Bastardpalooza 2008 - NO MORE BULLSHIT BIRTH CERTIFICATES

I hadn't realised how badly I have been neglecting my blog. Most of my online time is spent where all the cool bastards hang at AAAFC (Adult Adoptees Advocating for Change).

I hope putting a link here will not attract all of the surrogacy freaky-deakys to my little haven. People in surrogacy are probably the most disturbed individuals I have ever run across in my life. Intended Parents are right next to the SOFA adopters in stone freakiness, except they out and out buy their babies from their mothers (or sell their babies to the adopters) as opposed to buying them from the lawyers and agencies. Anyway...

Adult Adoptees forum

Back to my original thought- Bastardpalooza 2008!I am hoping like hell that I can get enough money together so my daughter and I can be there to support adoptee rights! And I will post piccies!!

Put together by the supercool Gershom (Kali) and BB Church (Ron), they are Deep Dish Bastard Super Supreme in my book :) I heart them for their efforts. They give Bastardry a good name!



A Day for Adoptee Rights!!

Meeting Mother

I met my mum right before I turned 20. Wow.

I set off to Dayton with Sam in tow, leaving my parents with James. OMFG, were they PISSED OFF! They called maybe 20 times over the course of the weekend and left 6 indignant messages. I actually laughed at the messages instead of feeling ashamed. That's a first...lol. I didn't call back, even though they ordered me to. They can get stuffed.

I had a problem finding the house and I was so nervous and shaking so hard when I finally did find the house, that I couldn't open the car door. I parked in the street and cried because I couldn't open the frickin car door. I couldn't get it together. When I finally managed to form a cohesive thought, I pressed the green button on the mobile 2 times (that calls back the last number, which happened to be Christy's mobile) and when she answered, and I blubbered, "Christy come get me, I can't open the car door!" OMG! What a RETARD! I couldn't believe I called my sister to come and get me because I am too much of a basketcase to get out of the car myself. She didn't even question it, she just said, "Hang on sweetie, I will be right there to help you." What an angel she is. I could not have asked for a better sister, I swear.

Christy and Evey came running out of the house and up to the car. Christy opened the door and was like, "Are you OK? What happened?" They thought I was hurt. No not hurt, just a stupid prat who couldn't manage the complex mechanisms and sequences involved in the operation of car door latches and such. I seriously don't know what happened to me. It was as if I suddenly turned into a helpless infant and couldn't do a simple task

We all had a tremendous hug and some more tears for me, fresh ones for them. They are just such beautiful and loving women. I could hardly believe I was hugging my own flesh and blood, my sisters. OMG....we have the same mother. We grew in the same womb. Holy shit, that is amazing when you actually wrap your head around it. Never before had I been around any familiar wombs, and now here were 2 of my familiar womb's previous occupants. They kicked the same uterine walls!! That's so cool!!

Oh The joy of adopteehood! I bet real kids don't get to have these profound thoughts about wombs and occupants- LOL!

I closed the door and then said, "Oh FUCK! Sam!" I am such a scatterbrain that I forgot, even for a brief moment, about my precious Sam. Christy offered to get her out of the car seat to save me from having to trying to operate another car door. Sam took right to her and it usually takes days for Sam to get used to someone. Normally she screams if a stranger tries to pick her up, but Sam not only let her take her out of the car seat, but she let C carry her inside the house and she even smiled at her whilst being carried. That is is FIRST! She didn't view C as a stranger at all.

I am going to skip all the detaily stuff and just get to the points. If that is possible...

Their first plan was to have ALL the bloody family over - extended family and friends - and I absolutely freaked about that. I hate meeting new people and being around a lot of people because it is like my nervous system goes on overload and I have to go lock myself into the bathroom for an hour just to decompress.

C and E are so comforting. It feels so nice to be around them, but the one person who I wanted to be around the most was my mother. I was so weak kneed walking up to the house. Oh - they have a fantastic house! It is so stately and full of character. Lots of wood - mahogany floors and some pretty ornate woodwork. The staircase is fabulousI guess it is an older home - as old as they get in Dayton anyway. Tudor style. My mother has exquisite taste in decorating. It leans toward Victorian, but very, very well done. They even have....drum roll....

A POOL! It is a 40 foot, kidney-shaped, in-ground glorious pool! A birth family with a big arsed POOL!!! Now I KNOW I Would have been better off with them! Terra cotta floors in the kitchen with stainless steel appliances/cupboards. Terra Cotta on the terrace as well, I don't know how they manage that. Chimineas abound and there is a gorgeous rock garden surrounding a fountain (with a STONE PONY in the middle!!!!!) and a stunning flower bed comprised of tantalising layers colours and textures. I wanted to reach in there and touch everything, but I controlled myself...lol. It is obvious that my mother is naturally creative and she expresses her creativity in her surroundings. Lovely!! She clearly likes to surround herself with beauty as she is quite beautiful herself! And young. God is she young compared to amum. Amum is like a dried, shriveled old prune. Natural mum is a succulent plum in comparision. Nmum is only 44! Amum is 67 or something. I know that is a weird comparison to make on your mothers, but I think you know what I am getting at and all. Oh yes, I said I would skip the details, NOT.

So then I walk up to my mother and just look at her. She definitely is my mother. My very own mother! How comforting to look into the eyes of the woman who created you, who grew you, who welcomed you into the world, who looks like you, who has the same movements and gestures, the same voice, and, just maybe, the woman who has the same thoughts as you.

Despite my nervousness, I felt a tremendous amount of peace and wholeness. It felt as if I was finally a human being - an inhabitant of the planet Earth. For the first time in my life, I could let go of the forced foreignness in my body, and embrace the inherent nature of my soul. No longer did I stand before a woman called "mother" who was forced into my life by the luck of the draw. I now stood in front of the woman I call mother who was brought to my life by the Will of the Gods and the Beauty of Nature. Meeting your mother for the first time after 20 years of separation is a spiritual experience, indeed.

I could see her eyes welling up with tears as she looked at me with such soft eyes. She said, "Sarah, oh sweetie, you are so beautiful!" Those were the sweetest words ever spoken to me in my life. And then she hugged me.

I never expected a reaction like that. I thought she would be all superficial. She was, at times, I think in order to protect herself and keep up the facade of do-gooding and adoption gifting, but I can see that isn't genuine. Not really. She doesn't fool me. I can see what is going on behind all that shielding that she does.

We had a lovely weekend. On Sunday morning, mum made waffles with Mrs. Butterworth's syrup and real butter. I never knew about Mrs. Butterworth's. I got a tum ache from it, but I loved it. It was so comforting being at the table during breakfast on Sunday morning. I mean....I actually felt like I belonged somewhere, for once in my life...I fit in. Mum scolded me for putting on too much Mrs. Butterworth's. "Don't put so much on there Sarah. You'll end up with a stomach ache and the runs, honey." OMG!!!!!!!! Nothing has ever felt so good as her saying that (besides telling me I was beautiful!)!!! Most girls get their feathers ruffled from maternal chastising. I loved it. How stupid is that?

She totally treated me like I was a member of the family on the last day. Gone was the pretense and fakeness. She even told me to pick up my socks in the same breath she told Evey to clean up her mess in the bathroom. It was the sweetest day of my life.

What really, really hurt is that my sister who is only 2 years older than me, Jocelyn, (Christy is 26, Evey 24, Damian is 16)refused to meet me. I took her place in the birth order and she is angry that I came back. She looks the most like me. In fact she looks exactly like me and I was so hoping to connect with her the most. But....she totally rejects me :`(

Blogger Blitz to bring Baby Evelyn home

Blogger Blitz Called to Bring Baby Evelyn Home

As court battle for Baby Evelyn trudges on, new details of case are revealed.
OriginsUSA calls for Adoption community bloggers to help.

Source: OriginsUSA
Apr 12, 2007 08:54:20 PRLog.Org) – Richmond, VA April 12, 2007 -

OriginsUSA, Inc. is organizing a Blogger Blitz for Monday, April 16, 2007, to increase media and public awareness of the coercion used to obtain the surrender and removal of five month old Evelyn Bennett from her seventeen year old mother, Stephanie Bennett, on September 12, 2006, in Canton , Ohio. Traditional media, with the exception of Rick Armon of the Akron Beacon Journal, have largely ignored this story.

As outlined by Mr. Armon in the original story on December 31, 2006, the Bennett case has many unanswered questions. Despite the lack of media coverage, the interest of the online community has not diminished and has been kept alive for months via blog articles, adoption forums and online chats. Kicking off the Blogger Blitz will be a live stream, online, radio interview with Judy Bennett, Stephanie’s mother and grandmother to baby Evelyn. “The Adoption Show,” with Michelle Edmonds, will air on Sunday, April 15, 2007, and will be available online there after at www.theadoptionshow.com . The interview will break the codes of silence and gag orders imposed upon the family, while showing that this story is more tragic than even previously known.A factual time line will be available to bloggers, along with further, as yet unrevealed, details.

