THE Essay

From the book "Born in Our Hearts - Stories of Adoption" by Filis Casey and Marisa Catalina Caey

Thinking About the Birth Mother - Anonymous

My oldest daughter will be four in July. She was born in Ecuador, and my husband and I adopted her when she was an infant. We know almost nothing about her birth parents, the people who gave her life. Those people are an integral part of her story, and she loves to hear that story. She also loves her little sister’s story, the story of how she was born to us. She recognizes that these stories are very different – except the part where “Mommy and Daddy were so happy to have their little girl and love her with all of their hearts.”

My adopted daughter has brought only joy to my life, but my happiness is shadowed by a sadness that I am certain awaits her when she is older and more cognizant. I am the parent of a child adopted from overseas, a child whose biological parentage is and is likely to remain a mystery. The sadness she may feel someday already sneaks up on me as I tell her and her sister their stories. There is a blank space in her story while her sister’s story has so many rich details. That space is not empty, but we can’t see what’s there. She has a birth family: a mother and a father, grandparents, cousins, maybe siblings. But no amount of looking is likely to illuminate their space for a daughter.

I have started typing to come up with a composite story that is probably true about my daughter’s birth parents. I have yet to share any of these possible scenarios with my daughter because I am not comfortable with the extent of my knowledge about the situation of the average person in Ecuador, and I am not yet comfortable with the idea of presenting my daughter with mere possibilities. Fortunately she doesn’t need the details yet, and I have some time to work on them. I sometimes find myself feeling a little envious of the parents who adopted girls from China. While each birth family’s situation is unique, China’s one-child policy provides a heartbreaking shorthand explanation for so many infant girls becoming available for adoption.

When I think about my daughter’s birth family and try to prepare for the “why” question that is sure to come, the explanation I always foresee giving is simply poverty, which seems to be common if not the universal factor in birth parents’ decisions. Ecuador has no large, thriving middle class, and precious few people there are wealthy. Chances are pretty good that my daughter’s birth parents were poor. If they had not been poor, maybe they would have decided to parent our daughter. Combine poverty with issues of abortion access, and the stigma of out-of-wedlock births in many poor, developing countries, and many women around the world have few options when faced with an unplanned pregnancy.

I live with the knowledge about this dilemma and focus instead on details and unanswerable questions. I wonder at what point in her pregnancy my daughter’s birth mother made the decision not to parent her child. Did she know from the moment she discovered her pregnancy? Was the decision made only after her baby, my daughter, was born? Was the birth father involved in the decision? I wonder if they are together now, if they were ever together. I wonder about other siblings my daughter may have.

I also focus on the questions to which I have the answers. These questions and answers comfort me. For example, I know, because I am a parent, that my daughter’s birth mother loves her. I know that she struggled over the decision, no matter when or how it was made. I know she remembers and thinks about her daughter. Even if she never looked into her baby’s beautiful eyes, she remembers the child she carried. I can tell my daughter these things with complete confidence. I hope they comfort her too.

Of course, I find myself praying that searches by international adoptees will one day be easier and present greater likelihood of success. I hope that circumstances in countries like Ecuador change so birth parents are freer to identify themselves and open the search process. In any case, we will try to be sure my daughter understands that someday she may search, but that searching does not always mean finding.

For me, right now, almost as strong as my wish that my daughter will someday be able to find her birth mother is my longing to thank her. But I can’t even do that. I’ve heard some adoptive parents say they think a lot about their children’s birth mothers on their children’s birthdays. I do too, because that is the one I can be certain she is thinking of our daughter. Bit I think of my daughter’s birth mother almost every day, and I believe she thinks of my daughter, her baby, almost every day too. Every day I send a thank-you south – a thank-you and an apology. “I am so sorry for whatever it was that put you in the position you found yourself in almost four years ago. But please don’t ask me if I would have changed it if I could, because I fear my answer will not be noble. You are in my heart, and I will do everything I can to ensure you are in my daughter’s – our daughter’s – as well.”

Every birth mother’s situation is different, yet every birth mother’s story is the same. I once read an article written by a birth mother, and I found myself shifting the details. I imagine a young mestiza woman telling her tale. She has dark brown eyes, light brown skin and straight black hair falling down her back in a single braid. She looks like my daughter. She looks like her daughter. She cries softly as she recites her story. I am not stealing the story of the birth mother who wrote. I’m just borrowing it, because it is all I have.