So here goes my first post in nearly a year and a half. I've gone months of feeling "okay". This is not to say that I've gone months without thinking about or missing my daughter, or that I haven't felt sad, but I've more or less been at terms with the adoption.
But lately I've been overcome with anger and fear. I've been angry beyond comprehension at the adoption agency. I've been learning about various methods of coercion, and how they've been used on me. I've been asking myself questions that I can't answer for myself, and that the agency has been unable to answer for me.
Questions like: Why is it okay to have a mother sign away rights while still in the hospital and under the influence of very strong pain killers? You can't get a tattoo while drunk or high. You can't sign for a loan while drunk or high. But you can sign away parental rights to your child while under the influence of hospital grade pain killers.
Why is it okay for adoption agencies to not fully disclose the side effects of adoption, side effects to both mother and child? Why is it okay for them to not tell me that adoptees often grow up feeling abandoned? Why is it okay not to tell me that birth mothers often suffer from numerous mental disorders?
Why wasn't I made aware of my rights at the hospital? How come nobody ever told me I had the right to spend time alone with my daughter before I signed my rights away. Why wasn't I told that I DON'T have to allow the amom to have a wristband matching her to MY baby? Why was I only offered the option of my daughter sleeping in their room, or the amom sleeping in my room with us, but not the option of sleeping alone with my daughter? Why I was I asked to leave the hospital at noon the next day, just 15 hours after giving birth, after being told by the doctor that I needed to stay 24 hours?
Why wasn't I told that the adoption agency would have no obligation to follow through on the counseling the promised me I would have access to? Now, that I need it most. Now that I am serrating my friendships, one by one, as my girlfriends have babies and or wed, and it eats me alive that they are becoming happy wives and mothers, while I am nothing but an used up hen? Now that I need help, and have reached out for it, I realize that the ones who promised to be there are long gone. But then, I guess it's foolish of me to expect the predator to cure the wounds of the prey.
Wow, Jessika. Thank you for sharing. And please continue to write out your feelings, whether or not you choose to share them. I'm appalled at the agency's lack of regard for you. Birthmom's deserve so much love and attention for the sacrifice they make. And certainly, you deserve long term counseling at various times along the way. Grieving is a life long process. You are grieving a loss and always will, although hopefully it will ease with time.
ReplyDeleteSheri T.
i'm really sorry you're going through this. i too wish i had done everything differently, and that will never change. it's horrible to see your girlfriends get married and get pregnant, and find yourself unable to feel happy for them.
ReplyDeleteas for coercion, the thing that surprised me the most was that i'm an intelligent person and i still fell for it. i was already quite set on the idea of adoption, so it was easy to coerce me in such a way that it all seemed like my idea. i don't have anything comforting to say, and no one ever does. just know that you're not suffering alone.