Links to this information and a list of participating bloggers will be available on the OriginsUSA website at www.originsusa.org . The online adoption community, other mothers who have been forced to surrender, adult adopted persons, and people who have adopted will have the opportunity to react to the new information. They then can respond as to why this case is important not just to people involved in adoption, but to all who care about truth and justice.It is hoped that attention generated by bloggers will inspire renewed interest from mainstream media and cause widespread support for the Bennett family. To date, the Bennetts remain separated from their daughter and granddaughter and are fighting in court for the return of baby Evelyn. Sandy Young of OriginsUSA, who has been working with the Bennett family said, “Wrongly ignoring cases like the Bennett’s, and the many other stories of forced adoption that still occur in America as accepted adoption practice, allow these abuses to continue. OriginsUSA fights for justice and the preservation of natural families.”If you are interested in being part of the Blogger Blitz or would like more information about how to help the Bennetts, please contact BOD@originsusa.org*****

For more information about the truth of adoption, past and present, join us at OriginsUSA. OriginsUSA, Inc. advocates for the preservation of natural families and, as a last resort, alternative systems of child care that respect the needs and dignity of both mother and child above permanent adoption separation. We provide support for people separated by adoption, fight coercive adoption practices, and educate the public and policy makers about the effects of adoption separation. A national organization, we are internationally affiliated with Origins Inc. ( NSW Australia), Origins Canada, and other Origins branches in those countries. OriginsUSA, Inc. has also aligned with Tracker’s International in the U.K. and with Adoption Crossroads in the U.S.

So really, how is it different?

Yesterday I spent the evening with James’ family. It was lovely. Until…

They have a friend over named Rich. Rich is 52. He was way cool. He talked about how it was to live in the 70s and what music he liked. He saw Crosby Stills and Nash the day President Nixon resigned and Graham Nash he said came out on stage to announce it and then went right into his song, “Chicago”. This was so before my time, but I love hearing all about it.

Then he talked about Past lives and how in the 80s he had Past Life therapy. He brought along a book and gave it to me. Many Lives, Many Masters. I totally believe in Past Lives and was fascinated by this guy. I couldn’t believe he was so open about all of this. I loved that about him!

The conversation comes around to his daughter, who is 3 years old. I ask for pictures of course, because I love to see little ones. Lots of pics, he had of this adorable, blonde beauty who almost seemed too perfect, to flawless to be true! The angel white-blond hair and Colorado Winter Sky Blue eyes were the icing on the cake, so to speak. He was just an average-looking guy. Interesting, intelligent, well traveled and well read, but average looking. I thought his wife be one of those Czech supermodels judging by the looks of his daughter. She definitely must look just like her and she must be bloody gorgeous.

“This (as he points to the cherub on the screen of his laptop)…..this is THE best decision I have ever made in my life.”

Of course this really melts my heart to see a man talk about his baby like this.

Then I had to be stupid and ask questions.

“Oh, so your wife must be much younger, then.”
“No, she is 47. We tried for 6 years for our daughter and went through a lot.”
“Oh.”

In my head bells were sounding and smoke was rising. I knew where this was going because I knew how to add and subtract. 47 with a 3 year old and this is her first child. Uh huh. Well I know quite well that women have babies naturally at age 44, but it almost never their first one. It is usually their 4th or 5th or 17th. I have read enough to know that it is extremely rare for a woman naturally conceive and to birth her first at that age. Extremely rare. I have read enough about the subject to know that once a woman’s body “knows” how to be pregnant and has done so relatively recently, it is easier for a woman of that age to conceive again. “Went through a lot” automatically means lots of fertility treatments.

And I am a cheeky little bastard, so of course I go on.

“So it was IVF for you, then.” (I am HORRID, am I not? What a Nosy bitch!)

“Yes.”

Now I know enough to know that at age 43 or 44, you have an extremely small chance of conceiving with your own eggs (less than 3%). I know enough about assisted reproduction now that I know the clinics who do IVFs will even refuse to treat a woman at that advanced age because the dismal “success” rate that ultimately lowers their overall successful statistics and the clinic doesn’t want to look bad. I know enough to know that doctors push the hell out of donor eggs (more money in their pocket and wildly better success rates=more money in their pockets!!!) I know enough about 3rd party repro to almost be a bloody PhD, for fuck’s sake. I have been eating and breathing it for the last year.

“In fact, to tell you the truth” he goes on and then pauses.

“Your daughter is an egg donor baby,” I finish his paused sentence.

At this point I see James and his mother wildly gesticulating. You know, that movement with the hand swiping the air across the neck whilst mouthing the word, “Ix-nay Ix-nay, CUT CUT CUT.” You know what I mean. James’ father rolls his eyes and brings the newspaper closer to his face.

“Why yes, how did you know that?”

“Unfortunately, I know all about it because I am all about it.”

James: “Uh, Sarah. Can…can I see you in the kitchen.”

Me: “Bugger off. I am talking to Rich and I will talk to Rich until I am finished talking to Rich.”

James and MIL: Panic-stricken looks as they know what comes next.

“Tell me about the egg donor. What is she like? DO you like her?”

“Oh, well we don’t know her. The whole thing was anonymous.”

“Why would you choose an anonymous donor? Don’t you think that is unfair to your daughter? Wouldn’t you ever want to meet the other half of your daughter?”

“Oh yeah! I would love to meet her. I mean she must be incredible. She must be drop dead gorgeous. Hell yes I would like to meet her, but we never can. We don’t even know her name.”

“What are you going to tell your daughter?”
“Well at first I was so into telling her all about how we had her. I was all, ‘Yeah I am into the truth.’ But honestly, I don’t know any more. I don’t know WHAT I am going to tell her.”

“How about the truth. It is her right to know who she is. You have no right to keep the truth of who she is from her. It is incredibly arrogant to think you can make decisions like that FOR her and without her consent.”

More wild gesticulations from the peanut gallery, but I ain’t stoppin’ now.

“But we don’t know anything. How are we going to explain it when we don’t even have a name? Maybe she never wants to be found.”

“Laws change, people change. Dna banks are set up as are registries which I am sure will flourish in the next 2o years due to all of these donations. Women change after they have children of their own. I did. She may long to know her genetic child as genetics are so much of who we are. So many adoptees want their records. They long or their original families. Their original families long for their lost members.”

“Oh but adoption is WAY different. It’s night and day. You can’t compare adoption with egg donation and surrogacy.”

“Yes actually I can. It IS different. Sure. I agree with you there. It is different for the parents because they have all set this up and paid for it. It is a transaction rather than having to woo the birth mother. The egg has been sold, the womb has been purchased. Yes, a lot different than a crisis pregnancy. But I’ll tell you the one person who it isn’t different to. The child. The child doesn’t know whose eyes are looking back at her in the mirror. She doesn’t know whose smile is on her face. She doesn’t have the benefit of that continued bond from the woman with whom she had her first real relationship – the surrogate. That can affect the way her brain is hard wired or the rest of her life (I have been reading again). It can cause her to have abandonment imprinted in her most primitive brain.”

I said a bunch of other things. I think he got the picture.

“So tell me. How is it different? How is it different to the child?”

“I don’t know.”

I made my point. I got up. I didn’t feel like talking to the happy Egg man anymore. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone anymore.

I could hear the apologetic chorus in the living room as soon as I walked out excusing my behaviour. I don’t care. I am not going to let people live with their heads in their arses anymore. They’ll get my opinion and then they can shove them back in again for all I care, but they are going to listen to me.

Fab new blog!

As soon as I remember how to add it to my links (computer challenged here), I will do so.

Children Have Rights

St. Patrick's Day

Was incredible. James' parents came all the way from Evanston just to make the day special for James, Sam and me. They are such wonderful and thoughtful people and I am so blessed to have them as part of my family. They knew travelling 2 hours with Sam was going to be a hassle and they said that they wanted to give us special memories of our own, in our own home, a little 2 bedroom flat.

James has a unique cultural mix. His Mom is Mexican and his dad is 100% Irish, born in Dublin. They call themselves the Carlos Murphys, which I think is too cute. Around Christmas, we get together and make tamales (I still can't get how to spread the masa on the husk, but I really try) and do Mexican things and St. Pat's day is huge, too. We make corned beef and cabbage, potatoes and soda bread. I am not old enough to drink the beer yet :) We basically faff around for the whole night after the cooking and eating is done, just enjoying the company. I am so happy that Sam will have this to look forward to every year as a celebration of her heritage.

But it is cool. It is cool and it is so incredibly warm. That's how I could describe his family - warm. It's really lovely how they all relate to one another and how all of them dote on and protect Kyle, the 7 year old little brother. I always wanted to grow up with siblings. Seeing them....it makes me just feel so warm. They are lucky to have each other. They have no idea how lucky they are.

Some new things

1. James and I got married. It was a necessary thing for me to stay in the country. Thing is that I was born to an American mother and a British father. I should have an inherent right to both countries. But because I was sold by my American mother and was bought by a British woman who, by the act of purchasing me, became my legal mother with all of the rights and privileges of ownership (I thought slavery was abolished in America years ago !) contained therein, I lost my right to American citizenship along with my first mum.

