in the baby’s life but expected not to be overly involved. I didn’t want them to feel rejected that I wasn’t considering them but I didn’t want to be pressured by them either, keeping the pregnancy quiet was probably safer.

I carefully fanned out the profiles and let my parents review them. I didn’t say a word, as I didn’t want my feelings or thoughts to shade theirs. After reading all of them my Mom looked up at me very seriously.

“You are 100% sure, that you want to place this child for adoption,” she asked and after I nodded at her she continued, “because I can’t imagine any greater heartbreak than to tell someone you’re giving them a child and then to take that away from them.”

“I’m sure Mom, I want something more for my baby then what I can give it right now.” I said and she sensed the sincerity in what I was saying.

My Mom and I put our heads together to go over the profiles again. My Dad restlessly excused himself, he said he was going to get the names of some doctors. I sensed what he couldn’t say, that putting this baby up for adoption was going to be harder on him than he was was going to be able to say.

My Mom narrowed the profiles down to three, my top two were in her three. I explained my concerns about the cat allergy to her and so we eliminated one of her three. Like me, once we were down to the same two she felt a pull towards one couple over the other. There are really no words to say why, but I felt more confident in my decision with my Mom and I on the same page.

When I left, I had the other profiles in my bag but I kept out Beth and John to look at over and over again, they were the parents I told myself as I flipped through the profile, MY adoptive parents. I looked at the house and I imagined my baby (sometimes a little boy, sometimes a little girl) sitting at the table and playing in the living room.

I’ve always been something of an early bird, my eyes popping open shortly after the sun comes up, even on Saturday. Pregnancy didn’t change that, but now I found myself nodding off on a lazy day, hanging around the house. I was having a lovely lazy Saturday when I decided to wander out to the mailbox and that changed everything.

In my mailbox was a package from the Attorney’s office and inside were five profiles of prospective parents for my baby. I practically ran back to my apartment where I could lay them out and look at them in peace. My heart was racing and my palms were sweating, I was so nervous!

I sat down cross legged on the floor and took a deep breath before I pulled them out of the box to look at them. I was trying to think logically, what was I looking for? How would I know my baby’s parents when I saw them? I was going back and forth between trying to apply logic and telling myself I was going to have to trust my gut, two very different instincts at war within me.

I had five profiles with five happy couples smiling up at me. I picked up each one and with tears rolling down my face as I read the stories they held and looked at the pictures. In some ways they were the same, there were letters of introduction and most of them had shared their adoption journeys with me. Those journeys were full of longing, heartache, and medical procedures that sounded expensive and painful. Some of the profiles had endorsements from friends and family and some of them held promises that I would never be forgotten from my baby’s life, or from theirs. By the time I finished the last profile I was bawling.

I took a deep breath and stepped away from the semicircle of profiles that I had made. I went in the kitchen and rifled through the fridge looking for nothing in particular and settling on a glass of milk.

Were my baby’s parents in that stack? Would I know them if I saw them? Was one of those couples anymore deserving than the others? Questions were swimming in my head, questions that no one could answer for me. Rob was the only person who knew my secret and he was out of town visiting Emily.

I could do this, I had to do this, I thought as I sat down back in the middle of the semicircle of profiles.

I applied the lens of logic first as I picked up each profile and looked at it again. Two of the five profiles showed cats, Rob and I were both very allergic to cats. (I had actually almost been hospitalized over my cat allergy before.) I took the cat owners and put them in a separate pile. I was 100% positive that those parents would give up their cats for a baby, but I also knew that cat dander was hard to get rid of and I didn’t want my baby to start his new life wheezing and his parents saying goodbye to furry babies.

Trying to maintain my logical view there was a third couple that I ruled out because their profile talked alot about “love at first sight” and how they had only recently become a couple. They were confident that their love was strengthened by their struggles with infertility but I had just been burned by my own love at first sight experience. I wanted a more stable couple, one that was more established. I put them in the pile with the couples who had cats.

This last decision felt a little less logical and a little more from my gut, and it made me a little uneasy. Was I judging these people? It seemed wrong, but I was trying to chose the best parents possible for my baby. I knew that any couple could fall out of love and end up getting divorced, but I just didn’t like the odds for a newer couple. I comforted myself that something in that profile would resonate with another birthmother, it wasn’t like a game show where if I didn’t pick them they would never get picked.

I was left with two profiles and from a logical standpoint they looked similar and I knew it was time to fully go with my gut. I picked them up and read them, evaluated them over and over again. I read the profiles so many times that I still remember the names of that second couple, the couple that would not become the adoptive parents for my baby. Of the two profiles there was one that spoke to me more than the other, there was something comforting in their letters, something welcoming in the pictures of their home.

Even though I found myself leaning more towards that one couple over the other, I was overwhelmed again by the decision that I had to make. This was forever, could I really make this decision by myself?

I picked up the five profiles and put them in a back pack, and I called my parents to ask if they had some time for me to stop by, they said they did. With shaky hands I grabbed my car keys and headed to my parents house, to tell them news that I suspected would change our relationship forever.

“What does this one say?” Rob asked, standing in the master bathroom near the sink with his back to me.

