Difficult birthmother

June 9, 2001

My wife and I adopted through an agency 2 years ago. It is an open adoption and the birthmother lived with us for 10 weeks before the baby was born. She was 14 when she got pregnant. I have read of studies which found that teenage birthmothers will sometimes see open adoption as a way of not "really" giving up the baby. I am almost certain that this was so in our case. We are quite fond of the birthmother and would not trade our opportunity to get to know her for anything. However, the months she spent with us made it clear that she manipulated situations to suit her. As the adoption process proceeded she refused to participate in counseling and, at the openness agreement meeting for example, I started getting the sense that she thought she could pretend to go along with everything now and then "play" the situation later.

We agreed to two visits a year in our home plus any phone calls or notes she wanted to send. The birthmother has demanded two years in a row that we bring the child to her city so that she can give a birthday party and "show the baby to her friends!" She brought 20 gifts last Christmas, all marked "from Santa" and "from Mommy." She drove to our house in the middle of the night and left a basket from "the Easter Bunny" on our doorstep - no note, no permission or warning - a little frightening. When she doesn't get her way she sends scathing letters saying that she is the child's "real" mother and that she could raise it by herself. Recently, the birthmother had another outburst: she visited a lawyer in hopes of getting the openness agreement "enforced" (no lawyer would take that case which infuriated her more) and phoning the agency to rant (at least she finally thought to call the counselor she spurned before the adoption.) We have become convinced that she considers herself the Mommy and wished we would cooperate with her fantasy of what being a mother is like.

We have been reminded several times that we should treat the birthmother (now 16) as an adult and make all our contacts with her. We have also been told that we need to sit down and discuss the situation to make sure everyone understands the provisions of the openness agreement.

My question is What do you do if the birthmother refuses to acknowledge the reality of the situation and is too manipulative to deal with in an adult manner? I don't feel that stroking her every time she has a tantrum is a good idea - we don't do that with our two year old. We can't force her to seek counseling. Sitting down with her and a mediator is just going to force her underground for a while until the next outburst. We are really at our wit's end and have such a bad taste in our mouth that we have toyed several times with ending contact all together.

We can't be the only adoptive couple ever to have this problem. I have read several of the popular open adoption books (all frightfully anecdotal to this engineer) but being told that "most" open adoptions go well does little to comfort those of us in the unfortunate minority. We did everything the books recommended. We used a respected agency. We went through the recommended counseling but she refused to take advantage of it. What now???

Archive

July 5, 2001

Originally Posted By Nikki

Wow, that does sound like a very frustrating experience. I am a birthmom to a 3 1/2 year old little boy. His parents and myself have a wide open adoption (had numerous overnight visits). I have since moved 12 hours away from them, so it makes it a little harder to visit.

But in regards to your situation. It sounds like the young birthmom hasn't dealt with the issues at hand. As a birthmom, I kind of hate to say this, but maybe the only way to go about it is to distance yourself until she has had time to deal with her emotions. I know personally, in the beginning, I wasn't dealing with anything, but I recognized it, so I didn't visit for about a month and a half (it doesn't sound like much I know, but I had been visiting every other weekend, on their request). After I dealt with reality, it was much easier. I had to realize that he was no longer my CHILD. He will always be my son/my baby, noone can take that from me b/c I gave him life. But he will NEVER be my son. That is the hardest thing to come to grips with as a birthmom in an open adoption.

Maybe the best thing for everyone is to cut off visits for the time being. It's going to force her to come face to face with reality. Continue with pictures, letters, etc. But maybe it would be best to cut off visits for the time being. You have that right, your ARE the parents. After things settle down with her, continue with the visits.

I hate to see situations like this, as a birthmom, because it does tend to give all birthmoms a bad reputation, like we need any more of that. I know it is difficult for your child's birthmom, but she needs to get through this. Hang tight and let me know how things go:)

Nikki Birthmom to Jordan Ryan 1-7-98