Adoption does so much more than remove a child from her natural mother. It removed my right to my heritage, my country, my natural relationship with my siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. It removed nature and replaced it with legal contract. Well, legal contracts don't mean shit to me. They make the natural, unnatural.

I don't so much believe in marriage. It is just a piece of paper that says we legally belong to each other and have all of the legal rights both implied and stated herein, blah, blah, blah. I guess the reason I don't like the concept of marriage is because it is the same concept as adoption. A legal contract for something that should be so natural. I do believe in the natural beauty and glory of love. The love I have for James and the love I have for our child. I don't need something fake and "legal" to force that love and make you bound to the other person like it did with my adoption. Why do we need a legal agreement to love each other? Thats what screwed up my life to begin with ! Anyway we got married and so now I call him my husband, just like my amum adopted me and called me her daughter.


2. I somehow acquired another sister. Yes, it's true. One just popped out of the woodwork like some bloody magical forest gnome. Can you imagine my surprise?

It happened on sunny morning when I decided to call first mummy, or as she calls herself, my "surrogate". As an aside, I was always confused about that word surrogate. According to the dictionary, it originally meant -

adjective

Definition:

substituting for somebody or something: taking the place of somebody or something else

noun (plural sur·ro·gates)

Definition:

1. somebody as substitute: somebody who acts as a replacement for somebody else

2. law estate-settling judge: a judge in some states who probates wills and settles estates


3. psychology substitute authority figure: a respected person who replaces a lost or nonexistent parent in somebody's unconscious, e.g. a teacher or older sibling

Only in the last 20 years have they added the "having a baby and selling it to handing it over to another couple" definition. When the pool of healthy white infants dried up because of Roe vs. Wade and more acceptance of single motherhood and they had to come up with some way to manufacture more white babies for the growing demand as infertility rates were skyrocketing (see I have been reading the antiadoption boards again because I have the lingo down now - I used to be so innocent and now they have tainted me - LOL !).

I got off track here. I was talking about my sister, the forest gnome.

I tried to contact one of them through myspace, but never got any return mails. Whatever. I don't give up that easily, especially when it took me months to work up to the contact.

So I call Mummy dearest (or shall I say my Surrogate Sheila - LOL !) and request my sisters' addresses. "Oh hi, Sarah. So nice to hear from you (yeah right). Let me talk to them first about giving out their addresses and I will get back to you."

Brilliant ! I need mummy's permission to have contact with my siblings. I am 19 and they are in their 20s, but we need the "adult" as the intermediary. Only in adoption ! At least she didn't ask for $300 for a "search" fee !

10 days pass. Wouldn't you say 10 days would be a long enough time for you to converse with your daughters about the possibility of sibling contact. I would say so. So I called again. "Oh hi, Sarah. I was just about to call you (yeah right).Here are the addresses."

She tells me the first address. Then the second. Then...."And Christie's address is..."

Um, who the fuck is Christie? I didn't say fuck, but I wanted to.

She
"Christie is my daughter."

Me
"But I thought I only had 2 sisters. I grew up thinking I had 2 sisters and a brother and then when I found you I learned of the other brother who was born after me. I thought I had 2 sisters."

She
"No," she said firmly, "I have 3 daughters."

Me (only in my head)
"No, you stupid cow. You have 4 daughters. What's the matter with you? Do I not have half of your genes like the others? Did you not grow me inside of you? What's the matter? As I lived inside you, did I not kick your liver swiftly enough or bounce off of your cervix hard enough? As I passed through you, did I not stretch out your vagina and rip your perineum thoroughly enough for you to notice that I was your daughter? And at the moment I was born, did I not cry out for you loud enough? Were my wails not heart-rendering enough or my pleas for you not convincing enough? What IS it that set me apart from the 3 other little girls that came before me? Was it the $10,000 in cash that you received from my parents that did it? Does money really scream louder than the plaintive, all-encompassing, desperate cry of a newborn for her mother?"

Me (only with my voice)
"Oh."

Happy Birthday, Samantha

Today, at 3:38 am, my little girl completed her first year on earth. Her first year since her cord was cut and my womb was no longer her shelter. Sam turned 1.

I can't believe it has been one year since she emerged from me, all red and squalling, so full of hope. She was the most beautiful creature ever to shine her light on this troubled mass of rock, water, tragedy and madness. She's the one human being who made the connection, who touched the two wires which created the spark. She bridged the formidable gap between my lost soul and all of humanity. I know now that I am a part of it all - this human race. Thank you, my precious girl. You gave me roots to this Earth.

I am so fortunate. I have been blessed beyond my wildest dreams. This experience of conception, pregnancy, birth, nursing and nurturing my own flesh and blood child is now and always will be the pinnacle of my life.

But there still is that freshly stinging sadness hanging heavy in the air. The sharp and acrid smell of the one longing that cannot be met.

With Sam comes a new realisation. It is the realisation of what my mother never had with me. But it goes far deeper than that. It's what I never had with her. And it hurts.

I want to have another child so badly that I can smell his sweet newborness everywhere. But I know that even if I have a hundred children and give them everything I never received from my natural mother, it still will not plug up that hole in my heart. Most babies with holes in their heart get an operation. They just gave me a new mother. A mother who I didn't know, didn't feel safe with, didn't trust. I spent 9 months building a relationship with the woman who was supposed to take me home and raise me and they give me to a bloody stranger. WTF??

Just because they couldn't see my heart hole in an x-ray doesn't mean it isn't there or it is just as debilitating.

I have to wonder why. Why people think it is a good thing to willy-nilly break the most sacred bond that nature could have ever created, do it with glee, and think that the child won't be affected.

Well, I am. We are. When will you start to listen to us? For once, can you see - IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU AND WHAT YOU WANT!

No, I am not playing the victim, so fuck you. I am trying to put it back together again, but I am not such a good surgeon. I would probably need some motherly love to assist me or at least give me some putty to slap on the bloody thing.

I suppose I should go to bed now.

My Real Mother

I found this at Orogins Canada but first saw it on an adoptees blog

My Real Mother
From: Elephantgirl Sent: 4/2/2005 11:28 AM

My real mother gave me my first home. I lived within her for 9 months.

My real mother gave me a name. My second mother changed it.

My real mother gave me a birthday.

My real mother is the one who first held me. I wish I could have given her a tighter grip.

My real mother gave me my brown hair and brown eyes and the dimples that I've been complimented on all of my life.

My real mother gave me my curly hair. You know I spent an hour everyday straightening it. I hated my curls with a passion and since I met her, I like my curls!

My real mother gave me my perfect 32 Bs, hmmmm will I get those back after I have my baby??

My real mother gave me the blood that runs through my body.

My real mother gave me my laugh.

My real mother gave me the ability to laugh.

My real mother gave me the ability to love.

My real mother gave me life.

My real mother couldn't be there for games and events. She wasn't given the chance.

My real mother cried for me as my second mother wrote out a check for my purchase. I've often wished that I came with a sales receipt. Surely she would have wanted a refund when I came home late, or when I had trouble with math, failed a test, threw a fit, said the wrong thing, or moved out to have my own life.

My real mother was unable to keep me. It came down to owning a home, being married (and we all know how much THAT means!) and having a bank account. My second mother "won".

Samantha

Took her first step this morning!!!!!

I am so happy and so sad at the same time. My baby is growing up. She will be one in 5 and a half weeks.

Some part of me wishes she would stay little forever. I don't know why. So I can nurture her in the ways that I never truly got from amum, I suspect. I don't know...

I get this feeling that amum really didn't know what to do with me or...there wasn't that bond. You know that flesh and blood, primal, primitive, she-came-from-me thing going on. I know she loved me. No doubt about that. But it wasn't....couldn't be...like I love and know and belong to Sam.

That's it. Sam and I belong to each other. That's what I was missing. I never really belonged. But we do. We Belong.

Woohoo! Check out this comment!

http://umbliclychallenged.blogspot.com/2006/03/fantasising-as-youngster.html

Gotta love this. What a joke! The typical "Baby Dump" shit...lol. And Anonymous (too chicken shit to post their name) to boot!

Probably one of those "Intended Parents" who gladly shelled out their "lifesavings" to pretend that they really had a child together when they actually bought another woman's child to call the child their "own". Get over yourselves. Yes, wonderful parents you will make.

You need to get over this and move on. Many people come from broken homes and tragic upbringings. Many children are truly unwanted. You on the other hand, have parents who wanted you SO badly that they were willing to do just about anything to get you. Your birth mother was a caring generous person who was willing to give of herself to make other people blissfully happy. So many children in this world are dumped on doorways, and you whine about not having the perfect life? Well you should stop comparing what you have to what others have, stop hurting the people who adore you with your pathetic attitude, and start looking at what you DO have instead of what you don't.




How's the weather up there in Winnipeg, "Anonymous"? And seriosuly, you spent 15 hours on my web page only to write something like this? How sad and pathetic you are. I would have come up with something much better than all of this cliche boring rubbish.

