Seewalds 31: Jessa’s Maybe-Baby

[Rachel333]

12 minutes ago, JordynDarby5 said:

Or fear that the birth mother will show up and want the baby back. They might feel that the further away the birth mother is the less likely she'll change her mind and show up take the baby back. Or that sending pictures or allowing them any part in the child's life she will change her minds and decide to take their baby back.   

It's a completely understandable fear and I know it's an incredibly painful event for someone to have to go through, but it makes me sad that people have done so much legally to prevent birth mothers from being able to change their minds. I don't think that should be an option indefinitely, but I do think it should be possible very early on. Some of the stories I've read about women who chose to parent after planning for an adoption--even if they changed their minds before the baby was born--are horrific. At that point a lot of adoption agencies will make it as difficult as possible for a mother to keep her child.

[Bad Wolf]

States have different time periods for a mother to change her mind. Ours is 72 hours, and the adoptive parents don't get the baby until the mother signs off. The father can sign off before the baby is born. My brother didn't get their baby until he was 3 months old.

[KelseyAnn]

While I can understand having a period of time where a mother can change her mind and decide to keep the baby, I don't think it's fair to be angry adoptive mother's want to be the 'sole' mother. I know it's not the same thing, but I wouldn't go and buy a car from a dealership and be alright if the manager decided he still wanted to have a say in how I took care of the car. 

[Jellybean]

I think we need to hear more from those who were adopted as well, especially in the area of adoption policy/legislation, where I think agencies and adoptive parents have had the dominant voice. 

Families are complicated and I definitely agree that it’s not ever about ownership of a child or children. 

I think it would be helpful for us to hear how those children feel about adoption, closed or open, about any connection with their birth family, their ethnic or cultural background, about how and when they found out they were adopted, how (if) they manage the process of looking for their birth parents and (potentially) having a relationship with two families. I think that the more we know from them, as well as from adoptive families and families of origin, the more we can help to shape the experience to be as good as it can be for everyone involved. 

[JordynDarby5]

5 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

It's a completely understandable fear and I know it's an incredibly painful event for someone to have to go through, but it makes me sad that people have done so much legally to prevent birth mothers from being able to change their minds. I don't think that should be an option indefinitely, but I do think it should be possible very early on. Some of the stories I've read about women who chose to parent after planning for an adoption--even if they changed their minds before the baby was born--are horrific. At that point a lot of adoption agencies will make it as difficult as possible for a mother to keep her child.

Its a really big decision. I can't imagine how hard it would be to make the decision to give up your child or how you would feel afterwards. I do agree birth mothers should have the option or chance to change their mind. Adoptions agencies shouldn't be able to force a mother to give up her child if she's changed her mind. Now after she gives up the baby how long should she have to change her mind? Months? Years? I really don't know the answer to that. Its hard to know how your going to feel six months, a year or two down the road or how your circumstances might change.  It is also painful to adopt a baby only to have the birth mother show up and take the child back. One of my mom's friends adopted a baby girl. Two years later the birth mother showed up and took the baby back. She was devastated.  

[Ivycoveredtower]

10 minutes ago, Jellybean said:

I think we need to hear more from those who were adopted as well, especially in the area of adoption policy/legislation, where I think agencies and adoptive parents have had the dominant voice. 

Families are complicated and I definitely agree that it’s not ever about ownership of a child or children. 

I think it would be helpful for us to hear how those children feel about adoption, closed or open, about any connection with their birth family, their ethnic or cultural background, about how and when they found out they were adopted, how (if) they manage the process of looking for their birth parents and (potentially) having a relationship with two families. I think that the more we know from them, as well as from adoptive families and families of origin, the more we can help to shape the experience to be as good as it can be for everyone involved. 

one thing that has always upset me in this debate was the feeling that the children don't have a right to know where they came from and are selfish if they want to try and connect with their birth parents and i'm talking about actual birth parents that say I hope they never look me up ect.. I think the rights of the kids to know their truth should supersede the rights of the birth parents to privacy or forgetting the past. 

[SapphireSlytherin]

1 hour ago, JordynDarby5 said:

Or fear that the birth mother will show up and want the baby back.

I have two older adopted first cousins, a younger adopted 1st cousin/once removed, and an older adopted 1st cousin/once removed cousin.

