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Receiving Support Through Adoption Loss
Continued from previous post
Finally, we were informed that the birth mother had chosen another family. We felt as if we had been rejected. Again. The last thing we wanted to do at that point was to call everyone and tell them we’d been rejected.
When the calls did begun trickling in, people’s response to our news was “Oh.”
Oh? What kind of a response is that? I thought.
I’ve learned to become more gracious since then, because I now know that our friends and family simply didn’t understand the kind of emotional support we needed. Because they hadn’t experienced the complexities of adoption, they took the safest route, which was to say nothing.
Others acted as if the loss had never happened. Still others, in hopes of comforting us, shared horror stories of friends in California who had adopted and six months later, had to return the baby to birth parents. Not very comforting.
Others suggested we change our parameters: Why don’t you try international adoption, or bi-racial adoption, or special needs adoption?
Situation #3
Two months later, we received another call from our adoption agency. A baby girl had been born that week to a college student. The baby’s mother attended a very conservative college that would have excommunicated her had they known she was pregnant. The baby’s father didn’t know about the pregnancy and lived in another state. The woman wanted to look at our profile. Three days later, we learned that she had placed her child with another family.
At this point, I was beginning to wonder whether I really wanted to be informed when our profile was sent out. Our agency’s usual policy was not to inform us to whom our profile was being circulated, but since the two most recent situations had been last-minute and a bit outside of our parameters, they had had to ask us for permission to send out our profile.
In the next post…Situation #4
With our second adoption, the agency started out telling us when a birthmom would be coming in to select. Our odds were pretty decent because our agency only kept up to 17 adoptive families at a time in the “pile”. I would be on pins and needles waiting for a call that never came. I really couldn’t live like this (I was a basket case for weeks upon weeks) and then the agency seemed to get away from this practice.
Although I did not like the info I was getting, I still wanted to know what was going on. At the time, any info was better than silence. I then started to call for monthly updates.
I can’t tell you how many times they would say that it was between our family and another family. The birthmom would then choose the other family because we already had one child and they felt they wanted to give their baby to a family that did not have any children. From talking to contacts in the adoption arena in our community, this was a trend they were seeing more of.It was heartbreaking each month for us. I had decided not to call anymore because it was getting too difficult on me.
We are now working on our third adoption. Our home study has been completed and we have been approved since mid January. A month into our waiting game the agency called to say that we were a “real hot prospect”, but again the birth parents chose a family without children.
I kind of forgot how hard this waiting is going to be. And you are right, I am looking for support from friends and family and they haven’t got a clue what to say.