The Birth Mother Myth
By: Denise Clemen
Tags: Adoption, Birth Mother, Family, Lies, Motherhood

The Birth Mother Myth

A teenage pregnancy led to an adoption I regretted years later

Photo: Kristina Flour/Unsplash

There were many things I was unprepared for when I relinquished my son for adoption. A naive 17-year-old, I believed the secret I carried would grow lighter, not heavier. I believed the pain of separation would fade. I believed the poster I saw in the adoption agency’s office, proclaiming, “Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life” was a harbinger for my new beginning. I would be a college girl, respectable, confident, and happy that my traumatic past was behind me. All of this turned out to be miles from the truth. Still, I plowed through life sometimes doing well, other times not so well, unaware that my biggest post-relinquishment challenge would begin more than a decade later.

When I fell in love with my college boyfriend, he seemed a perfect person to incorporate into my new life. He was undeterred by my confession of my scarlet past. He seemed almost relieved when I told him I didn’t want to have any more children. We were the perfect couple, mostly skipping through life, only occasionally plodding a bit. A dozen years into our marriage, when the ticking of my biological clock synched up with an uptick in our income, we reconsidered our childlessness and had a baby. I was 34 years old when our daughter was born. It had been 16 years since I’d placed my son in the arms of a social worker and walked into a sweltering Iowa summer without him.

I don’t remember anything untoward in the pregnancy with my daughter. I remember happiness, clear skin, and a craving for chocolate milkshakes, in which I regularly indulged. I don’t remember flashing back to my son’s birth as I labored with her. What I remember is that I couldn’t stop marveling about the comfortable hospital birthing center. It was furnished with a rocking chair and a bed instead of a delivery table. My doctor treated me like a human being. My husband was there every minute, and the two of us were served a steak breakfast before we were released the next morning. The birth was straightforward, and our baby was healthy and beautiful.

The Santa Ana winds were tearing through Los Angeles the day the three of us drove home. I’d crocheted a yellow sweater and hat for the baby, complete with a matching blanket. Minutes after I’d dressed her, the nurse instructed me to strip our daughter down to her T-shirt and diaper and sent my husband outside to cool off the car. Stepping out of the air-conditioned hospital lobby into a triple-digit day while clutching a baby who was ramping up to a full-out wail was my passage through the gates of hell.

The baby was still crying when we entered our apartment. I tried putting her to the breast even though my nipples were already sore from the little bit of breastfeeding I’d tried in the hospital. The day spiraled down into pain and tears for both of us. The night was nearly sleepless, and the next morning my husband went to work. That day, and the next, the one after that, and the coming months spiraled downward too. “Wheelchair,” I’d say, mistakenly, when I meant “rocking chair” if I tried to tell anyone how much time I spent rocking in an attempt to comfort the baby. Something was going wrong, and I wasn’t sure how it had begun. My daughter’s face was also my son’s face, the two of them swimming in front of me in a sea of tears.

Each day, rocking and rocking, the unreasonable list of things I was sure of grew.

1. My daughter did not like me. She didn’t trust me. Who could blame her? Why would you trust a woman who’d given away your brother to complete strangers?

2. I was not cut out for motherhood. Look what happened the first time. Now look: I was terrible at it.

3. I should not have given up my son. Why hadn’t anyone explained to me what it was like to hold your baby day after day and have it look into your eyes? Even this baby that didn’t like me was part of me, and I was part of her. I had transgressed life’s most primal bond.

4. My baby would not stop crying because God was punishing me for forsaking my son.

5. My husband did not understand the mother/child bond. He didn’t understand me. He didn’t understand the baby. He didn’t understand anything.