Birth Mother's Day

Normally for these posts, I have a hard time deciding what to write about. Today...not so much. It's an important weekend for mothers everywhere. It is the first full weekend of May which means Mother's Day is tomorrow. Normally, you'd think that's what I would write about. While I have full intentions of writing about it tomorrow, There's an important topic for discussion today. Not many people are aware of it, but the day before Mother's Day has been designated in recent years as Birth Mother's Day.

I guess a proper definition of Birth Mother is probably required. A birth mother is a woman who gave birth and placed her child in another woman's arms to raise. She is a woman who cannot, for one reason or another, raise her child herself. She has so much love for her child that she wants what's best and places her child with someone else.

I've had a bit of trepidation about this day. Personally, I didn't like thinking that we were any different from regular moms. I'm still not too fond of it, but I see the reasoning behind it. Birth mothers are, by definition, different. Having a day set aside that is separate from Mother's day is a way for some people to acknowledge the sacrifice made by every birth mother. Kind of like Veteran's Day or Memorial Day. Some of the girls who are birth mothers need that kind of recognition. I'm not really one of them.

My story has been an open book since it happened. At first, when I would tell people I'd placed my daughter in another woman's arms to raise, it was for sympathy. I wanted people to feel sorry for me. I wasn't ready to forgive myself for what I had perceived I'd "done", so their admiration for this great feat I'd accomplished acted as a buffer. That has since changed, thankfully. I tell my story so other people will understand something they might not have before. I mentioned a little bit of it in my post about abortion and I want to fill in some gaps now. I will try not to be too terribly long winded, but this is a story that takes some explaining.

Naturally, there are some aspects that I won't lay bare simply because they are things I don't think people want to know. However, this all started around February of 2005. I was spending a lot of time with a new friend who was a convert to the church. She'd just begun attending the local singles ward and we'd hit it off really well. She stayed at my house all the time. Around February, she told me her dog had had puppies and invited me to go see them. The puppies were at the house of the family she'd lived with when she joined the church. She's left her dog there when she moved out so that's where the puppies were. That was where I first met Josh.

I'd heard rumors about Josh at church. His brother was in my Sunday School class and rumors followed the family everywhere. Most of them were about Josh and most of them were not favorable. My friend warned me after I met him that Josh was trouble. I chose to give him a chance rather than listen to what other people had to say about him. I played the part of girl-who-thinks-she-can-change-a-guy perfectly. You see, Josh was a drug addict. I'm not talking a little weed here and there. I'm talking hard core crystal meth. For anyone who doesn't know, crystal meth is "poor man's cocaine". It's made from things like battery acid and the household cleaners you find under your sink. Gross. I know.

When we started dating, we started misbehaving. We were being immoral from day one. I could go into a lot of detail about why I stayed with him for almost a full year and why I gave him the most precious thing I could give a man, but that would take a while and I'm sure you don't want to read a therapy report. The abbreviated version is I have a very loving heart. I was crushed by the realization of what I'd given up and felt like I could no longer do any better or offer anyone else anything in regards to love. I stayed with him for that reason. I didn't think anyone else, meaning any other man, would ever want me. This at the age of 19. From the beginning, Josh and his mom told me that the doctors had told them he would never father children. Looking back, I'm not sure I believe that. Either way, we didn't use protection and were ok for nearly a year. In November of 2005, right after my older brother got home from his mission to the Phillipines, I started getting morning sickness.

I knew two weeks before I actually went to confirm with a doctor that I was pregnant. I think my parents knew too. Josh was in rehab and I was beyond terrified of what I was going to have to face. I'm a passive person by nature anyway so having to deal with what I saw as a MASSIVE confrontation scared the pooey out of me. I asked my mom to come with me to the appointment because I was so scared. In retrospect, I'm not sure that was the best idea, but you can't really plan for these things.  Here's the disclaimer for this post: My family is amazing. There is no handbook on how to deal with finding out your child is expecting his/her own child, and it's not really a joyous thing when the situation is what mine was. They handled it the best the could and did remarkably well considering the circumstances.

When the doctor said the test was positive, I just about died. I remember not hearing much after she said that. Everything went fuzzy. I remember getting in the car and seeing that my mom was on the phone talking to LDS Social Services. I had much less control over my emotions when I was younger anyway, but compounded with pregnancy and I was the Texas Giant of roller coasters. Mom was the Stake Relief Society president at the time and called the director of the LDSS branch in Carrollton. She called him directly and told him she had a daughter that would be coming to see him soon. I'm a red head. We skip angry and go straight to livid. I didn't want anyone planning my future and still have a bad habit of bucking against what someone tells me I should do, even if it's good for me. I was so focused on who was right that I forgot to pay attention to what was right. There were a lot of fights and a lot of tearful discussions between me and my parents about what should be done. We held off telling my siblings for a few weeks, but we all understood that we wouldn't be able to hide it for long.

I am trying to be abbreviated, but I think this part of the story is worth telling. It demonstrates just how blessed I am with the siblings I have: We had a family meeting where I sort of blurted out that I was pregnant and Dad asked everyone how they felt. It took a lot of years for my older brother and I to see eye to eye on what happened, but we are on the same wave length now. At the time, he had an interesting way of saying he hoped that I would learn my lesson and never make this mistake again. My sister was an angel and told me she would support me no matter what I decided to do. It was my younger brothers' reactions that blew me away. As soon as I said that I was pregnant, all three of my younger brothers reached out to physically offer their support in whatever way they could. Rayo held my left hand, Remi wrapped his arms around my legs, and Nick got up and sat next to me, laying his head on my shoulder. When it was their turn to share how they felt, all three of them said they would help me with anything I decided to do. Rayo said he and Nick would share their room with the baby and keep it clean and help get up in the middle of the night to feed what they immediately dubbed as Tiny Tim. Yeah. I didn't ask them to do that and neither did anyone else. They offered.

