This is a hard one for me to write. Because even with my veil of anonymity, it reveals something so personal and secretive, that few people in my life actually know about it. Many of my closest friends do not know about it and it was even hard to admit to my husband, but I realized recently how very relevant it is to my journey.
Some recent stories I arrived at via
Stirrup Queens showed me the importance of sharing my story. I apologize in advance for any grammar mistakes, for I don't plan on check editing like I normally do for long posts. Feel free to comment, but if you ever meet me in person let's agree not to bring it up - ok? Alright, here it goes:
When I was barely 16, I gave up a child for adoption.
There. I said it. Or at least wrote it.
Surrogacy is not an easy option for me. Wait, I need to rephrase that because surrogacy and infertility are not easy options for ANYONE on any side of the fence, as blog after blog can attest. Let me try again... Like many cases in infertility land, our path to use surrogacy was an extremely difficult one.
For you see, I know the pain of carrying a child in your womb for 9 months and then giving it to someone else. I can pretend that my pain was "more" because the child was genetically linked, but I really have no way of knowing that. The best I can hope for is that the verbal evidence I am given from those "in the know" is what my surrogate will experience: that it's not easy, especially that day in the delivery room, but that the surrogate knows from the beginning that the child is not hers. Knowing that her GIFT will enable her to help her own children - something HUGE that I think most articles on the subject seem to miss, but mothers pick up on right away - helps to ease the worry. At least a little.
My main nurse in Anand is twice a surrogate. She is always happy with a smile and her recent deliveries occurred when she was about 39 and 41, the last one being only a year earlier. She has worked at the clinic for approximately 9 years. She's not the only nurse that is a former surrogate and I dare say that they would certainly have inside information on what the women go through before making those decisinos for themselves.
The life and emotional well-being of my nurse is a strong contrast of how my life was a year after giving up my child for adoption. Maybe emotionally she's an exception, but I don't think so. Speaking and reviewing empirical information on former surrogates lets me see how their lives are changed for the better, but I still don't fool myself into believing that the initial period after births are easy-breezy for them.1
When I was pregnant and 15, I listened to people tell me that, "if I loved my baby, I would give it up for adoption." No one told me how the pain would rip me apart. The pain didn't even fully settle till months after, when it was far too late by legal standards to do anything about it, (even though I did try). Having been ostracized by any "good girls", combined with an already deep ability have depression (even before my pregnancy), it's no surprise that I continued making bad choices for awhile. I have no doubt that post-partum equally contributed it's ugly head during those times.
And then I stopped making bad choices, (at least for awhile). At 19 I was engaged to a man 5 years my senior and became pregnant. While I certainly had not (I promise) PLANNED on being pregnant, after I got over the initial shock, there was a sense that a huge hole in me was in some way going to be repaired. I had to clean up my act for my baby. My marriage lasted for a very brief period, as my husband did not share my epiphany, but my second son helped me heal. Tremendously.
I won't pretend that I haven't had other ups and downs in my life, many of my own doing on both accounts, but to say that giving up my first-born for adoption didn't have a huge impact on my life would be a lie. My first-born is now old enough to have tried to seek me out and even though I put in the initial papers that he could, he never has. Something that both grieves me and relieves me. It's probably been over 20 years since I dared even open the box containing all of the documentation and correspondence I had during those difficult times, but I still have the box. And it's a big box. It has been a long time since I grieved on his birthday, but there were many, many years that I did. Now, most birthdays go by without even remembering. Not because I don't love him, quite the opposite, but I guess my mind finally kicked in it's defense mechanism that we humans are so famous for.
Invariably when I see surrogacy articles, I get enraged when I see all the comments about "they are selfish and should just adopt!" Do people think the mothers of adopted children didn't equally grieve? Some maybe less, but many possibly more. (There are more reasons that these comments enrage me, but I will save those for another day.) Do people not know that the amount an Indian surrogate makes, even though small by western standards, can effectively change her and her families life? The surrogate can start a store or buy a rickshaw for her family to earn more. Things that were never even remotely possible for her prior.
Surrogate mothers choose their paths for a variety of reasons, but as long as it is their choice and they are fully informed, we should not take away that right or even judge it. Not even if the woman is poor and does it simply for the money. A poor woman wanting a better future for her family should not be held to a lower standard than other women. Knowing a little bit about Indian culture, I know that these women don't do it for pure altruistic reasons as I sometimes see touted, but that doesn't make their GIFT any less.
Surrogacy is hard for me, but the adoption option would be even harder. My baby may have been unplanned, but he was definitely not unwanted. Not any more than my second child. I can not imagine reliving my 15 and 16 year old life from the other side of the fence. Adoption is not even on the table for us for us for many reasons, including simple ones like wondering if we would even be allowed AND our desire to have a genetic child. It was not until my most recent trip to India that I even acknowledged to myself about how my teenage years affected some of my angst of our current journey.
Does the 40 year old me regret giving up my child for adoption? Surprisingly - no. I don't think the 20-ish one did either. I knew that the 16 year old me could not give a life to a child that even a 20 year old me could give. Even the 20 year old me had difficulties, but I think my second son turned out pretty awesome,. My first son would have had less of a chance and there is a high likelihood that if I had kept him, my second son would not have been born.
I don't doubt that most surrogates go through pain when giving a child they have carried for 9 months to the intended parents, but I don't believe that most would want to keep the child either. The financial burden compiled with the stigma would be something that we westerners could not even begin to understand. At 16, I may not have understood all the pain that would occur with my decision to give my baby up for adoption, but it was the right decision. For me, my future self, and both of my sons.
1 I can ONLY speak from my experiences with my clinic, there are tons of nefarious ones out there that I hope are regulated out of business soon.