The first two and the last one, above, were all brought to their adoptive parents by the same preacher/friend of the family. This was in a military town (we assume but don't know the babies were born to military dependents) and back in the early 60s, so things were done differently then. Anyway, my story is about the last one mentioned:

I'll call her Lisa*. We assume that Reverend Smith* "got" her from a military family and brought her to my grandmother's sister and brother-in-law when Lisa was a day old. (He also brought the older two to their adoptive parents - our family really loved him for facilitating all the adoptions.)

When Lisa was 3 or 4 years old, she was playing in her front yard with the neighbor kids. Remember - this is the 60s, when kids could AND DID play outside, without constant supervision. Her mother happened to look out the kitchen window as a car with a young woman driving slowly drove past the house. She thought it was odd, but figured she must have been looking for an address.

About an hour later, Lisa's mother went outside and saw the car parked down the street, and the woman was just sitting there, watching Lisa playing. My great-aunt then got kind of spooked and took Lisa inside with her. She saw the car several other times, and felt super-skeeved. She mentioned it to my grandmother and other relatives, and they all agreed that it was likely Lisa's birth-mom. My great-aunt and her husband actually put their house on the market and moved out of state. They were terrified the woman would take Lisa back.

*All names changed.

[AtlanticTug]

My grandmother's brother was adopted in Europe in 1942 during WW2. My grandmother's family was quite wealthy and her Mother was volunteering at an orphanage. There she came across a young boy, I think he was 3 at the time, who was segregated as he was dying of typhus. She said there was just something magical about the look in his eyes and she told the nuns that this child wasn't going to die in the orphanage and she would bring him home so he could die in dignity. She ended up nursing him back to health and he began to thrive. In 1945 when the war ended she worked mercilessly with the Red Cross to find his family, which had been sent to a German work camp (they were Eastern European but not Jewish), and she actually did it. They ended up repatriated and they had a lot of children, maybe 7-8 survived. They reunited with their son who had little memory of him and while it was very difficult for my grandmother's family, particularly my great-grandmother, it was really important that she finds his biological family and gives him a chance to go back to them. His parents then asked for my grandmother's family to adopt him - they found this very hard but they said they had nothing left after the war, too many mouths to feed, and they just didn't have the energy to reconnect with a child who didn't recognize them. So he stayed and was adopted formally and became a very successful adult. He kept in loose touch with some of his siblings but never developed a close relationship with them. He always said he could never truly appreciate how selfless his parents had been.

We contemplated adoption during our infertility struggles. Instead did 5 fresh rounds of IVF and 3 frozen transfers...well over $100K out of pocket for our two kids. And even all of that struggle and time was easier than an adoption process would have been for a newborn. I just didn't have it in me to deal with the emotional up and down of adoption, the hope and the dashed hope. I had 6 miscarriages which were awful but even that seemed preferable to how difficult the adoption road can be. We were also older and I didn't want to wait until we were 40+. It kills me when people say "you can just adopt" - believe me we heard it a MILLION times. It's not like walking into Walmart and picking a baby off a shelf for heaven's sake.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

5 hours ago, Ivycoveredtower said:

one thing that has always upset me in this debate was the feeling that the children don't have a right to know where they came from and are selfish if they want to try and connect with their birth parents and i'm talking about actual birth parents that say I hope they never look me up ect.. I think the rights of the kids to know their truth should supersede the rights of the birth parents to privacy or forgetting the past. 

This in the EU is called "right to roots" and is granted to every adoptee. It is also retroactively valid, even if the lack of information may undermine the search of a birth family for children adopted in the past.

Personally I think that the right of the child is always paramount and trumps the rights of both sets of parents. If a child has been adopted and has been with the adoptive parents for a significant length of time, his/her right to a stable life and to not be subjected again to loss trauma should trump the right of the birth mother to change her mind. 

That said I think there should be a reasonable time frame for the birth mother to change her mind before having her parenting rights permanently terminated.

It's incredibly sad and unfair that there are countries in the world that don't grant this sort of rights to birth families and to adoptees. I have little consideration for people who choose to adopt from these countries with this reason in mind.

[QuiverFullofBooks]

The sad emotion (which has been used a lot in the adoption thread drift) looks to me more like someone who’s about to barf. It might be more appropriate for WTF.