Ok. So fast forward a little. A few months later we found out that Tiny Tim was actually a Tiny Tina. I broke up with Josh, finally, and things settled into a semi routine. I was still leary of adoption and chose not to choose anything. I avoided making any decision about the baby for as long as I could. When Josh started threatening violence to me and my family, things started happening.

My foster brother, Mike, married into a wonderful family. I love his wife and her family so much. Her mom in particular has been a unfailing rock for me. She works with an adoption agency in Utah. When Mike found out I was pregnant, he put Karen on my path. She tried calling me a few times and I resisted. I finally relented around the beginning of May 2006. She got me connected with the office and it was decided that for my protection and the protection of my daughter and my family, I would move to Utah for the last three months of my pregnancy.

The move to Utah was emotional, but so was everything about the situation I'd found myself in. I hadn't really decided for myself that adoption was what I wanted, but I am passive. Remember? I did what I was told. Mom wanted me to go to therapy with their counselor because it was offered and it was free. I resisted. She had dad talk to me for two hours. Honestly, I don't remember much about the conversation except that I wanted it to be over. I do remember agreeing to go at the end so I could end the call. Sorry, dad. But, I made a promise. So I called the agency and set up an appointment to go see Theresa. The first question she asked me was why I'd gone to therapy. I told her that I'd promised my parents I'd go. She told me later that she knew right then I was a special case and that I was going to eventually be fine. I'd told her a truth right from the beginning.

Being pregnant and single is not easy. I had a lot of free time on my hands to think and do nothing. Somehow, the agency took a special interest in me. I found out I was the first topic of discussion at almost every board meeting for the entire month I was there. They wanted to make sure I was involved in the activities they set up for the other birth mothers there. I wanted none of it and Theresa knew it. She told them, in no uncertain terms, that they were not allowed to push me to do anything I didn't want to do. She knew I was being pushed and pulled by everyone and she wouldn't allow anyone else to do any more.

Fast forward again. At the beginning of August, I had still not chosen a family to place my child with. I hadn't found the one I felt fit the best. I'd made two selections already, but the first one declined and the second couldn't afford the private agency. Theresa showed me a portfolio of a family who'd submitted their packets a week before. They'd been planning on adopting from China and, for then unknown reason, had had duplicate, notorized copies of all their paperwork made. Things that normally would have taken months were set and ready for me to choose them when I got their profile. I thought about them for a week before actually choosing them.

Last fast forward. I can't tell you what it's like to carry a life inside you for nine months and then finally meet that little person. Mom flew in barely in time for me to go into labor...we're talking like, three hours before labor started was when she landed. I'd made a promise to wait for her and Karen (not like I have ANY control over that) and I did just that. When mom got there, that was it. She was ready to come out. She was done waiting. Mom, Karen, and Theresa were in the delivery room when it came time for Liza to be born. It took some doing, because I had an epidural, but Liza was born just before 11 pm on September 3, 2006. You know those movies where a woman gives birth and then falls back and starts crying? That was me. I was relieved that the physical pain was over. Yeah. Not so much. I chose to hold my baby girl and spend as much time with her as I could. Mike came and took baby pictures in the hospital at 2 in the morning for me. Mom got to spend some time with her and so did Karen. My older brother and Mikes family also got to come to the hospital and see my baby girl.

The rest of the physical pain that I alluded too began when the adoptive family came to the hospital to meet me and Liza for the first time. That's when it started hitting me. I could feel what was coming like it was a Mack truck hauling logs going 80 miles an hour. So, I left the hospital and had to leave her there overnight. They had to run some tests and I didn't think I would have to check her out. Two days after she was born, the day after I was released, I signed relinquishment. I got a call later that afternoon, when I was visiting with a very dear friend, Leslie, asking me to go back to the hospital to check her out. I asked if we could have a little more time with her. Luckily, my nurse from the last two days was there and had no problem letting me see her for 45 minutes. She slept on my chest the whole time, curled up and content to listen to me talk. At the end of that 45 minutes...that's when the worst hurt happened. I started crying when they said it was time to go. It took everything I had to put that little girl back in the hospital bed. When I finally pulled her head away from my chest, it literally felt like I was tearing a hole in my chest and my heart was going with her. I felt like I was drowning. The nurse saw what was happening and pulled me into as tight a hug as she could manage. She said, "I don't even know you that well, and I love you so much."

My recovery took years. There is a whole two months of 2006 that I don't remember. I took a nose dive for a full two years and it took me a long time to pull myself out of the trouble I went looking for. Now, almost five years later, I am a lot happier than I've ever been. Being a birth mother sets me apart from a lot of people, but not in a bad way. I have learned a great deal about myself. I've also been able to give life to an incredible little girl and a little girl to a family who couldn't have any more kids. There's still a stigma against adoption, sadly. Maybe that's why they created Birth Mother's day. Either way, speaking as someone who's been there, giving a child up for adoption is not taking the easy way out. It's something you live with for the rest of your life. It's not something you forget. It's an act of love. Pure and simple. We do it because we love our children so much. They deserve everything we can give them. Sometimes, the best thing for a child, is not us.

I hope that this has enlightened someone. I know it'll probably be shocking for some that I put my story on such a public forum, so please forgive me for shocking you. I want people to understand and the way I explain is through story telling. Now you know what it means to be a birth mother. We really aren't so different. We just made different choices.