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I am a 28 year old birth mother. I currently have one child (4 years old), and just had a baby girl last Monday who my sister & her wife are adopting. They live in Canada, and I live in Minnesota in the United States. Tomorrow I am supposed to sign the first round of paperwork to give up my parental rights (in the state of MN you sign one form no earlier than 72 hours after the birth, and another form 10 days later). I am struggling with this a lot more than I thought I would. All throughout my pregnancy I tried to "detach" myself from the baby in a way, by referring to myself as an auntie instead of a mommy, and telling my daughter that she would be a cousin instead of a half sister to this baby. Of course right after I had the baby, I fell in love with her. When I made the choice to give her up for adoption, I was struggling as a single mother taking care of my 4 year old. The biological father of this baby wanted me to have an abortion. He didn't want to deal with the situation at all and said he couldn't afford to give me any child support money because he's already paying child support for two other children. I didn't want to have an abortion, but at the time knew I wasn't able to care for the baby on my own on top of all of my other responsibilities. I knew my sister and her wife had been looking into adoption for a few months prior to this happening, so I reached out and called her and asked if she would be able to adopt the baby. She agreed, and it's been an extremely long process for them. Because our relative adoption is also an international adoption, there has been a horrendous amount of paperwork they have had to go through. Also because they are a same sex couple, their marriage is not recognized in the USA even though in Canada they are legally married, so that has also posed problems. 3 different adoption agencies are involved, and several attorneys. They have spent about $30,000 in fees thus far. etc. etc. Long story short, they have put a ton of time and effort into being able to adopt this baby.
The problem I'm facing now, is that I feel trapped. I feel like even though I -legally- have the option to change my mind, I can't. It would be devastating to my sister. But after carrying around the baby for 9 months, giving birth to her, bonding with her, etc. I'm now having a hard time accepting the role of "auntie" rather than "mommy". I'm also now in a better financial situation, I'm in a stable relationship, I have a good job and am in school full-time. My life has changed tremendously over the past 9 months and I feel as though I could now take care of the baby. Problem is, I have made this commitment to my sister and her wife, and now I feel as though it's impossible to back out of. I either have to live with:
A) My sister & probably the rest of my family hating me for the rest of my life if I don't sign the forms and assume responsibility of the baby
or
B) Living every day of my life feeling guilty knowing I gave up my daughter for adoption, even though I no longer want to & now actually could take care of her without help from her biological father.
I worry about what she will think when she gets older. She will wonder why I kept my first daughter and why I gave her away. I worry about having more kids in the future because she would wonder why she was the only one I didn't keep. Rather than it feeling like I'm giving someone a "gift" now, it feels like a huge sacrifice. I also feel like I'm no longer doing it for the "right" reasons. Now it just feels like I'm giving her away. There is this giant hole in my heart now and I just feel so much emptiness. It hurts seeing other people congratulate them for the baby that I carried. It makes me feel inadequate when I see how wonderful they are with her. I feel like nobody cares about my feelings or how this has all effected me. I feel like I have nobody to talk to about my feelings other than my pregnancy counselor. I don't know a single person who has ever given up their child for adoption. I thought it would be easier having a relative adopt her than a stranger so that I could maintain a relationship with her and talk to her whenever I wanted, but it's almost harder because it hurts -so much- knowing I can't change my mind and having to call my sister and her wife her mommies. I still feel like I am her mother. It sounds bad, but I wouldn't feel as bad changing my mind if the person were a complete stranger. In fact I definitely would have already done that by now. But now I'm stuck. They swear we will Skype, they will send pictures, they'll text, call, visit, etc. And I trust that we will... but at the same time there is always this fear that someday eventually I'll be shut out.
I'm also struggling with the fact that the dad has been so indifferent through all of this. He has only talked to me maybe 5 times during the whole pregnancy. He went on vacation to Arizona 2 days before my due date. He said he couldn't help me with money for the baby back when we made the decision to adopt, yet he seems to always have money to go out and get drunk almost every day (we're friends on Facebook, which is why I know this). He came to the hospital the day after the baby was born, held her for about 5 minutes, and while holding her literally said "Well this whole thing was one big accident so I guess this is the best way of handling it" basically referring to his child as an accident... and then was like "I'm going to go ride my motorcycle now, see ya later!" and left the hospital. He hasn't once checked on me to make sure I'm doing okay emotionally. This whole time he has had me lie to all of my closest friends about who he is because he doesn't want anyone to know he's the dad. He has two children of his own and posts pictures of them on Facebook all of the time and acts like he's father of the year, but then completely shuns this child because she was conceived during a one night stand. He also impregnated two other women who had abortions, so technically this is his 5th kid. Every day my resentment for him builds stronger and stronger, but I've held it together this entire time and have been friendly and cordial so not to jeopardize any of the paperwork. In 4 days I will never have to deal with him again thankfully but every part of me wants to rip him to shreds for being such an insensitive, irresponsible jerk.
Since he is such a jerk, part of me feels justified in giving her to my sister and her wife to raise because I'd rather her have two loving moms than a dead beat dad. But the selfish part of me does not want to give her away at all.
