WEG’s mommy is brilliant!
18May2005 Filed under: Adoption Author: DawnMy new pretend therapist said:
[W]hat I’m hearing you say is that having already become a mother once, you had a specific set of responses to J as a mother that you might not have had if you’d never yourself given birth. And I hear you saying that that identification with her, mother to mother, feels like it might have made it different (harder?) for you to rejoice in Madison’s arrival. Because (_maybe_ I’m reading this right?) you could identify so strongly with J’s experiences as a new mother.
All sorts of interesting questions here: how much of this was just you opening yourself up (ack, unintended pun) to open adoption. How much of your willingness to do open adoption was in fact shaped by your prior (biological) parenthood.
Yes and yes and yes again! This was such a big help for me! That’s what I’m trying to understand. And I thought hearing from moms who did it the other way would help me see things more clearly.
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About Me
I have two kids and a delightfully odd husband, Brett. My children are Noah (born to us in 1997) and Madison (born to her first mom, Pennie, in 2004 and brought to our family through a domestic, open adoption). They are my inspiration and also the reason I don't get more done around here.
I'm a writer and sometimes I get published, which is a nice thing. I write for joy, I write for money and when I'm very lucky, both things happen at the same time. My work appears in national publications including Yoga Journal, Disney's Family.com, Utne, Wondertime, Brain Child and Salon. Currently I am working on a book about my daughter's adoption and seeking representation for the proposal. I also own Smart Cookie Communications with my husband.
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LisaV
May 18th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
I don’t know. I think I alway identified with their grief and pain. Even thought I had never experienced birth or placing a baby, I felt like I had pretty good empathy for it. I actually thinking my pregnancy losses were more in tuned with what I imagined N was going through. Emotions and hormones making you long for this baby that was no longer yours.
Mallory was so firmly mine by the time I gave birth that most of the emotional hindsight is 20/20 was lost on me. If anything, adopting Mallory made giving birth to Aubree less significant. It became an event more about me, and less about becoming a parent. Does that make sense? It’s like Aubree was completely seperate from my pregnancy and birth experience. On the other hand I still think N’s pregnancy and the birth and adoption are still tied up in Mallory for me. More so than my birth children. Maybe adoption removed me on some level from being wrapped up in birth.
I would like to know if there are differences for birthmoms in children they placed and children they parented.
LisaV
May 18th, 2005 at 9:40 pm
More-
You know sometimes I will “give” (not the right word) maybe “transfer” emotions on to N because they are what I feel, and I assume she feels the same way - mother to mother. I honestly don’t know how she views herself in some of these situations.