At the hospital
My last (pre-bald doll) post about being in the hospital garnered some interesting comments. Two folks (one here, one at my LJ-crosspost) said that they feel adoptive parents should absolutely NOT be at the hospital. (One person is an a-mom and one is a first mom.) I’ll expand on what I said in response in the LJ comments.
I have really mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I get totally squicked out when I read about potential a-parents being at the birth and even sometimes being at the hospital because I understand that our presence can be coercive. And I know from reading some accounts that being there often brings with it a strong sense of entitlement to that baby and even, unfortunately, to the birth experience. On the other hand, any woman — making an adoption plan or not — obviously has the right to decide who is with her when she gives birth and who is there at the hospital to visit. So I cannot say that a woman considering an adoption plan should have fewer rights than a woman who isn’t (even knowing that it’s totally not the same thing).
Originally Jessica did not want us at the hospital but she changed her mind when Madison was born. Brett and I were both ok with not being there but when she asked us to come, there was no way we were going to say no either. Not just because we wanted to meet Madison but also because Jessica said she wanted us there and if she wanted us there, we were going to be there. But I was really floundering at the hospital. It was hard to know what to do or say and it was difficult to know how to support Jessica without being intrusive.
It’s impossible to look back and predict how our being there impacted the outcome of our adoption (would Jessica have placed if we hadn’t been there? I have no idea) but I can look back and see how our being there impacted my feelings about our adoption. I want to explain more about that but I’m running out of words. I can only say that it was spiritually humbling to be there and the experience changed me profoundly. (That’s the whole Salon essay if you think about it — I don’t know if my transition would have been as deep and as hard and as fulfilling if I hadn’t been there.) But of course it’s not about me and what being there gave to me as much as what my being there might have taken from Jessica. (And she doesn’t blog, sadly, so she can’t tell you.)
So my thoughts about this are that the expectant family — particularly the expectant mother — have a right to dictate how it goes during the birth and in the hospital but I think a lot of women are making these important decisions without really knowing what it all means.
Think about it — it’s hard to figure out how to write a plain old vanilla birth plan before you’ve given birth. Now think about writing a birth plan, a pre-adoption plan, a birth plan in case of adoption, a post-birth/pre-adoption plan, etc. etc. etc. I think an agency needs to be very forthright when they help a woman figure this out. I think they need to say (and maybe some do — maybe ours did, I don’t know), “IF you want the potential a-parents there, ok, but here is what you need to know about this. Here are your rights. Here is how I will kick them out the minute you give me the secret signal we’re going to come up with right now. It’s about you, it’s about you, it’s about you.”
I don’t know how much that would help but I also don’t think there’s really any way to fully prepare any woman for the impact of her birthing decisions and hospital stay before it happens whether she’s considering adoption or not. I think the best adoption professionals can do is be absolutely clear about what they’ve seen before. They need to put it all out there and not try to “protect” women by holding back information (likewise I think it’s wrong to “protect” women by limiting their right to create their own birth/adoption plans).
I don’t know. It’s incredibly hard. I think of things that agencies could do like have a brochure talking about hospital stays written by women who chose adoption and women who ultimately didn’t. You know something to talk about the minefields of having potential adoptive parents there and some ways to handle scenarios. But realistically, a lot of women wouldn’t read it because what I hear many first moms saying is, “I didn’t want to prepare because I didn’t want to face it.” I feel like when I say “agencies should do this or do that” that I’m asking way too much of the expectant mothers in crisis. So then I think the agencies need to be more proactive at the hospitals and really tune in to what the mother is saying and really keep a leash on the adoptive parents. We adoptive parents are just some special kind of crazy, seems like. Ugh. And maybe being proactive means discouraging women from inviting adoptive families there but ultimately it’s her choice. I don’t know. It’s like pre-birth matching — potentially coercive but I think it’s wrong to tell a woman she can’t start planning her adoption before the baby is born.
