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Nearly 46 years ago, my mother gave birth to a boy. She was barely 20 years old, she was alone, and she was terrified.
I only heard this story for the first time last year. I knew my own birth story, of course. She'd told me countless times about how she hadn't known that she was in labor with me (a 'silent labor,' she said the doctors called it), about how my dad had gotten suspicious when she became unusually cranky one afternoon and called the doctor and described her state and then spent hours with his hands on her belly, timing the contractions by what he felt rather than by what she felt. She told me about how it really felt, for her, as if they'd brought me into this world together. She hadn't been alone during my birth. She'd been surrounded by love. I never knew that there'd been a birth before mine, and that she clung to the happy story of my birth as though to a life-raft, something to keep her afloat whenever she felt swamped by the dark waves of the memory of that other birth.
She told me that story when she finally told me that I had - that I have - a brother, somewhere, a brother who was given up for adoption. She told me that story, and it broke my heart. Then she started her own blog, and told the story to everyone else, and, I'm sure, broke more than a few more hearts:
As soon as I began to show, my parents sent me to a home for unwed mothers... I tried to kill myself while I was there. The pain and loneliness were unbearable. Neither Mom nor Dad ever visited me there; it was too painful for them. Several young women carrying 'illegitimate' babies came and went during my three months there. All cried themselves to sleep
every night...I went into labor in on a beautiful July afternoon in 1963. The staff told me to call them when my pains were five minutes apart. I didn't have my mother or a husband there to support me, so I walked the gardens for five hours, by myself, because I didn't know what else to do. I was scared. When the pains started getting closer, the Home called my parents and then called a cab to take me to the hospital. I went to the hospital all alone. I delivered my beautiful son all alone.
I was told that, because I was giving my son up for adoption, I shouldn't see him because it would make it harder for me. I saw him. His perfect little face will be forever imprinted on my mind and the intense love I felt for my baby has never gone.
Every birth story is beautiful. The story of my mother's first birth is beautiful, in its way: her bravery is beautiful. Her love for the son that she had to give up is beautiful. Her bravery and her love and her strength and her survival: these are beautiful. But her story is also, obviously, full of fear and pain and no amount of romantic gloss can change that.
There are, however, beautiful birth-to-adoption stories. Andee - a proud birth mother - wrote about being accompanied, in childbirth, by the parents who would adopt her daughter:
I wanted Dustin and Andrea there to see their daughter born. They stood up by my head and watched as Avery was born. It was the most spiritual experience I have ever had in my life.
It all happened so fast.
I remember looking over at Dustin and Andrea as they walked in. Within minutes Dr. Terry held up a beautiful baby girl, and she started crying...
I sat in awe and stared at her. She had ten fingers. Ten toes. She had 2 arms and 2 legs. What a miracle she was.
They then laid Avery on my chest. I held on to her. I couldn't stop crying, or staring at her. Dustin and Andrea cut the chord and the nurse wrapped her in a blanket. I immediately pulled her to my chest. I couldn't stop staring at her. Her beautiful eyes.
I didn't ever want let her go.
But Andee did let her go, into an open adoption with the parents Andee had chosen for her, and she has, she says, never regretted it. My mother's story is one of
