When I Knew I was a Grown-Up

It was nine-and-a-half years ago when I placed my only child for adoption, the hardest and smartest thing I ever did.

I was 34 and for 14 years I didn't think I could get pregnant so when I got the positive dollar store test which my friend had to buy me because I was too broke, I was shocked, to say the least.

After I went to Planned Parenthood to confirm the test, several weeks later I heard my daughter's heartbeat for the first time on Jan. 31, 2000 a few weeks after I moved into a maternity home, The Gladney Center for Adoption in Fort Worth, TX.

On Feb. 28th I got an ultrasound which showed I was having a daughter. It also happened to be the biological father's birthday but he would wind up leaving me the next month.

Though I slipped into a deep period of depression while I was pregnant, I knew I had finally grown up because I was making the first unselfish decision of my life, because I knew that as badly as I ever wanted to have a child, I could not parent her for emotional, financial, mental, and physical reasons that had plagued me all my life.

Shortly after I moved into the dorm at Gladney, I started an adoption journal and in my regular therapy sessions I would cry from grief about my decision even though I knew it was the right thing.

Throughout my pregnancy there were times I thought that if one more person asked me why I was placing my child for adoption, I'd choke them. I didn't know if the pregnancy was making me stronger but I found myself standing up to people, which I'd never been able to do.

Two months before I had my birth daughter McKenna I met who would be her adoptive parents and one month before, her adoptive brother who had also been adopted through Gladney two years before. They are both nurses which wound up being a godsend since McKenna wound up with food aversion and uses a feeding tube three times a day. She was born with the condition, has been in numerous programs, and is still not cured.

McKenna was born on Aug. 15, 2000 and this is what I wrote in the journal to her after my emergency C-Section: "I want to remember your smile, dimple in your chin, all the pictures we took, your dreams, good nature, cooing, feeling like you motivate me to go on, how you love to nap and stretch."

The nights were so hard at the dorm after having given birth since I had had my child and the other residents were still pregnant and had no idea what to expect. During the day for one or two weeks I had nursery visits on campus with McKenna for an hour or two each while she was in transitional care which involves a foster parent-like arrangement. Once I cried until my incision hurt and another time I even cried in the presence of a houseparent who naively asked, "Why are you depressed?"

Then on Aug. 24, I placed my daughter with her new family on what is known as Placement Day. Pictures are taken, videos are made, gifts/cards are exchanged and it is a total ceremonial setting.

I have a semi-open adoption which means I get letters, videos, pictures, cards, gifts, emails, and I send the same. I made a scrapbook over a four-month period for McKenna before she was born about my life and I write her letters on significant holidays and birthdays every year.

Luckily, I also get to see her twice a year - highly unusual in adoption cases and unheard of in closed ones. It is if a picture that I have in my bedroom of McKenna and I has been freeze-framed in my mind and soul and comes to life during our visits.

When I used to go to a post-adoption support group I tried not to bring this good stuff up to the other birth moms who I knew didn't get any or not many pictures or videos, emails; etc. I didn't want to make them feel bad and I felt bad for them.

My best friend Stephanie who was my labor coach and with me through the whole thing once was surprised to hear that I was so privileged. She said she just assumed that all the birth moms got the same information.

It used to be that the sound of a bunch of little girls' laughter would echo as I left a store and I would wonder if Id' ever get through a day when the sound or the sight of a little girl didn't jerk at my numb heart or threaten to stir up tears. At the time I told myself I'd moved beyond it, but I knew better. Then it became just like a sore with scab. It had hardened in time but it was still there, just waiting to be scratched or poked.

Now when I hear a little girl's laughter or voice that is the same age as McKenna, I smile inside and wonder what she's doing today.
People don't understand why I send my birth daughter gifts or why I wanted to set aside some money for her.

"She's got everything she needs," they'd say.

I do it because I am her mom, because I love her. It isn't about McKenna having plenty of toys or books. It is about me being her birth mother.

People just didn't get it.

The first holiday season, McKenna's first Thanksgiving and Christmas, was brutal for me. I cried in the bathroom on Christmas Day as my family prepared to eat while I was visiting my sister in Florida.

Then one day I had hope at last. After a three-year major depressive episode I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel a little and focus on how happy McKenna was.

If I had kept her I would have been on welfare, but being bipolar with a lot of other emotional problems, that would have been the least of it.
Shortly after I had McKenna I wished I could hold her for at least a minute or even a day but I knew as soon as she got fussy I'd panic and look for her adoptive mom to take her.

As a recovering alcoholic, I almost drank one night when a friend of mine who couldn't have kids made some especially rude comments about the adoption. I wrote her a letter but didn't send it. There were so many times I almost drank over my decision but I didn't.

My sister, who's a therapist, once told me that it is mature to admit that you know you're immature.

I got so much grief at work for my painful adoption decision that when I changed jobs and someone asked if I had custody of McKenna I told them I did, only later admitting the truth.

Throughout all this, my dog, who I had had since 1997, was trying to save my life in a way by making me get up, get out, and get moving.

Then on April 15, 2001, the adoptive mom asked me if I'd like to see McKenna in two days which would be the day they would go to court and have her adoption finalized. For the first time since Placement Day I got to see and hold my daughter and we took pictures in which I looked my happiest ever in my life.

I started talking to others about the adoption more and I was not ashamed although many consider birth mothers "the invisible moms."

Fast forward to 2009 and in July I was actually invited to my birth daughter's house by her adoptive mom, something I had dreamed of and wished for for nine years but never thought would happen. To be in McKenna's home where she lives with her family, to see how she lives and how she is, is a gift that I cannot adequately put into words as to how much it meant to my heart, mind, and spirit.

I can't imagine my life without McKenna now.