There’s so much obvious coercion and need for reform like for-profit agencies and unlicensed facilitators and professionals who ship pregnant women to Utah to avoid their own state laws. I can totally get behind those reforms. But when we start talking about limiting women’s rights in order to protect them, I get uncomfortable. Jessica was angry the agency wouldn’t show her profiles when she was seven months pregnant and she didn’t give a damn if the agency did this in part to protect her (because they felt no woman should be meeting with agencies before she’s felt her baby kick and is clearly showing and because they felt that longer matches resulted in more unreasonable hopeful adoptive parent entitlement) and in part to protect potential adoptive parents (because they felt longer matches were too emotionally difficult). And she would have been angry if the agency told her she wasn’t allowed to have us at the hospital when she called four hours after Madison was born and asked if they thought I would mind visiting.
You know, I think it’s impossible to make definitive statements about these muddled areas — pre-birth matching, hopeful adoptive parents in the hospital — and how they ought be for every family unless you have a very black/white view of adoption. If every adoption is by definition a failure of the system because a mother loses her child and a child loses its mother, then these things are surely always bad. But of course not every adoption is a failure (at least not in the views of this blog author) anymore than every adoption is rainbows and sunshine and guiding stars and sun (warning, that link is annoying and could be triggering).
Hmmm, as I write that I think this is a big part of the problem. Of course an awful lot of adoption talk is on the side of rainbows and sunshine and adoptive fathers cutting the cord of the baby and adoptive mothers tearfully hugging her child while the birth mother smiles and says beatifically, “He’s in the right place now, Mom!” (I mean there are a ton of those stories out there.) It really sets everyone up. So you’ve got adoptive parents who have these high expectations of bonding from the beginning and you’ve got expectant mothers who have these high expectations for themselves. (And all this adoption lore perpetuating these stereotypes.)
I guess the big issue is that we all of us — adoptive parents, expectant mothers, agencies — always think adoption is about getting a baby from here over to there. That’s the past tense of adoption, really. Adoption is first about a woman facing a crisis and it’s all about her and that crisis. If only there was a way to make money out of supporting women in crisis, then we wouldn’t need reform. Because I think this would all be different if the pre-birth matching and the hospital visits happened in the context of empowering a woman in crisis (in the context of serving that woman) and not in the context of that past tense of adoption. Well, that’s all theoretical though isn’t it? Because it’s a market economy and we adoptive parents are the consumers in all of this. (sigh)
I have to go make dinner now so I have to quit writing about this even though I feel like I had this little mental breakthrough for myself.
I am just beginning to consider my role in this whole triad and how the mere presence of an adoptive parent could be coercion in many instances. Personally, I don’t want to be anywhere the first mom doesn’t want me. And I do’t want to be anywhere that I might impede her decision to parent if she so chooses. So I defintiley wouldn’t push to be in the room, but like you I would probably go if she asked (regardless of whether or not that could still be coercive).
It’s so hard, as a potential adoptive parent to find my place in the “system” for lack of a better world. Thank you for this post. It *really* makes me think.
“I also don’t think there’s really any way to fully prepare any woman for the impact of her birthing decisions and hospital stay before it happens whether she’s considering adoption or not.”
This strikes me as the source of many regrets around first parents’ and adoptive parents’ choices: if you knew then what you know now, you probably would have chosen differently. But how to get that “knowing” without going through the experience itself?
As you say, agencies and professionals can provide information, but our desire to bury our heads in the sand beforehand often prevents that info from getting through. It seems to be human nature.
First of all, thank you so much for your encouraging comment on my latest post. I do appreciate it!
Now, for your post. This is such a tough issue, isn’t it? I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was thrilled when Snuggle Bug’s birth mother told us upfront that she wanted us at the hospital (no pressure from an agency because we didn’t use an agency for anything other than our home study). We got to tour the birthing rooms, take a parenting class, and meet with the hospital social worker prior to Snuggle Bug’s birth.
Giselle was encouraged by the hospital social worker to write out her wishes on how she wanted things to play out, with the understanding that she was calling the shots and could change her mind at any time. She brought in that list when she came in to deliver her child. The head nurse shooed everyone out of her room, closed the door, and went over every item on her list with her to make sure they understand exactly what she wanted. I thought that was pretty darned cool!
Sorry, I digress.