[SapphireSlytherin]

I disagree regarding the "sad" emoticon. There's already a puke-looking emoticon (disgust). However, I use the "confused" emoticon lots instead of "WTF" because to me it looks more WTF than the WTF. lol

[Jellybean]

It’s so funny how some people see those emoticons, especially the dead parrot asking people to move on. It’s not pining for the fjords. It’s dead. It has ceased to be. 

Some people thought it looked like shit with a fork in it - this shit here is done - move along! I need to go back and look for the person that said that because it still makes me laugh and I feel that I should credit them.

I’ll be right back...

ETA: I found it! Thanks to @Don'tlikekoolaid and @CreationMuseumSeasonPass For making me laugh!

From here if you’d like to check out some of the other responses:

 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

17 hours ago, Rachel333 said:

It's a completely understandable fear and I know it's an incredibly painful event for someone to have to go through, but it makes me sad that people have done so much legally to prevent birth mothers from being able to change their minds. I don't think that should be an option indefinitely, but I do think it should be possible very early on. Some of the stories I've read about women who chose to parent after planning for an adoption--even if they changed their minds before the baby was born--are horrific. At that point a lot of adoption agencies will make it as difficult as possible for a mother to keep her child.

As they should.  My brother in law's wife had 2 children when they married (he also had 2 children) so my husbands step niece I guess, her and her husband adopted a baby girl several years ago, they found out 7 MONTHS after the adoption that the birth father had not signed over his rights as the mother lied about who the baby was, he fought them for custody and won. This was a 19 year old kid with a criminal record for drugs, and no stable job, was given custody of a 15 month old little girl, that had lived with a mother and father since she was 3 days old. They aren't allowed any contact with this child because some dirt ball wanted her back, we live in a small enough area that they can keep tabs on her but stopped after a year because it was too sad, the little girl is abused and neglected, and there isn't a damn thing they can do, they wanted her and had the means to care for her but because his blood ran in her veins he was the better parent.  Nope, there was a reason the girl lied about who the father was he was trash and she knew it. 

Not sure if anyone remembers a lesbian couple had an adopted child removed from their custody because the courts ruled the birth parents could have it back after a significant time I want to say over a year.  Anyway, the birth father beat the child to death shortly after s/he was returned to them. You really think the courts should make it easy for birth parents to get their kid back? Normally if you've lost custody of your children it is for a damn good reason.

[Meggo]

On ‎3‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 9:21 AM, QuiverFullofBooks said:

I appreciate that you you showed some concern instead of just downvoting me. I think that the traditional system, where birth parents got some input (religion, etc.), but didn’t make the decision, worked just fine. We decided not to go down the adoption path largely because we were over 40 by the time it was clear that fertility treatments might not work for us, and a friend who works in adoption told me that the birth parents are young and they would not choose us, so we would be wasting our time and money. 

I was JUST about to turn 39 (and my husband would turn 44) when we were selected by our son's birth mom. 

The workers told us too - that birth moms who are likely young - probably look at people in their 40's as the baby's grandparents more than parents. (Because everyone at 17 or 18 thinks 40 is SO old) 

I'm not trying to change your mind - you need to make your own decisions, naturally. But we were lucky to have our son come into our lives. That being said - he's an only child in part because we feel like we won the kid lottery and in part because - as my husband says "We're too old to begin the training... again." 

 

[Rachel333]

33 minutes ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

You really think the courts should make it easy for birth parents to get their kid back? Normally if you've lost custody of your children it is for a damn good reason.

I absolutely do. Not indefinitely, like I said, but definitely within the first few weeks. Unfortunately a lot of states have made the period where parents can change their minds as short as possible so that even if they realized two days later that they made a mistake choosing adoption then it's too late for them to get their baby back. And I'm not talking about parents whose rights have been involuntarily severed, I'm talking about parents (usually mothers) who planned for adoption before the child's birth.

It's sad that people want to leap to the worst examples whenever birth parents are discussed. A lot of birth parents are capable of being excellent parents but adoption agencies--and Christian agencies like Bethany are known for being some of the worst--heavily coerce women into choosing adoption. It seems like people want to believe that all adopted kids are coming from a horrible situation where they would be abused if they weren't adopted, but that really isn't always the case.