This is so long now I doubt anyone is going to read it. It is a complicated situation. I don't know what I feel like will be accomplished by even posting this, but my counselor gave me the link to this forum so I'm trying to start sorting out my feelings somewhere. Eventually I will accept the decision I have made, but I don't know where to go next. Right now everything just feels hopeless and I feel confused and lost and don't know what to do with all of these feelings. My doctor prescribed some Wellbutrin for me to try to counteract some of the Post Partum I currently have, but it's not helping. I feel miserable and I feel as though it's eventually going to take a toll on the daughter I'm currently raising and I feel as though my misery and sadness is also going to ruin my relationship with my boyfriend. Everyone is being supportive right now, but eventually they're going to get sick of me crying all of the time and will want nothing to do with me. I don't know what to do. If anyone out there can relate or has been in this predicament, or if anyone has any good advice they can pass on please help me. How did all of you get over the grief? I feel like I'm never going to move on. Everyone tells me I'm so selfless and wonderful and that I'm doing the right thing, but my heart is breaking and everything feels wrong... :grr:
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I would urge you to take your sister / sis-in-law's point of view out consideration, and be honest with yourself about what is right for you and your daughter. From your post, it sounds like you have decided what you want, but you are letting guilt influence you. It is unfortunate that your sister and her wife have wanted to adopt for so long, and have spent a lot of money. However, this in no way obligates you to place your child. If you decide to parent, they will likely grieve, but you cannot make this your problem. They will handle their grief and hopefully go on to become parents in the right way.Don't make a permanent and irrevocable decision that you are not comfortable with. Parent your child for a week, a month, longer, and take time to decide what is right for YOU. If your sister is mad or tries to make you feel guilty about parenting your child, you may need to distance yourself from her until she has had time to handle her grief.
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As an adoptive parent, I can say that given everything you've said here, it seems like placing your daughter at this point would not be the best decision. The one thing I feared most in the adoption process was not that a mother would change her mind but that a mother would place with us because she felt obligated to us for any reason whatsoever. Your sister and her wife may go through a period of significant grief - that is not your responsibility and they will recover. It is nothing compared to the grief you will have for placing your daughter for adoption out of obligation, the grief that your sister and her wife might feel if they knew you only went through with it to spare their feelings, or the grief that your daughter might feel for being placed under these circumstances. Adoption is permanent - you can always parent for a while and then decide adoption is best, but you can't place your daughter for a while and decide that you want to parent. I think it's important right now to be honest with your sister and her wife that you are having doubts and that you need this to be a decision you feel more confident about. I don't know if this is helpful to you, but the adoption agency we worked with encouraged expectant parents to bond with their children as parents and to not distance themselves from the connection. They had found that birth parents that allowed themselves to really bond and then made the parenting decision to place their child for adoption did better long-term than those that convinced themselves that they weren't really a parent to their child (anecdotally speaking - this isn't verified by any research I know of, but it made sense to us and our child's birth parents). Give yourself time to accept that you are your daughter's mother. If after that you decide that the best parenting decision to make for her is to place her with your sister and her wife, then move forward. For now, I think you should think solely about your part of the equation - if you didn't know who the adoptive parents would be and didn't know of their situation, would you choose to place your daughter? It doesn't sound like it. Good luck with this decision - remember there is no hurry here.
I agree with Tacosalad. As an adoptive mom I could and would never want a child that someone truly felt that they could and did want to parent. It's awful for everyone involved if that's the case. Again yes your sister has serious investments in to this both emotionally and financially however; your child is #1 beyond all and especially money. You sister will understand eventually especially once they have a completed adoption under the right circumstances.Don't make more decisions that will lead to guilt out of guilt. Make them out of a truly whats best for me and my child place. Most of all sending positive vibes your way!
Go get your daughter. It would be good for your 2 daughters to be raised together as sisters. That fact alone should be considered by your family if they attempt to guilt you. Your daughters need to be sisters. Why would a family not want that. A healthy whole Mommy raising 2 healthy happy daughters.JMO
Against everyone's advice, I signed the paperwork and my sister now has legal custody. For anyone wondering, yes, I regret it. Yes, I'm prepared for you all to tell me "I told you so". My baby now has no idea who the hell I am when I hold her, but in the long run she will have universal health care, two parents who love her, and money for college. So maybe I made the "right" decision. I'll never really know. All I know is that right now it all really ****ing hurts.
For anyone thinking about doing something similar, bear in mind the after effects are not what you might expect. It is incredibly painful watching other people congratulate someone for a baby they didn't have, nobody will congratulate you, people are too scared to talk to you about how you're feeling so instead they will just ignore you, the people who weren't supportive of your decision to adopt your child out will rub the fact that they were right in your face, you will watch your baby smile and laugh at their new parents and they will completely shun you, and everyone will constantly tell you that you did the most "selfless thing" anyone could possibly do, but in your heart you will feel like it's the worst thing you have ever done and you'll never forgive yourself for it. The sad, honest truth of it all.
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What continues to bother me about this whole situation is that a large part of why I gave the baby to my sister to adopt was because of financial reasons. My brother feels like I am a giant financial burden to my mother because she helps pay for daycare costs for the daughter I do have, and he constantly makes me feel guilty about it. I've later come to find out that my mom has basically paid for the entire adoption process for my sister. Which pretty much tells me that she thought I would be an inadequate mother and that it was worth $30,000 to let someone else parent her. And she continues to pay for pretty much everything for them even though my sister and her wife both have good jobs (which is one reason why I chose them-- they're both financially stable without my mother's help). Had I kept her, that $30,000 could have went toward her future college education, first car, basically anything else... and instead, she basically just threw away what could have almost bought a house just so that my sister could take my child, knowing after I had the child that I no longer wanted to give her away. I think that hurts more than anything. My mom and I used to be best friends, and this whole process has really shattered any sort of respect I used to have for her. It is clear to my now that she favors my other siblings and their families and just views me as a giant **** up.