Saturday, June 10, 2006

I'll show you mine if you show me yours...

On ThirdMom's blog (please add it to your must-read blog list), I commented on a discussion about adoption, sex, and morality. This was further commented on by a few of the birth moms who have found a sensitive and sympathetic place to share their pain with mostly APs.

Some of what I said was a little misconstrued, I think. But while I have given birth to a child, I was never faced with the choice (a loaded term since for some the decision to place their child for adoption wasn't really a choice at all) of not parenting my child. I can only guess at the depth of that pain which can only be made akin to losing a child by death. And even that doesn't adequately describe it either.

I forget sometimes, that we can only evaluate others through the lens of our personal experience.

Let's talk a little about infertility/miscarriage

I started trying for a family in my mid-30s. Two very early miscarriages that left me sad but undaunted, and then my one and only successful pregnancy. At 39, we tried again. A molar pregnancy (feel free to look it up), and several miscarriages more. This time, each time, the ground would open up and swallow me whole. My sorrow was that I got pregnant easily so I stayed on the treadmill longer than I probably should have. Maybe this one, maybe that one.

The one that crystallized my grief was the one where a chromosomal report had been made. A boy, a son, still not to be.

During this time, I joined a number of post-miscarriage lists for support. Instead, I suppose in part because I did have one perfect little daughter already, I couldn't relate at all. Like we do on adoption lists, the posters would have their special signatures. Angel #1, brought to heaven [this date]. Okay, I can work with that, I thought. My signature simply said, "1 beautiful daughter, too many miscarriages to count"

But what finally did me in were those who had names for each potential son or daughter lost. Even if the pregnancy was only a few days old (called chemical in the infertility world), it merited a name.

Okay, I thought. I'm out of here and I moved to an over-40 infertility group. I spent about two years there. Some opted out for adoption, as I did. Others remained firmly and sometimes grimly on the IVF treadmill. Some like me, had one or two children at home, but wanted just one more. Others were still waiting to bring forth their own fruit.

I never did any IVF or similar. Thought about donor egg for about two seconds and dismissed it. As my RE (reproductive endocrinologist) told me, "Roberta, 95% of our technology is to get the woman pregnant. That's not your problem. Overly ripe eggs that don't divide properly are your problem. So what do you want to do?"

Hubby and I decided to ride two rails and begin to explore adoption and try one more time for a successful pregnancy. I went to "Intro to Adoption" classes 6 weeks pregnant and nauseated. I told my OB I wouldn't consent to one more prenatal exam until I had an ultrasound at 8 weeks.

I did. It was perfect, a little heartbeat and all. I was sick as a dog and hoped that this meant all was well. We went on vacation. Came back for my prenatal.

Next day I started to spot. At 12 weeks, I lost my last pregnancy. A month later, we began adoption in earnest. Not as a cure for my infertility, but as another option that would allow me to extend my desire to parent.

My personal refusal and stubbornness to define myself in terms of failure.

What is resilience? How do we learn it, how do we teach it? We learn how to compartmentalize and how to reframe the experience. (When I divorced my first husband, my mother used to go on and on about the failure of my marriage. I told her the marriage didn't fail. It merely concluded. Now that made her crazy :=)

My secondary infertility/miscarriages didn't make me feel like a failure, but boy, they surely pissed me off. Worse, were the sad faces, the whispers. The prayers to St Jude (patron saint of hopeless causes) from my husband's side of the family. Hey, knock it off already!

"What am I supposed to learn from this?" became a personal mantra. It's not bad, it's a teaching moment!

I couldn't ultimately relate to giving my lost little zygotes names, that would mean my whole personhood was being defined by personal loss. I couldn't ultimately relate to the relentless drive for a second pregnancy, because that too would have defined me by my cranky biology, aging eggs, and an unfilled womb. Uh uh, that wasn't going to fly for me either.

My mother was the poster child for emotionally stuck in a bad place.

In response, I became the emotional equivalent of "MacGyver" - no matter how bad it is, I have the resources and tools to get me out of yet another jam.

Yet in my fear, it was easy to tamp down raw emotions that didn't quite fit the MacGyver mold I developed for myself. I prefer to "do" myself through emotional hurt rather than ponder it, even when ponder is all you can do ... or should do.

Even while awaiting the arrival of our son from Korea, I had to do (I had already completed several needlework and bead pieces) and with that I began to write the first pages of what became adoptkorea.com

None of us can feel each other's grief. Both my parents are deceased, my husband's parents are still living. He has no idea of what it feels like to be an "adult orphan" (perhaps a posting for another time.) And why should he. This is an event for the future. Merely an abstract at some time ahead.

So how can I expect to understand anything at all about birth mothers who rail at me. Or they me. I can't unless they and I find what is common to our shared losses as well as shared gains. I can give my children everything except a genetic past and linkage, critical elements to who they are and will become. The contribution of every biological parent is the piece of themselves in each child. Deep in the DNA where APs like me can only view from a distance.

We can, we should reach to each other from the chasm of our individual pain. It's not about them or us ... it's not about whose contribution is more vital ... nature vs nurture ... the terms we're allowed to call ourselves and what others will call us. It's about wholeness for the children we share. By coming together for them, we can heal ourselves, as well.

1 comment:

Third Mom said...

Roberta, this is a beautiful post, describing a really painful experience. I've been there a little, never really got to the point of miscarriage, but at least know the feeling of having had the potential of life within me. It hurts when it doesn't happen.

I'm trying to understand what it must have been like for a first mom to carry that child on to delivery, and then to let go. It's that pain that has been driving my thoughts, and making question the processes that we take as givens in adoption.

I think that by reaching out, acknowledging that we don't and maybe never can understand another's pain, we do exactly what you say - focus on the wholeness of our children.

Thanks much for the callout!

Margie