[SapphireSlytherin]

I don't think - once the child has been handed over to the adoptive parents - that the birth parents should be allowed to take the baby back. I know of one tragic instance where this happened. I was friends with the birth mom's mother. Birth mom chose a family. Family took the baby home. Birthmom changed her mind and went to get the baby back. I think there was something like a two-week "window" for that to happen (Tennessee) back in the 90s. 

Two weeks later, birthmom, baby, and grandma were in a car wreck, and the baby was thrown out of the vehicle and killed (baby was being held by birthmom instead of in a car seat). Birthmom and grandma walked away with scratches. 

That poor adoptive family lost that baby twice.  

[QuiverFullofBooks]

32 minutes ago, Meggo said:

I was JUST about to turn 39 (and my husband would turn 44) when we were selected by our son's birth mom. 

The workers told us too - that birth moms who are likely young - probably look at people in their 40's as the baby's grandparents more than parents. (Because everyone at 17 or 18 thinks 40 is SO old) 

I'm not trying to change your mind - you need to make your own decisions, naturally. But we were lucky to have our son come into our lives. That being said - he's an only child in part because we feel like we won the kid lottery and in part because - as my husband says "We're too old to begin the training... again." 

 

Thanks, but alas, I am older than that, and my husband is older than I am. After my miscarriage last year, he informed me that he’s too old to start a family and he wasn’t going to do further fertility treatments. I almost left him, but did not.

[Rachel333]

6 minutes ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

I don't think - once the child has been handed over to the adoptive parents - that the birth parents should be allowed to take the baby back. I know of one tragic instance where this happened. I was friends with the birth mom's mother. Birth mom chose a family. Family took the baby home. Birthmom changed her mind and went to get the baby back. I think there was something like a two-week "window" for that to happen (Tennessee) back in the 90s. 

Two weeks later, birthmom, baby, and grandma were in a car wreck, and the baby was thrown out of the vehicle and killed (baby was being held by birthmom instead of in a car seat). Birthmom and grandma walked away with scratches. 

That poor adoptive family lost that baby twice.  

That's extremely sad, but that doesn't mean mothers shouldn't be able to get their children back. I do believe that mothers (and I'm using "mothers" not "birthmothers," which is no longer an appropriate term once a mother has chosen to parent) should be able to change their mind that early on.

There was a case last year where a girl who didn't even know she was pregnant before giving birth was immediately pressured into signing adoption papers. After she had a little more time she realized she did want to parent her child. Or I've read other stories where women knew as soon as they held their child that they couldn't go through with the adoption, but the adoption agencies did everything in their power to make sure the adoption still happened--telling the mother she would be a terrible parent, bringing the sobbing potential adoptive parents in the room, telling her she would have to repay them, threatening to call CPS and get the baby taken away anyway... the pressure can be intense.

And this isn't just a normal business transaction, these are people's lives we're talking about. Things get really ugly when you combine money and babies like that, and there is a lot of corruption that goes on with adoption agencies, which have a strong financial incentive to push adoption rather than supporting mothers who might want to keep their babies.

I've never denied that there are situations where adoption is absolutely the best option, but I find it extremely sad to see how prejudiced people often are against birth parents, who they often judge to be terrible people in contrast to the wonderful adoptive parents, but real life situations often aren't that simple.

[justoneoftwo]

The problem with laws about changing your mind is that there will always be someone who falls outside the arbitrary time (if its 72 hours someone will change their mind at 73, if its 1 year someone will change their mind at 13 months).  I also think that the law does not acknowledge the damage this does to a child.  A 6 month old baby being given back to a birth farther (who didn't know as discussed above) will be horribly damaged by being torn from the only family that baby knows.  Its horrible for that farther, and the mother who lied should be punished, but we can't do that to families, I just don't think that is right for anyone (except the father, maybe).  

So yes, there should be some amount of time, but it should be very short.  Babies bond to their caregivers very young.  Tearing them away from everything because an adult (or teen) "changed their mind" is cruel to the baby, who never had a chance to be given a choice at all.  

We are talking about making the best of a bad situation, there are no perfect answers.  So I think we should worry more about the baby than the adults. 