My heart hurts

I should not google. It does me no good whatsoever to know that places like this exist or people would have these attitudes toward trading human beings. My heart just hurts. It HURTS :`(

Scary Stuff

There is even a Classified section. Reading it horrifies me. It frightens me.

So many "IPS" with sad stories and the overwhelming entitlement in their minds to someone else's child. And then, well the are no bloody words for this -

"don't drink healthy std and drug free wanting to surrogate for a couple have pictures of my youngest baby he is a healthy baby boy 4yrs old now. I'm still fetile as a turtle and can have more children and would like to be your surrogate mother all I'm asking for in trade is a mobile home camper, and medical expenses paid and $200 a month for carrying the child there is a reason why I'm doing it so I can get my ministry up and going and I have no other way to come up with the resources. you help me I'll help you. I'm good on my word and you must pay for my plane or buss ticket to where you are "

What the....? Your baby for a fucking trailer?!?!

My head hurts too!

A Grief not allowed

I am very sad today, with a grief that is not talked about. It is not allowed. Because I had two loving parents. I am not granted asylum. I am not allowed reprieve. Well...what the fuck are you complainin' about ?? You got everything you wanted. You had so many presents at Christmas and your birthday that it was supposed to buy your happiness. You were supposed to forget about your mother. You had everything. Why would you want more? WE GAVE YOU EVERYTHING.

I had everything....everything but my mother. You just can't fix that. Sorry.


Born with the moon in cancer
Choose her a name she will answer to
Call her green and the winters cannot fade her
Call her green for the children whove made her
Little green, be a gypsy dancer

He went to california
Hearing that everythings warmer there
So you write him a letter and say, her eyes are blue.
He sends you a poem and shes lost to you
Little green, hes a non-conformer

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
Therell be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little green
Like the nights when the northern lights perform
Therell be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes therell be sorrow

Child with a child pretending
Weary of lies you are sending home
So you sign all the papers in the family name
Youre sad and youre sorry, but youre not ashamed
Little green, have a happy ending

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
Therell be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little green
Like the nights when the northern lights perform
Therell be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes therell be sorrow

I am not dead!

I just haven't had computer access over here in a long time !!

So much has happened. I don't even know where to begin. I suppose I will need to start tomorrow because Sam just woke (right this second after I began to type)and I am sure nappies will need to be exchanged and boobs will need to come out !!

On Surrogacy and the Primal Wound

Just one more thought before I go. I have been feeling extra indignant today and I just wanted to get it on paper. Rather, on cyber paper.

I have been reading the Primal Wound. My friend (exsurrogate mum)lent me quite a few books through the post and this was one of them. It has been one of the most difficult books I have ever read. I find myself reading a chapter, crying, getting angry, cursing God and the arseholes that put me in this position, crying some more, throwing the book in the rubbish bin, calming down, going to sleep, picking it out of the rubbish bin the next morning and reading the same chapter again. This poor book has had everything from baked potatoe skins to chicken bits to dirty nappies on it. I guess the stains and odours lend to its unique character.

The second go of the chapter is usually the most helpful because then I have gotten over myself and really can hear what it is saying. Course I still react emotionally, but by that time the anger and blame towards others has subsided so then the self reflection and discovery can begin. Acceptance.

I hear many of the people who are pro surrogacy and adoption (usually the people who want other peoples babies)say how the Primal Wound is a cop out and that people used it as a crutch. Fuck's sake !! I am not using it as a bleeding crutch !! I am using it as a tool for self-discovery, self-understanding and self-healing. If you cannot understand what and why you do the things you do and feel the things you feel, how in the bloody hell are you supposed to fix them ??

Sometimes I wonder if I don't belong on another planet. Honestly. I don't even think I belong here with some of the stupidity I hear on a daily basis. People seem to be so quick to defend the Sacred Cow of Adoption that we, the children, become its sacrificial lamb. Some have their heads so far up their arse that they have forgotten what anything looks like besides their own lower GI tract. And their own shit.

Crikey, let me first try to understand what it is I am feeling before you tell me I am playing the Victim for feeling it !! Can I please just read the book in with some semblance of peace and dried potatoe skins without anyone jumping down my throat?

What is it about the Primal Wound book that knocks everyone off their trolley? Does the truth hurt?

This bullshit about not getting a Primal Wound because I was from surrogacy and everything was "intended". What a stupid concept. I'll not feel abandoned because I have my real father ( AS IF he had anything to do with me for my first 9 months while
I was living inside my mum). There is no loss because I was intentionally made this way, happily, and out of love, and I better goddamned well be happy about it too. Or else !! No pudding for you !!

Well, let's see now. It has been shown that what the mother feels while pregnant get passed on to the child by hormones and emotions. My mother spent the entire pregnancy "not bonding" with me because I was in her head some other woman's child. Some other woman clear across the bleeding globe and had no genetic or gestational or emotional or spiritual connection with me at all !! Yes of course. THAT makes sense. She spent the entire pregnancy pretending she was just a carrier and not my mother. Well, that's a lovely way to start off then ! I spent the first 9 months being "gestated" by an incubator with legs.

No, you have that wrong. Surrogacy didn't make me feel better because I was made to order. It added just more dysfunctional, mutated, two headed fish into the kettle.

Surrogacy did not act as some sort of feel-good prophylactic for adoptee abandonment issues like you thought it would.

No, Surrogacy just rubbed the salt into my Primal Wound.

Once again, Bang On!

This woman seems just to know how I am feeling and then writes about it ! This is a must read !

I am so fed up with the Happy Jack's of the world telling me I should be grateful.

Thank you, Joy !

Leaving !

We are leaving Friday to go back to the UK and file my papers so I can stay here in America. James' parents are paying for the whole thing. They are such lovely people and I am forever grateful for them doing this. They want their family together and will do anything to do that. Imagine that. Most people these days are trying to wrench families apart so they can take their children and raise them AS IF born to them - whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.

We will be gone for a week, but it was originally supposed to be for a fortnight as we were to go to Cheltenham to visit B and H. But I am not going to Bumfuck Cheltenham. You couldn't pay me to go there - I hate it !! They can come to London if they want to see me. Look what they have in the middle of the shopping center (see the photo above) !! Why would anyone glorify a drug addict who beat his women, got several girls pregnant and left them to fend for themselves and some of the girls had to give the babies up for adoption !! Look what I found trying to find a picture of this stupid bust.

Dawn Molloy interview
Here she describes here pain of losing her child.
Q: What are your thoughts on adoption by both your own experience and in general?

DAWN: Adoption is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. When John was born, single women were not allowed to keep their children, often unless they faced complete rejection by their parents and friends. I was not told about alternatives, as there were none, such as temporary government help for young mothers. I was only told I could not provide for my own son and he deserved better than me. I was forced by society and my parents to relinquish him. I regret every day that I have lost with John. My heart had a huge hole in it for many years until we met again. The world seems to focus on the adoptive parents to the exclusion of the first mother. No one seemed to care that I suffered a terrible trauma that has affected my entire life.


They want to glorify this man who abandoned his children. I hate that town.

Anyway, I didn't want to make the whole post about old Omlette Head here.

We are staying with James' parents in Evanston, IL until we leave as it is only 20 minutes from the airport. I love the whole family. They are so warm and welcoming. Everything just seems as if it "fits" here.

James is the oldest of four. He has 2 sisters aged 16 and 13 and then there is the little one, Kyle, aged 6. His parents are so young !! They are only 43 and 44 years old and they relate so well to the children being the ages that they are.

The mum gave birth to all of them and you can tell. You can see her gentle smile and warm brown eyes in all of them. It so different...seeing a natural family like this. I guess I just never knew what was normal being raised an only child with a mother I had no genetic or gestational connection with. It's hard not to be jealous of their connections to one another, but it is so beautiful that I could not possibly be envious. She relates to them differently. Oh, I can't find the words. The way she looks at them, interacts with them, loves them...its as if she is "in" them rather than just "around" them. I can't adequately describe it as it is so emotional rather than verbal.

I guess the bond is so sacred and magical that rather than trying to understand and describe, it is better left to be a mystery. Like God.

My hunny

I found this piccy in the files today. It is of James before I fell pregnant with Sam. In fact, I this was the holiday when Sam was made, but that is probably too much info for you.

He looks a little rough, but he cleans up well. He is so handsome in my eyes. He is beautiful.

Harry says he looks like a young Charles Manson without the forehead tattoo. Harry can be such a bloody arsehole sometimes. He's always trying to take the piss out of James and James takes it so well because he is a lovely person on every level. And its because he has respect for me, James does. He lets me scold Harry rather than doing it himself. Betty wouldn't dream of saying something so rude. Betty does have some decorum and respect for me. Harry can be such a right prat.