“It’s positive, like the last two, so can we put an end to the farce – clearly I’m pregnant.” I said as I handed him the third pregnancy test I had taken for him in the last half hour, making my way to go sit down on the bed.

In the bedroom I contemplated the bed, the bed that had been our bed and I decided to make my way to the living room instead. I sat down on the sofa and found that I couldn’t get comfortable, every fiber of my being reminded me that this wasn’t my home anymore, I didn’t want to be there. He had followed me into the living room and sat down in his recliner but was eyeing me warily. The was silence between us, not the companionable silence that comes with intimacy a new uneasy silence.

I could feel tears threatening to fill my eyes. This had been my home, and he had been my love, were we really reduced to this? He distrusted me so much that I had been asked to take not one, but THREE pregnancy tests. We could hardly hold a civilized discussion.

I had called Rob no less than a dozen times before he finally answered, realizing I was not going to stop calling until I got to talk to him. I explained the situation calmly and concisely – I was pregnant and I planned on placing the baby for adoption, I was only calling him because he had to sign paperwork as well. (Frankly, I didn’t really want to have this conversation over the phone but my concern was that I would never get him face to face with a cryptic “we need to talk” message.)

“Emily is going to be very unhappy about this,” he said putting an end to the akward silence.

It was the wrong thing to say, like striking a match to kindling, my sadness flared into anger with that one statement.

“Your new girlfriend’s happiness is really the least of my concerns right now,” I said as I rose to my feet and started for the door.

“Hey wait,” he said as he jumped to his feet and gently grabbed my arm, “I’m sorry it was the first thing that came to my mind.”

“How lucky for me that when I tell you I’m pregnant, her happiness is the first thing that comes to your mind,” I said bitterly, this was not going the way I had planned.

“Look, sit back down, let’s talk about this,” he said.

I sat back down, even less comfortably, on the edge of the sofa. I was ready to bolt for the door in case things took a turn for the worst.

“You know that I won’t be paying you any child support, right?” He blurted out.

The only good thing about Rob’s statement is that I was so shocked, I couldn’t make a break for it. He knocked the wind out of me.

“What?” I asked

“I won’t be paying you any child support if you change your mind and decide to keep the baby.”

I thought I was angry before, when he brought up Emily, but now I was irate.

“First and foremost, IF I decided to keep the baby, you are legally obligated to help support YOUR child, no matter what your intentions are,”

“I will leave the country before I pay you a dime in child support,” he interrupted me.

My eyes narrowed but I continued on as though I had not been interrupted “and secondly, conversations like this are exactly why I think it would be better if we placed the baby for adoption. We can’t hold a civilized conversation, let alone co-parent a child.”

I was on my feet and out the door before he could respond. I made it as far as the front porch when a wave of nausea crashed over me and I bent over and threw up in the bushes and that was where he found me.

Sitting on the front porch in the afternoon sun, after I had thrown up on the zinnas, we had a much calmer discussion. Maybe he had realized I wasn’t the enemy, this wasn’t a ploy to trap him, I had an adoption plan and really and truly if I could’ve not involved him, I wouldn’t have. Maybe seeing me in a weakened state brought out some of the tender feelings that he still had for me, somewhere underneath all the drama. Perhaps it was just that the porch was a safer, more neutral location, but calmly and civilly we discussed “our” adoption plan. (I was a little disgruntled that he was suddenly acting like he had been responsible in making the adoption plan, but as long as it got his signature on the dotted line I wasn’t going to split hairs.)

I calmly and rationally explained my search for an adoption attorney, what Mary had said when she talked to me, and where things would go from here.

“So what do you need from me?” he asked in a tentative voice, and I felt more relaxed.

We discussed and debated and in the end we agreed to three things -

First and foremost, he was not going to discuss the pregnancy at work. We lived in a small town, at the heart of which is a miltary base where Rob worked. Someday, his job would take him out of this town and I didn’t forever want to be known as the girl he got pregnant. I had already learned that gossip spread like wildfire across the base.

Second, Rob did not want to tell his parents. They lived out of State and were all ready out of sorts with him, because earlier this year he had relinquished parental rights to his daughter from his first marriage. His daughter was not quite six months when he and his wife had divorced and now that his ex-wife was getting married and the little girl was two, he felt like it was the right thing to do. (I had noticed that after he relinquished his rights his relationship with his ex-wife improved and even the way he felt about his daughter seemed to change for the better.) He didn’t think that they could survive losing another grandchild. I had only met his Father and liked him alot, but since they were no longer part of my family, I agreed to whatever was best for Rob.

Finally, Rob said he was going to cancel Emily’s two week visit. I did not ask him to this concession, but I was relieved when he made the offer. He was adamant that I was going to need a strong support network to get me through my pregnancy and he wanted to make himself available to me at any time of the day or night. He told me stories about the day his ex-wife woke up and couldn’t stand raw chicken and he had been forced to remove all of it from the house while she was sick in the bathroom.

For all the hurt and ugliness that this meeting started with, it ended on a note that I felt was hopeful. Rob and I were united in one thing – we wanted what was best for the baby. I was certain as long as we could keep our focus on the baby everything else would just fall into place.