[libgirl2]

I have three friends who are adopted. Two are sisters and we lived next door to each other growing up. I baby sat them several times. Neither really cares to know about their birth mothers. What is cute is the older looks like her father and the younger a lot like her mother. The older wrote a lovely poem for her mother's birthday about what a real mother is. Many tears when it was read aloud at her birthday party as you can imagine. 

My best friend is also adopted. She sought out information on her birth parents as she was born with a physical condition and was planning on a family. Other than that, she doesn't care either. 

[PainfullyAware]

 It strikes me that a child being left in a toxic family environment is more of a failure of child welfare then any adoption regulations. If the birth parents reclaim their parental rights and are raising their child, but abuse or neglect is taking place, then the usual procedures should be put in place for that child to be placed in foster care,  an alternate family Guardian or eventually even adoption. In that situation, the problem isn't that the birth parents exercised their right but that they suck as parents. It's just as tragic and sad as any other child who grows up in those circumstances. The birth parents should have a right to change their mind about adoption but at the same time the right of the child to a stable environment needs to also be protected. No arbitrary length of time is going to be perfect in every case but it's really the best we can do. I generally think a few weeks at the absolute maximum. Adoption agency pressure tactics should be outlawed and child welfare should be properly funded.  Of course some of that is just a pipe dream in a world where cutting funding to Social Services is every politician's favorite hobby.

[Meggo]

54 minutes ago, justoneoftwo said:

We are talking about making the best of a bad situation, there are no perfect answers.  So I think we should worry more about the baby than the adults. 

Yep - there are no perfect answers. Adoption is a loss all the way around. Some kids who are adopted don't feel that as a loss - and that's their right. Some feel it keenly.

Ontario gives a birth mom 28 days to make her decision. She cannot sign over her baby to anyone until the 28 days has passed. Our birth mom had an adoption counselor who worked specifically with her - just counseling her on the decision. Would have done the same for the dad too if he'd been known. We didn't know that counselor, she had no relation whatsoever with us - (except we paid the bill) and had no coercion. We could provide NO gifts to birthmom at all - no flowers in the hospital etc. 

After the 28 day period - if birth mom changes her mind - she has to go to court to prove she was coerced and I've heard it's really hard to prove. 

 

[Ivycoveredtower]

1 hour ago, justoneoftwo said:

The problem with laws about changing your mind is that there will always be someone who falls outside the arbitrary time (if its 72 hours someone will change their mind at 73, if its 1 year someone will change their mind at 13 months).  I also think that the law does not acknowledge the damage this does to a child.  A 6 month old baby being given back to a birth farther (who didn't know as discussed above) will be horribly damaged by being torn from the only family that baby knows.  Its horrible for that farther, and the mother who lied should be punished, but we can't do that to families, I just don't think that is right for anyone (except the father, maybe).  

So yes, there should be some amount of time, but it should be very short.  Babies bond to their caregivers very young.  Tearing them away from everything because an adult (or teen) "changed their mind" is cruel to the baby, who never had a chance to be given a choice at all.  

We are talking about making the best of a bad situation, there are no perfect answers.  So I think we should worry more about the baby than the adults. 

birth fathers I am a really strong believer in Birth father rights and well I realize it's a gray area and the story told up thread is horrible I think women shouldn't just be allowed to say i don't know when it comes to the BF. there are just too many stories of men finding out months and years later that they have this child and fighting in court. 

[justoneoftwo]

6 minutes ago, Ivycoveredtower said:

birth fathers I am a really strong believer in Birth father rights and well I realize it's a gray area and the story told up thread is horrible I think women shouldn't just be allowed to say i don't know when it comes to the BF. there are just too many stories of men finding out months and years later that they have this child and fighting in court. 

I am also a huge believer in birth father's rights.  I think it should be considered kidnapping to claim you don't know who the father is and give a child away without the father's rights being protected.  I think there are times when they really don't know though.  

I also don't think its in the child's best interest for a father to get the child a year later.  

Thats really the problem, the harm done by claiming there isn't a father can never be undone.  The harm is to all the parties, but the harm in taking a child away from its family is too great.  

[Bad Wolf]

If the mother doesn't say or know who the father is, then it must be announced in the newspapers. Of course, not that many people read newspapers any more. It's important to get a general description, so the adoptive parents know what to look for. Was dad 6' 6" or 5 ' 5" ? Then when the child is growing, they can  have an idea of what might be normal.