My husband and I were there when Snuggle Bug was born, per Giselle’s request. We were fully prepared not to be there if that’s what she wanted, but she asked us to be there.
We were pacing the halls outside Giselle’s room, along with Snuggle Bug’s birth father, waiting for Snuggle Bug to be born. Snuggle Bug was placed in my arms at 2 minutes old and being there with him from the beginning was one of the most emotional and spiritual experiences of my life and I’m so thankful for not having to miss it.
Did our being there pressure Giselle and Quinn into feeling that they HAD to place their child with us after all? I’m not sure. I don’t think so. Giselle was getting pressure from her mother not to place (before and after Snuggle Bug’s birth), but she stood firm in her decision.
That’s the impression Giselle gave us from the day that we met her, that she knew her mind and that she wasn’t wavering in her decision.
Still, despite my experience, I realize that this is just MY point of view from my perspective. I do believe that expectant mothers can and are pressured into placing by having adoptive parents there during the birth.
Thanks for the though-provoking post.
We adopted from China, so I don’t have any experience with this, (except I have two bio sons and know the emotions that surge after birth) but from all I’ve been reading, the key is the social worker — the professional working with the first mother who needs, apparantly, to be extraordinary. To be tuned into the first mother when they may have only just met. To rise above the emotions of all of those around her or him. To be very very experienced with human frailty. The first Mom may be going through a vast range of wholly unexpected emotions, and the a-parents are going to be a mess, to be sure. The agency can have as many rules, procedures and booklets it wants, it is up to that human being, charged with looking out for that first mom who holds the key. And do most think they are looking out for the first mom? Or do most see the a-parents as the real “client” or are thinking about the best interests of the child? It really is a muddle.
DS-L
Ugh, that isn’t it? We’re asking ordinary people to be extraordinary under tremendous pressure. Good point, DS-L!
Thank you for your illuminating post on adoption. I am a prospective adoptive parent and your post highlights a few of the reasons that have given me great pause in deciding to pursue adoption.
I agree that the motivations behind and the commonly held views of adoption are misguided. The language used to talk about adoption and the business behind it are all focused on the a-parents. In many instances, the first mom and baby are considered commodities available to fill an order. The adoption process should not be about the a-parents whose prayers have been answered. It should be about a mom who has the most difficult, heart wrenching and life altering decision to make in her life and most importantly about the child whose life will be forever marked by the experience.
We’ve had four placements and they’ve all played out differently.
1: Firstmom didn’t want us at the hospital at all, and requested that she bring Langston to our home after discharged. She came back two days later and took him home.
2: BabyGirl was born early on the morning her firstfolks had an appointment to choose a-parents. The agency doesn’t allow any choices on the day of birth so they called us the next day from the hospital. We met with her firstfolks for over an hour before the social worker wheeled BabyGirl in for our first meeting. Her firstfolks took a walk and gave us a few minutes alone with BabyGirl. She came home with us the next day and stayed forever.
3: Firstmom had absolutely no birth support. My best friend, a nurse-midwife, offered birth support services for free. Both firstfolks, my best friend, my husband, and I were all at the actual birth. At firstfolk’s request, the three of us left pretty quickly after Audrey’s was born. They took her home after four days with us.
4: I was invited by firstmom to be at AJ’s birth and to spend as much time at the hospital as I wanted. I visited daily for no more than 20 minutes (my own restriction). When she was discharged a day before him, she wanted me to stay in the hospital nesting room with him until discharge the next morning. I did. She took him home after 16-weeks and two court appearances.
We’ve always seen hospital time as sacred time, a time for the firstfolks to fully be the mommy and the daddy. I never allowed the hospital folks to refer to us as the parents or the potential adoptive parents, I always used “family friend.” I insisted that the hospital staff address firstmom first rather than me because firstmom was the child’s mother, not me. I always believed firstfolks deserved the dignity of begin treated as the special ones. We always saw hospital time as the firstfolk’s opportunity to squeeze a whole lifetime of mommy- and daddy-love into their child.