Anyway, this lovely girl with a sweet tot took our beach piccies. She said we were a sweet couple and so lucky to have found each other. She was right !! <3 <3

Surrogacy: Not for the meek at heart

And not for the weak in stomach, because I nearly vomited when I read this article. Something in my stomach just twisted up so severely and set off a sadness in me so deep that I actually felt hopeless. Why? Why would someone be so selfish to not just take some mother's child and replace her with a substitute mother, but to take a child and replace her with no mother at all?

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2269752&page=1

This has got to be one of the most disturbing things I have read in some time now. I
must stop googling.

I cannot fathom what I read about artificial reproduction and how people will just "sever the mother-child bond as casually as they would an earthworm" (I read that elsewhere and am not sure that is verbatim, but you get the jist of it anyway).

Right now I have to change Sam's diaper, but will be back shortly to write about some other disturbing things I've read by googling. Somebody needs to block that page from my computer. I don't think I have ever seen as much mental sickness and twisted thinking about babies and reproduction until I learned how to google.

Oh damnit !! The link doesn't come up and I've forgotten how to do this. Must be the little button up there with the earth and the link of a chain. Let's see if I am smart enough to put two and two together now.
Not for the meek of heart

Alright, its 2 days later, but I was busy !! Apparently I can still edit my comments into this date's entry, so I will.

I am reading this article again because I am a glutton for pushiment and what is even more disturbing than the concept of making a baby to order and using a woman to be their paid broodmare (and who cares about the baby? evidently no one does or else this would never even take place)is how old these men are. These are crusty old bastards who have no business starting families at age 48 or 51. That's crazy !! I maybe could understand if they had a wife in her thirties or something and had a baby the natural way. At least the child's mum would be normal age. But this --this is insane.

My amum was 47 and dad was 48 when I was born. That's about 10 years too old on the top end of acceptable age. I am not trying to be horrible. I really truly don't want to sound like such an arsehole. But....it is how I feel !! I'll not lie or soften things for anyone's sake. I mean, in my eyes, 47 and 48 is still quite young, but it is just too old to have children and I will explain myself a bit later.

As I child, I was always teased about my older parents. When I was 11 or 12, I just started telling people that my real parents died in a car accident and these people were my grandfather and step-grandmother. They are naturally the age my grandparents would be !!

I felt very guilty about that and still do sometimes, but it kept me from all of the static the other kids would give me. I love my parents. They were good to me, but that doesn't erase what it did to me. And even though they were and still are very spry for their ages, there is no way you can make a 53 year old mother of a 6 year old into a 33 year old mother of a 6 year old. The energy level, the playfulness, it just isn't there any more. They tired easier. They looked tired easier. My friends' parents.....well they were just different. They were young.

There is a reason why your fertility wanes when you hit your mid thirties and practically disappears in your early forties. There are people who have had children naturally up to age 47, but that is truly rare. Usually around 42-43, you just aren't going to have children naturally anymore and that is a good thing ! Mother nature is wise and you should think twice before crossing her.

Childbearing and rearing should be left to the young. This is what nature has intended and I feel we should leave that as it is.

But these old geezers with the little girls, can you imagine?

"Where is your mummy, little girl?"
"I don't have a mummy, sir. I only have this mummy-daddy person."
"What do you mean you don't have a mummy? Did she pass?"
"No, I never had a mummy to begin with."
"Oh. How very sad. Did she die in childbirth."
"No, sir. I just never had a mummy."
Very confused look

Can you imagine ? Now you know why I feel like such a freak sometimes.

Removes the mystery, but not the grief

Most importantly, experts say, biological and adoptive parents must remember that open adoption is about meeting the needs of children, not adults. Openness does not simply wipe away the feelings of grief, fear, or insecurity that can swirl around an adoptive placement.
"It removes the mystery, but it doesn't remove the grief," said Claude Riedel, a psychologist and family therapist who co-directs the Adoptive Family Counseling Center in Minnesota. "The reality is that, at certain stages, it's normal to have questions: why did you choose not to parent me, not to keep me? And there may be complexities: have you kept your other children, but not me?"

See? This is normal of me to question these things and to feel grief and loss. Why does everyone still think that if the child grows up knowing her mother, visiting her mother and sibs, that everything is wonderful and she will feel no loss? I cannot tell you how many e-mails I have received saying "well surrogacy is different because we are in the children's lives and they know we did this from love, blah, blah, blah." Just because you tell someone that she is a "gift" and that her real mum did this out of "love" and she was so very wanted (which is precisely what they told me!) that I am just going to be fine with it?

My real mum created me to be given away. My parents had me made to order, not made from love. She (real mum) may not have sold me, per se, but she sold her parental rights. She gave me up without ever even having me. Talk until you are blue in the damn face about how I was wanted and loved and how I was given as a gift blah blah blah. It doesn't matter because, guess what Your words tell me "Loved and wanted" your actions tell me "abandoned and traded". ? Actions speak louder than words.

I had another important thought, but Sam's up from her nap.

Alright then we've Sam settled and I remembered what it was I wanted to say about gifts. Are children gifts? Yes, I believe they are, but they are gifts only to be given by God. My daughter came to me as the most precious gift of life to this earth and to her father and me. She is God's gift to us and only us because we created her. It was OUR act of love that brought her here. She is OUR gift. If I was supposed to be a gift to Betty and my father then I would have been bloody well put into Betty's uterus by an act of love and made with her eggs and dad's sperm. This "coming through another woman for us" crap is the biggest pile of horseshit rhetoric I have ever heard in my life. If that's so, then God fucked up, didn't he. I was not aware that Supreme Beings stuffed up so.

I was given to my real mum as a gift from God. My father may have squeezed his aubergine into a cup to facilitate this so there was no love involved here, but my mother was still given the gift of me to carry and to love and then to be my mother as God had intended. She, however, felt the need to re-gift me to Betty. It's like she took one look at me and said, "Oh. Perhaps Betty would like this." So she wraps me up like some unwanted shower gift of an ugly patterned punch bowl set and brings me to the next wedding she's invited to. There she presents me as if I was the end all and be all of grand gifts, when in reality, I am just a used gift. An ugly punch bowl that clashed with her china. An cast off object re-wrapped and re-gifted. A Used Gift. Oh no I am sorry. I believe the politcally correct term would be "pre-owned". A Pre-owned gift.

Doesn't make me feel so special to be your gift. In fact, it makes me feel more like a reject than anything. It doesn't matter how much Betty wanted me. Sheila "un" wanted me first and that hurt worse than anything has ever ir ever will hurt me again.

Children are only gifts from God to the people whose womb and eggs and sperm formed us. It is none of your damn business to be re-gifting us to other people!

I've received something else telling me all about the woman's child being "mentally conceived" by the Intended Parents (what a term !!)and born not from the surrogate, but from the Intended Parents love.

Ok, so if you had a "Mental Conception", that must mean that you also had a pretty earth shattering "Mind Fuck". Unless your husband imagined himself tossing off into the surrogate's ear in which case we would have "Mental Masturbation" and an "Intellectual Insemination". What a silly, silly notion. Fine, then I am going to have a mental conception of a million dollars (pounds would be better, but this is America after all) that grew out of my BF and my love for a better life for our daughter. I will call Citibank right now to tell them of this and of our inalienable right to some other persons money. Yes, that should do it. We mentally conceived a bloody fortune !!

Donated Generation

I am a bit slow on putting up new links in the links section because I don't know how to do it ! I wish there were more of a user friendly way to these blogs for computer dunces like me. Yes, I have been shown numerous times, but it still looks like Greek writings to me !! I have to rely on other people to do things for me, and the other people are absent right now. So until my linker-putter-upper comes back from hols, I am stuffed. I thought this was too good to miss, this Donated Generation blog from a Scientist from Oz. There is one post called Gratitude and Anger:


The notion that we are ungratefull for our existence is a bizarre notion in that even though donor conception is the reason we are how we are, it should have no bearing on our ability to have thoughts and feelings on the circumstances and results of the practice. It is an easy arguement to make for those who do not wish to think too deeply about all the issues involved. These people are asking us to accept a life debt for our existence when no-one else is burdened with such a debt. So don't say we are ungratefull as this should never enter into it.

The anger that we often express is rarely directed at certain individuals but rather the practice and the outcomes which were clearly overlooked in the pursuit of altruism and the desire or need to have offspring. While I can clearly understand the desire to have ones own children being a father myself, many seem to believe that it is a right of which it should never be.

If donors or recipients do not like what many of us are expressing then perhaps they should look at what they are doing more closely. If there are increasing numbers of people saying that there is something wrong with the practice then perhaps maybe there IS something wrong with the practice. I apolgise if this steps on peoples dreams of altruism and family bliss, but don't let your own perspective blind you to the perspective of those that should really know - the offspring. We are not doing this for some sort of perverted fun but because we have had our basic human rights violated.

