The First Part of Adoption and Mothers

One of my last memories as I signed the papers was that I was doing something that was wrong in so many ways.  I felt overwhelmed.

Grief at loss to be experienced was huge.  Almost as if I couldn't breath.  It is a pervading sense of doom, eating all the good in the world.  As I watched my daughter color and play and the social worker was hammering on me about medical history, like I knew that, and gave me a line of blow about who was adopting my child, all I could think of was that I would never see my little one again.

I know that this is different with infants, supposedly.  I know it is different if the mother never holds their child.  Unlike the BSE (Baby Snatch Era), most of the women can and some do, hold their babies.

I thought about that a long time, all the way home - a three hour drive from the social worker's office.  That I would never see her again.  They told me that if I looked and found her, I would go to jail.  They told me that she would not remember me, maybe she doesn't.  They told me that they were giving her to a good home...it wasn't.

Sometimes, no matter what the mothers intentions are, they simply can't be sure where their child is going.  What the social workers and lawyers do not tell you is that until the adoption is final, the parents can back out.  If they do, the social worker or the lawyer will not call you and tell you that your child is sitting in foster care, or that if they don't find a home it is likely that the child will remain in foster care for their entire childhood.  This is because you relinquished.  You gave up the right to be notified of anything but death. 

When a mother signs those papers, she is not a part of anything again...she is as if she never existed.  It is sad, since most adoptions are a permanent cure to a temporary problem.