With each placement, we wanted less hospital time because the more contact we had, the harder it was to see “our” babies go home with their firstmoms. If we were to go back again, I’d want no hospital time whatsoever; however, if the firstmom specifically wanted me there, I’d be there to support her, not to be with the baby.
“…the key is the social worker  the professional working with the first mother who needs, apparantly, to be extraordinary.”
“We’re asking ordinary people to be extraordinary under tremendous pressure.”
Right, and for hardly any money. People with these exceptional interpersonal and counseling skills know that they could double or triple their income as a psychiatrist in private practice.
At the same time, adoption should be not for profit, and the fees should be low enough to allow good families of all income levels to adopt, to keep fees from influencing a woman’s decision to parent, and to keep children from being commodified.
Ideally adoption would be free, but how would we be able to retain skilled social workers? Volunteers? That’s how it worked in the past, and we saw how that turned out. Tax dollars? Social workers in the public system don’t exactly get rich, and their caseloads are generally overloaded. It’s a real problem.
its funny, i could be the “Giselle” in the story Overwhelmed’s case. i asked them to be there when i went into labor. they were in the waiting room with my parents & family. they saw him right after he was born. it was what i wanted in my “birth plan”. i told everybody it was for them and the Kiddo, so that they could bond. but in retrospect, it was more out of fear. but that’s just me.
and Dawn, “getting a baby from here to there”, is a complete dead-on description. it IS like crisis mode, just drawn out a little longer.
I don’t know what I’d do if a mother wanted me–as a prospective adopter of her child–at the birth or at the hospital around the birth. I tend to feel pretty squeamish about that. But I also understand why you’d go when Jessica asked you to.
But for us, this question just has nothing to do with our adoption. I’ve been thinking about the topic a lot lately (Nat’s birthday today!) and will write more later. But this is, at bottom, such a privileged question to begin with. Nat’s mother never visited any of these issues because the depth of her crisis was–I hesitate to say “greater” but–more immediate? She had fewer choices in every way than many first mothers from middle class (even lower- or working- middle class) backgrounds that might have healthcare, but probably at least have some kind of social or cultural capital to advocate for themselves for decent hospital care at the birth to begin with.
So when I read discussions of this question, I feel agitated about how Rose and her needs are left out. And I don’t know what to do about that. But I’m trying to figure out at least how to write something about it.
Happy Birthday to NAT (see post above)
You raise some excellent points Dawn.
I don’t think the hospital is the place for the people wanting to adopt, I think the baby needs some time with his or her mother, you can see in all the photos of newborns with their mothers how comfortable they are being next to her body.
I think we should presume the mother will change her mind rather than the other way around, imagine how many less angry people there would be?
That said, I think you raised some good points and I think every case ought to be handled individually.
I don’t think from what I have read that you were coercive with Jessica.
URgh, I still get bad dreams about the hospital, I feel violated and upset if I let myself think about it, so of course I don’t.
It’s so hard to know how to make adoption be ok because basically it’s not ok. It’s a very difficult subject to cover because even when you speak from the heart you can upset or hurt someone without meaning to.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY NAT! (And mamas!)
Kim.Kim., I think you’re onto something here: “I think we should presume the mother will change her mind rather than the other way around, imagine how many less angry people there would be?”
Wow — how would that change the way things are done???
Dawn, this is a great post, and Kim’s point (above) is so important. I do think that should be the presumption, if anything is to be presumed at all (I hesitate entirely at prebirth “matches” for this reason, even if it seems to ease a woman’s mind about the potential placement of her child with a particular family, though I know that this has been a time of bonding between families in some cases).
I don’t think I could have been at the hospital, however much I wanted to be, but perhaps that has to do with my own delivery experience, and now, with our own adoption experience.
We had the ultimate pre-birth match. We met in October for the first time and Mallory wasn’t born until mid-December. We saw each other weekly for dinner. We sent letters and picture in between. It was like the four of us falling in love. Seriously that’s the only way I can describe it.
We came to the hospital (they asked). Went in and out of the room during early labor. Ran errands for them. Then when Noelle hit heavier labor we waited in the waiting room (we agreed on that ahead of time). There was no one else waiting, just my family. The extended birth families were against the adoption at the time, and Noelle had told them not to come. She finally let her grandmother and best friend in. They were there when Mallory was born. We went in a few minutes after she was born, stayed for an hour, then left for a day.