Here's the blog -

Donated Generation

I know that I have just been copy and pasting (I am so happy to know how to do it know !!) and putting up links instead of writing my own thoughts and that does sort of bother me, but at the same time I am so busy with Samantha (5 months old tomorrow, can you believe ?!?) that writing time is hard to find. She is growth spurting to so the titties are working overtime. It is hard enough to type with the one hand only, but breastfeed and type is nearly impossible. So soon I will have up some more of my own thoughts <3 XXX

Detached

My friend sent me a used book of hers called the Ethics of Commercial Surrogacy by Scott B. Rae. In it, she has but a very few areas of highlighted text. This is one of them and it about says it all, does it not?

"In screening women to select the most ideal surrogates, one looks for the woman’s ability to give up readily the child she is carrying. Normally, the less attached the surrogate is to the child, the more easily the arrangement is completed. This is hardly the ideal setting for a pregnancy. Surrogacy sanctions female detachment from the child in the womb, and fails to recognize that pregnancy is not an organically neutral experience, but a time of bonding to the developing child.

Not only are women separating personal responsibility from the ability to create life, and isolating their identities from their reproductive capacities, but surrogacy is turning a vice into a virtue. Detachment from the child the woman is carrying (and in many cases, a child to whom she has made a genetic contribution) would be discouraged in a normal pregnancy, but is encouraged in surrogacy. Further, women who would tend to attach to the child are screened out and disqualified from being surrogates.

Should surrogacy be widely practiced, Daniel Callahan from the Hastings center described what one of the results would be: “We will be forced to cultivate the services of women with the hardly desirable trait of being willing to gestate and then give up their own children, especially if paid enough to do so. There would still be the need to find women with the capacity to dissociate and distance themselves from their own child. This is not a psychological trait we should want to foster, even in the name of altruism.”

First contact with someone like me

Thanks to warrior woman's blog, I was brought to a page written in 2002 by a son of a surrogate. I've just received an e-mail from him and would like to share (I have his permissions).

Dear Sarah,

Thanks so much!!!!! You know i really don't check this e mail but once every couple of months so msn shut it down on me. Then i have to go and reinstate everything and i would lose any e mails that people had sent me or they would bouce back saying that it wasn't a valid address. I'm really glad that i checked it and found you here!

I live in Boston now with my partner Jason. I have one more year until my degree in Political science. What i'm going to do with that degree i don't know yet. I'd love to do an internship.

I'm glad that you found my web page. It's been up for four years now because i wrote it when i was 17. It pissed off alot of people and i caught hell when i went to smo. Don't go to smo, girl. The people there are really bat shit and they will call you all sorts of names just because you don't love surrogacy. Thing is Sarah, i've given up the fight. Not that I don't care anymore, just that people don't listen and they don't care about anyone but themselves. I might as well be talking to the wall. It hurts, Sarah. It hurts so bad that i just don't want to do it anymore.

I am fully reunited with all of my real mom's family and they have accepted me completely just like i never left. But the fact is that i did leave and was gone for 17 years. You never can get it back and it is something i have to deal with every day. It hurts really really bad. All the time that you can't get back. I am still in the grief proccess about that.

I am so so sorry about your mom. I think she is just way in denial and hopefully for your sake she'll realize you are her child and you are so lovable too. I don't have much contact with my dad and adoptive mother anymore only because of the shit they were pulling when i reunited with my other family. They acted like a coupla children and i just don't have any respect for that or the way they were treating me. I gave up on them too. I don't need guilt trips and bullshit. Course then they cut me off for the college funds but i don't give two shits about it because me and Jason do fine without them. Oh yah, my real mom accepted me being gay without a blink of an eye. The other set are still pissed about me being queer and are blaming my real mom's genes for it. What a coupla assholes, yanno?

Anyway i read your blog and love it. Girl, you rock! I'll be a regualr follower from now on. I loved the post on crazymaking because i can relate so much on that. There was a post i had made in respose to another post on smo made to me by some gay guy named Brian (how ironic!!!) telling me i was an ingrate and all that. He took a baby from her mother so he had to justify himself to me and all. It made me hella pissed so i responded to me but at that point could not respond to him because i couldn't remember the pass i used for the account so i responded to him on a controversial surrogate mother board that i knew they all read because they were always bitching about it. Took me a while because it was way back in the posts (i wrote it 3 years ago1!!) but i found the post and i think you'll like it. Here goes........

my post from 2003


Yes there are others like us out there and i can hook you up if you want. We have to stick together so plz let's keep in touch. Your such a fighter. Keep it up, girl. Maybe you can change people.

Luv, Brian

Open Adoption the failed experiment

The Open Adoption Experiment


A big thank you to a special person who is helping me with photos and to make my blog look nice ! I am so bad with computers that I hadn't a clue.

This link was sent to me via email by another adopted person in response to me saying that I felt like some sort of social experiment being a surrogate child. It's about open adoption and how it effected the child of an open adoption. I hear so much about these open adoptions being so much better for the children, which they may or may not be but the very same feelings are still there as if it were totally anonymous.I was never lied to. I always knew where I came from. I had pictures. I was told that I was a gift (I am going to write another post about being called a gift because I hate that !!) That never stopped me from the pain. It never stopped me from wondering why my surogate mum gave me away or the hurt that it caused. It never stopped me from longing for my mum and my brothers and sisters. It never stopped anything.

They won't let me put in the link cos it screws up the page. It is at Anti-adoption insights at the msn groups and the post was made by someone named pinkbubbler.

Edited - Ok, someone showed me how to put the link in properly without screwing things around on the page. Brill

Open Adoption; the failed Experiment

Open Adoption, the failed experiment

I am going to take away the full text as this makes things a bit over loaded.

OK, must edit once again as that link isn't working anymore !! I hate this when people change things around on me. As in "Who moved my cheese" Found another link to it.
Open Adoption; the failed Experiment

Mother's Day journal entry

I found this at adoption.com under the user name SweetnStuff. Carly, I hope you don't mind me posting this here, but it moved me so much. It is exactly the same way I feel.

Sarahxxxx

# 3Mother's Day

Date Posted: 05-13-2006 at 11:00 PM

17 years ago, I was enrolled into a club that I would rather not have joined. This is a huge club. There are members of this club everywhere but you don’t ever seem to meet them. You don’t recognize them at the mall or at parties.

There is no secret password or handshake. There is no confirmation or certification. This is a lifetime membership without possibility of graduating or moving on. The biggest test would be that of courage.

I was to live my life without my mother being a part of it.

I was to live without my mother but the oddest thing of all is that the world kept moving. Unlike an earthquake, tsunami, wild fire or hurricanes, in which everybody stands up ready to protect or take preventative action, I was sentenced to my own personal natural disaster 17 years ago, but nobody seemed to notice. I have lived my life without my mother being a part of it. I was adopted.

I was walking around the mall today and everywhere I went I saw these signs that said, “Don’t Forget Mom on Mother’s Day.” Forget? Some guy standing outside of American Eagle with flowers asked me if I’d picked up anything for my mom. Sometimes a question like that makes me cry inside. Never out loud, because when you are adopted and living without your mom, somehow it seems ungrateful to express your loss. I told him that my mom was dead. At least if I ended up crying, he would understand it.

Summer, spring and winter come and go, every year it is always the same. I live my life without my mother being a part of it.

Open house at school was this week. This girl Shelly gave a special speech in which she honored mothers. Something she said struck a chord of truth within my soul, she said: “We honor and thank the woman who gave us life. No one can ever take the place of a mother. At every turn, she is there to love, educate, comfort and strengthen us.” I looked over at my adoptive mother and wondered what was in her thoughts at that moment. I thought to myself that Shelly was so right. Nobody can take her place. I felt truly ashamed of myself for these thoughts. Growing up without her has caused me to miss out on a lot of things. Life lessons, someone to look like…….someone to look up to. Someone like me. Often times, daughters will learn about themselves through the example of their mother. My friend Jenny walks, talks and acts just like her mother. The other day I was at Jen’s place and found myself awestruck when I realized that her mother laughs exactly like she does. In 9th grade, Amber’s mom died. After the funeral, I listened to her express herself. I wanted to tell her how I deeply I could relate. But again I felt ashamed of my feelings. After all, I had two mothers, and one for sure wasn’t dead. The other one probably wasn’t either. But I felt like she was. I have a tight circle of girlfriends that I’ve had since elementary school. Yet, despite promises about how we would be friends forever, I feel uncomforted. Despite our declarations to never separate, I feel alone. Despite the fact that we call each other each night to discuss what we will wear the next day, I feel different.

Mother’s Day is here and the signs in the mall just keep reminding me not to forget my mother on her day. As if it were possible

"Broken Little Heart"
She disappeared without a trace,
Two things she left behind:
A broken heart and someone in her place,
but it is her that I want to find.
Where is she?
no this can’t be real,
there was no note and no goodbye
Can a broken heart ever heal?
Sadness surrounds this person called mother,
And a broken little heart can no longer cry.
The pain can’t be understood by any other
The only question is “why?”
Even though I won’t see you, Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Wanting to hear from Surrogacy mums

James scolded me for having my surname up here so I had to erase it and put up the first letter only. Then he started on the piccies being up, but he can bugger off. the piccies stay because I don't see how this is going to harm anyone.

I would like to have some links to surrogacy mum blogs too please. I'd like to read some of their thoughts as well but I should like to be able to keep my food in my stomach whilst doing it, so real feelings please. Did any of you love the children you gave away?

Once Removed

Once Removed by Marcy Axness

Once Removed

Carried by a mother who saw me as a "gift" she was making for a nice, infertile couple. My first mother didn't so much reject me as much as simply fail to claim me as a significant part of her own life, even during her pregnancy. I suffered from premature relinquishment, since she let me go once removed without ever really having me.

I don't know how to explain this, but I read her words and cannot help but to think about how first of all, we see things so similarly, and secondly, how we think of adoption in very primal, serpentine terms. Perhaps it is our memory of being inside our mothers. The snake-like umbilical cord which was our connection to our mothers. You know I have an issue with my navel. It was our entire existence. When our mothers were our whole worlds and when we were their whole world, too. Do you know what I mean?

It is so basic and primal. I can so relate. I truly think we have memories before birth.

Crazymaking

Joy, you put that rather well. Crazymaking.

I will share with you all in an attempt to educate what makes me crazy.

You want me to agree with what you do so that you can feel justified for having done it and continuing to do it. But you see, I’ve already spent my entire life living for other people and I’ll not allow myself to be used by total strangers to make them feel better about their choices. I’ve spent my days being used for the adults' needs and having my needs put behind and away because they were not as important. I’ve spent my life being expected to live as a person I am not, the person who my amum wanted me to be. She wanted me to be “her” daughter and to have all of “her” interests and traits. But I am not just “her” daughter, I am my bmother’s daughter, too, however I was not allowed that. She was not allowed to exist in my world and in my heart because I was being treated as if I was born to amum. I was not born to her. I had another mother before she "got" me.

And now I am not allowed to speak and have feelings because it threatens the fantasies you've built or it shakes the foundation upon which the lies you were told and want to believe was built because it makes you feel good about the loveliness of adoption and eternally grateful (lest we not forget happy!) adoptee. I can understand how one could become so adamant about one’s beliefs when they are threatened, but I cannot understand how you can come here, into my blog, and scold and criticise me for having feelings as an adoptee (surrogate's child)! It is ridiculous and it makes you look most ridiculous, too, so please stop it.

This reminds me of the very large adoption forums in which I post (adoption.com where I am user I.D. SarahandSam) where the amums and sometimes even the bmums scurry around the adoptee forums, making sure they don’t miss a single ungrateful (spoilt brat) adoptee post, telling them all how they shouldn’t feel the way they do or how much they love (cherish, desperately want, adore, drool over, spoil, etc., etc., ad nauseum) their own personally adopted child so we should never feel as if we were abandoned. To me, they just look silly – very silly. It is quite obvious really that all they are doing is trying to soothe themselves and they are using the adoptees and their own personal spaces to do it (much like was done here twice already - once by an egg receipient mum and next by a surrogacy mum although one surrogate mum was much more respectful than the other).

As I have said many times before and will say again, it does not matter how or why or for what outstandingly noble reason we were given away, back, forward or bloody sideways by our natural mums, it is still perceived by most as abandonment and there is a deep and unrelenting loss. Being desperately wanted by a stranger does not take away what we lost when we were taken from our original mothers. Why this is, I cannot explain. I wish I could and then I wish I could wish it away. But alas, I cannot. It is like a phobia. The most horrid feelings in the world are present and quite rooted in something you have no conscious memory of nor can you rationalise. It is very much like that. Would you tell someone who has a deep and unnatural fear of water that they should just get over it and then up and toss them in the ocean? That's what it feel like someone did to me.

So please do not in one breath tell me how I should feel about my own personal experiences and then in the next tell me that you are sorry. You are not sorry about how I feel, you are only sorry about how I make you feel. Also, please do not tell me that you hope I find peace with my situation. In order to find peace, I must be heard and acknowledged. Not necessarily agreed with, but heard and not be told I am a naughty child. You do not allow for that. You only allow for what makes you feel good and righteous, so then there really isn't any peace for me.


I don’t like being you amums' (surrogacy/egg donor mums') emotional nappy. The one you piss and shit all over and then in turn I am supposed to soak it all up just to keep you dry and happy. Bugger that. And since we are at it, Bugger you. The whole lot of you.

Photos and Sisters

I found a photo of James and I on the computer and included it in the profile. It is a real pain because I do not have a digi camera nor a scanner so that I may include pictures of my pride and joy, Samantha. We are a little tight with money so we cannot buy something like this right now as I need to go back to the UK in order to arrange my papers.

A friend of mine (yes I have friends sillies) has perused some place called My Space and she claims she found my sister and sent me the address !! I didn't know of all these places on the internet, but evidently they are all over the place. So I will check this out and see if I cannot find the other sister and brother. I have their names and Janie told me all I had to do was google the names and there they are.

Back to my Sister. She looks a hell of a lot like me, actually. It was so exhilirating and yet at the same time so primally comforting laying eyes on her image for the first time. It was as if I felt connected to the Universal Web of humanity whereas previously I felt like I was egg hatched. I grew up with my mother's photos, but to see a sibling...oh my. A real life sister !! I have a sister !! Well actually I have 2 sisters and 2 brothers.

And then came the rush of pain. The wretched, twisting in my stomach. Loss. 19 years without her. And she doesn't even know my name, my daughter's name. She knows nothing of me. And we are sisters.

There is something so basically wrong about it that I cannot even find the words.

All my life I said I was an only child when I knew, I KNEW, I was not. But I sat there over this big ocean......alone. Lonely. And I knew where I was supposed to be. I think that hurt the worst.

I find it so difficult to contact her, although everything in me wants to. Did my mother even tell her about me? She is only 2 years older, so I don't suppose she remembers me growing inside my mother. Or does she ?

Does she ?

New Links!

James taught me how to manage the links because I am terribly slow with computers. I still don't think I have it, but at least someone here knows how to do it !!

I have been pouring over these blogs and can finally say that someone gets it !! Someone feels like I do !! Thank you so much !!

Money or lack there of

Why does it always come down to money then ??

So I am in the process of getting myself all legalised and so forth and what a pain in the arse this is !! Try to do things the right way and get more rubbish dumped on you than a land fill. The Mexican immigrants who come here illegally get all the government benefits while we have to pay the hospital for the birth. I am not down on Mexican people because my daughter is Mexican, but still.

Thank God that James has a good job. He was accepted as a pipefitter apprentice, but it still doesn't seem to be enough when all is said and done. It is enough to support us and make ends meet, but there doesn't seem to be much more to put away for a house purchase. Then James tells me I can get a job if I was unhappy. I told him to bugger off. Child care is more than I would make and I will never ever leave Samantha like that. I want to spend every waking hour being with her and being a mummy. I am quite keen to go back to school when Sam is in school. Everyone tells me to be a writer or journalist, so we shall see. I really fancy the arts, but at the same time I fancy money so arts would not be logical.

Oh my god...

"he's my father who agreed with my parents to be radically disconnected from my life"

That was a comment left for me. Oh gosh...she was my mother who agreed with my parents to be radically disconnected from my life as well. Thank you for those words. They are so painfully true, but thank you for putting it into words for me....(tears). I can take that and go on with it.

Up with Sam and a mess

Maybe it is the lack of sleep that is doing this to me, maybe it is my young daughter blossoming into a little person with a personality, but I cannot stop thinking of my mother today and being very, very sad. It is mother's day in 2 weeks over here in the US (In the UK mum's day is in March) and I am getting bombarded with mother this and mother that. Oh yes. But she isn't my mother so she says. I forgot. She certainly did.

I want to meet her. She owes me some answers and I have a right to the siblings that were denied to me all these years. Fuck the whole lot of them. They are going to have to deal with me because you don't just have a child and be on your merrie way. It just doesn't work like that!

Mummyhood

I have been so busy busy busy with Samantha. She is a month old now and quite cute. She is no longer considered a newborn and sometimes it makes me sad that this month has passed so quickly. I wish for 48 hours in the day just to spend more time pouring over her little toes and fingers. I am just over the moon with being a mummy.

She stays awake for longer periods so tending to her can at times be a challenge. She wees and poos constantly, but that is what babies do! Wee and Poo! I must admist that I am shagged out - really knackered. There seems no time to write as I wish but she will only be this new to the world once.

The breastfeeding is going smoothly now and they have reduced to a manageable size. I at one point drew a striking resemblence to an exotic dancer. They get so bloody hard full of milk that they look like implants! Well, enough about my titties.

Cheltenham

I grew up in Cheltenham. Dullsville. Need I say more? What do we have here anyway besides that hideous Brian Jones bust (have you seen the stupid thing ??? It looks as if he has an omelette on his head. And who gives a fuck about some bloke who died 36 years ago ??) and the Chapel Spa. I can't say that Northwest Indiana is any better. The women are fatter and more nasaly, and there is definitely more corn and less tea. All these people eat is frozen food from boxes and McDonalds. No wonder they are so bloody large. I just had to get that off my chest.