Could any or all of this been coercive? Probably. But it was Noelle’s plan. This was her hospital plan for anyone that would have adopted Mallory. She told us the first night we met. We followed it to a T. She regretted that we weren’t there for the birth (she told me later on). But I am glad I wasn’t. Some of the time during labor I felt like an extra appendage. An unneeded one.
I honestly think our really knowing each other and loving each other pre-birth is what allowed us to have the relationship we have. But you are right, we were completely emotionally invested in Keith and Noelle and the baby. I am sure they felt little room emotionally to make a different plan. We are lucky that they didn’t lead to regret.
If we were adopting now, maybe we would do it different. Maybe not. I’m sure things could have been done better in some ways.
It would be nice for some standard procedure guidlines that could cover the basics to guard against corruption and coercion.
Dawn… this was a very deep, very thought-provoking post.
And let me assure you.. I did think about it. A lot.
When you said that being present at the hospital made your realizations and spiritual change (re adoption) more profound, that made me pause. It made me wonder: would Moonbeam’s parents “get” my experience, get ME, even more, if they’d witnessed her birth?
And I sat here thinking about that, imagining them being easier to talk to about adoption reform, and I really really want that. (And you know, they’re already awesome, but still.. there’s room for more comfort and candidness between us.)
But the thing is: I wish that BECAUSE my daughter IS adopted out, already. So what I’m wishing for is a second-best scenario.
FIRST best scenario, of course, would be me having my daughter right now. And the thing is, I can’t help but come back to the belief that if they had been at the hospital, the adoption would have been even more “set in stone” than it already was.
I mean, hell, just having a phone interview set up with them–not knowing them yet, just promising them as I left for the hospital that I WOULD call them back, to interview them–was humongous pressure. So their presence at the hospital? I cannot even imagine how incredibly pressuring that would have been.
Now… what you say about women’s rights. I want to quote something you wrote at the end of this post: “Adoption is first about a woman facing a crisis and it’s all about her and that crisis.”
Yes, it is. (Or it should be. It SHOULDN’T be about finding babies for infertile people…) But anyway, yes, that is where it starts. It starts with a woman in crisis. A woman with rapidly changing hormones. A woman in a desperate emotional place.
And the thing is… I am perfectly okay with limiting a woman’s rights, when she is such a place.
Maybe that is because I am mentally ill, too… and now work in the mental health field… and I see, regularly, people’s rights being taken from them FOR THEIR OWN GOOD. I have witnessed people literally run from the cops who were trying to take them to the hospital, to be involuntarily committed. And why? Not because they’d done anything wrong… but because they WERE NOT IN A STATE OF MIND to make reasonable decisions for themselves.
We involuntarily commit people to psychiatric wards daily, in this country. We do it because we recognize that sometimes, people just aren’t capable of protecting themselves. That sometimes, rights aren’t as important as humane treatment… and that sometimes, humane treatment actually means limiting someone’s rights–not forever, and not without good cause, but yes, limiting them.
So frankly, I am still coming down on the side of “Potential adoptive parents shouldn’t be at the hospital. Period.” I mean, maybe in .01% of cases it would NOT be pressuring, not be damaging… but I am willing to sacrifice the .01% in order to protect the 99.99%… even if it means protecting them against their will.
NOW. Maybe if there were some kind of litmus test… like, if a woman had to undergo a thorough interview on WHY she wanted the aparents there, WHY she was so strongly set on adoption, WHAT her beliefs were about how the hospital experience would feel to her (both at the time and in retrospect), etc… and if the woman could demonstrate some real knowledge and insight about the matter, and then if she STILL wanted the aparents there… then I could see giving her that right.
Otherwise? No. If she can’t demonstrate some good insight into how birth will feel, how adoption will feel, how having the aparents there will feel, (again, both at the time and years down the road), then… no.
No aparents at hospitals. No.
And no pre-birth matching between strangers, either. No.