God, I miss London. As Samuel Johnson famously said, "If a man is bored with London, then he is bored with life". True, that.

Betty and Harry

I am just so glad someone told me of this blogging business. I am a frustrated writer just looking to get this all out and now I can do so on the internet and not just in my diary. So much easier to type.

Finally they left today, my parents. Sent them off on a direct flight and not a minute too soon. I have kept myself all week from telling one of them to sod off. Harry sat in the Barkolounger and got rat arsed almost every night for the whole week. I have never seen him do that! This whole pregnancy thing must have caught up with him because he has never been much of a drinker. He was angry because I had a baby at 18, I am not married, I had the baby in America with a half arsed Mexican but even worse IRISHMAN and am making payments for the hospitilisation instead of popping her out in a proper NHS over there. After all that is what he pays taxes for! Betty was her usual prissy dizzy self. Kept sighing and calling herself grandmum. I couldn't help but to think about the grandmum who wasn't here.

I mean I do love them and all, but I have no way of relating to them. They are quite old.
They waited until they were both 46 before they thought of this surrogate mum thing and 47 when I was born. What business do people have starting families at that age?! All my life I was embarrassed with my older parents. I know that sounds really horrid, but it is true. Everyone always assumed they were the grandparents. I never wanted them to come to my school functions because of it. I was teased mercilessly. So what about me? Why didn't they think this would be hard for me? It all comes down to their selfishness. They didn't care about anything but themselves and thought very little about how this would effect me. You want to know why I am angry? They are selfish people. "oh but they gave so much to you and wiped your bum and kissed your knees" and all that other shit that people say. No! They did it for their own selfish motives. "You should be thankful and grateful!" they say. Well I am not. Fuck that! I am not indebted to them. They got what they wanted. I lost everything for their needs.

Now they can go back home and have a big stonking row over me.

Our Child

So I came here to live in Indiana with the BF when I was around 7 months pregnant. My BF, James, is American and we met whilst doing his European backpack adventure like the Americans do. He is an American borne Mexican/Irish mix, which really cheesed off the parents. I feel in love so easily with this man. His eyes are the warmest colour of creamed coffee you have ever seen and they way he looks at me with them, so full of wonder and love and awe, you would think he was seeing a goddess. He is the perfect lover and a fabulous father to Samantha. I cannot imagine life without James and Samantha. Oh they are my whole life.

What is particularly sweet is the way we have combined to make this precious child. She is truly ours. A part of he and a part of I - together. We are really a family now. We have a common relative - Samantha. We are forever bonded together through our child, much more than any marriage certificate would do. Our histories have combined so beautifully for all eternity. Crikey, I am waxing poetic now!! Then it is for good reason. One minute she looks like me and the next she will make an expression that is identical to
james! His eyes, my nose, my dad's ears, ......and then there is someone there also who I do not recognise straight away but who is still so familiar. There is a stranger in her. A stranger whom I love and in whom I lived for nine months. It makes me long so much more to see my real mum so that I can put a face to this stranger in my daughter. I have seen her pictures, I have heard her voice, but that is so much different than actually being in someone's presence.

I have to finish this later.

I am back.

I feel sorry in a way for Betty. She never had children of her own. She will never know what it is like to see herself in her husband's child. She looked at me and saw her husband...and the stranger. The same one I see in Sam. The one that loomed like a storm cloud over everything. They never talked about her, I am sure, but her presence was overwhelming. I could feel it. I wonder if my father ever thought of her, my real mum, when he looked at me. How couldn't he? I guess I look a lot like her. If he did think about her what did he think about? Oh it is so confusing but mostly it is so wrong.

'Tis I

So then I think I have this photo thing sussed but I can't put on in my profile. As the good BF says, "You are a computer retard." I want to put a piccy of my bub in here too. Let's see if it works !!

A Proper Bang

Please forgive all this vitriol. Normally I am a happy person by all outward appearances anyway. I laugh, I have fun, my life is full, i love my daughter. I am just going through some "I hate adoption" days which by the looks of it happens to most adoptees. Some more than others. It is just a bitter pill to have to swallow. At times, it is almost impossible. In the last couple of days, it (the adoption pill) has been pretty shitty tasting.

Having my baby was the best thing that ever happened to me,but she opened up a whole new can of mother issue worms. The first being how does a woman plan to give her baby away before he or she is ever conceived? At least the real adoptees (remember that I am only half arsed AdopteeLite) can fallback on the tired "she was too young and unprepared to be a mother" but I have the mother who was 30 or whatever, had 3 children before me and had another bloody one after me. There is no excuse for her. You would have to kill me to take my baby. She willingly gave me away. What made me so unloveable? Was I ugly? Well you laugh at that, but really - what was it?

Here I was born around the time of the Baby M fiasco. I have never told anyone this, but I am so jealous of Baby M. Her mum fought for her straight away. She could not bear to part with her. Why couldn't that have been me?
I almost feel as if there is something wrong with my natural mum. Like she is a few bricks short of a load. And then I look at the other two that raised me. How do you ask a woman to give you her child? Are you fucking mad? How can you sleep at night? I wonder who is crazier.

So here we are. The new experiments. I feel like some kind of odd social experiment.
I have something written by a girl in an "open adoption" that is really heart wrenching. You know this is the end all and be all to the new adoptions and is supposed to help us good old adopted persons to get past the whole being given away thing. Well it doesn't, loves. Being wanted (coveted) enough to be made to order by one mum isn't enough to take away the feeling of being unwanted and unloved by the first mum. Sorry.

Oh, and this is the thing that just makes me want to puke. My natural mother and father didn't even have a proper bang! He tossed off in a plastic cup, for fuck's sake! I can see it now, in the doctor's loo having a go at the cup with a copy of Big 'Uns magazine perched up top of the crapper and he wanking away trying not to miss and make a mess of things. Then my mother, legs spread open on a cold metal table, doctor having his way with the syringe and injecting her with my father's "washed" stuff on the other side of the building. Well that just sets the whole tone for my life doesn't it then. Sterile conception between two people who never loved each other, never wanted each other, never shagged each other. If you can't properly fuck, then don't make babies!

I always thought that my mother and father had this torrid affair and she would one day come to live with us and be my mother. That is how it is supposed to be. That is how it was when I conceived my lovely baby. You are supposed to want each other, make love, make each other come, love each other and raise your child together like I am doing with my boyfriend. They way they had me just makes me cringe.

Fantasising as a youngster

I wrote this in a forum, but I thought I would copy it here too.

My dad was my real dad and I was adopted by my mum. They had "hired" my real mum to get pregnant by my dad and give them me. They showed me pictures of her and told me that I had older sibs.I always fantasised that she would fly over from America and come and get me one day and say that she couldn't live without me anymore. I remember waiting for her on the front steps and looking at every blonde lady that would walk by to see if she looked like the lady in the picture. I used to think that she would come and see my performances and she would be sitting in the audience. Well it Never happened. She never came back and got me. In fact, when I found her (actually,my parents knew all along where she was and I was told the day after I turneed 18) last summer, she told me that she never considered me to be her daughter and that she was very happy to make someone else a family and that she never wanted to keep me. Lovely, isn't it. Well my childhood fantasies got shot to hell in one 10 minute phone conversation. It is always nice to hear that your mother got paid for you and never wanted you. Really Nice.

I am just looking for someone like me. Is there anybody out there in the same situation?Anyone? Please, I want to hear from you. I feel so alone and so much like a freak. Half Adopted. Umbilicly challenged. My mum never wanted me. Boofucking hoo, where is my violin. But seriously. I need to find someone like me!

Pondering One's Navel

Pondering one's navel.
I am sure you'ver heard the term previously, but how often have you actually done it. Well I certainly have more than once and for good reason I think. It is because of the person on the other end of that confounded navel hole that I have stared at it for hours, contemplating its meaning and its mysteries.

As I sit here, gently and tentatively swabbing around my newborn daughter's freshly cut belly stump, I can only think of how relieved I am, for her, that she will never have to wonder just who was on the other end of that cord. Never will she feel that invisible tug from a life line long gone, a blood line long cut. Never will that silver thread, that phantom limb from my true family tree, fling her about like a rag doll and rule everything that she does.

No, she will know who her mother is. And she will know that her mother loves her. She will not look down at her navel, the only thing left to her from the woman who bore her, and wonder if the bloody doctors didn't just cut a gash, drill some kind of hole in her stomach so that no one would know that she really didn't have a mother. So that she could look like every other child. At least from the outside.

So then you must now realise that I am an adopted child. Not just adopted, mind you, but half adopted. I don't know which is worse, but I am definitely leaning towards the half adopted life. I know who my father is. He is that crusty geezer over there in front of the telly, mindlessly flipping through the channels at breakneck speeds. But where is she? My mother. Not Betty, the one I call my Mum, but my mother. The woman who must have been on the other side of this cord that I feel, this heavy chain wrapped around my soul.... but I cannot touch. What is it about me that you cannot claim as yours?