Open Adoption Roundtable: Wish List

One of my favorite bloggers is Heather at Production, Not Reproduction. She’s coordinating an Open Adoption Roundtable, and you can head there to see what other bloggers are writing about on the same topic.

This week, she is prompting is us to "Share your wish list for your open adoption(s). Your list can be tempered by reality or packed with hopeful ideals.” As she anticipated, there is already some very enlightening exchange between various representatives within the adoption triad. (For the uninitiated, that's the birthparents, adoptive parents, and adoptees).

Here’s my first contribution to the Roundtable. Of course, it is very much “packed with hopeful ideals,” since we are waiting to make our match and to actually be in an open adoption!

My Open Adoption Relationship Wish List

The open adoption match is frequently compared to dating, and I think it is an analogy that often works well to describe the “get to know ya” phase of the relationship. And I suppose that placement is somewhat like a wedding, in that it requires a huge leap of faith that entwines at least two families forever.

As part of our homestudy, M. and I had to reflect a bit on our ideal open adoption situation. After some reading and talking, M. shared something that I think is so wise. He said that he’s come to believe that what’s needed for a good open adoption is what’s needed for all good, long lasting relationships.

So for this Roundtable Forum, I started by thinking about what I believe are the key ingredients to my strong marriage. Sure ’nuf, I think the list could be applied to other family relationships and close friendships. Here’s my wish list, with specific reflections related to open adoption.

Affinity. What first drew M. and I together was our shared interests, and what drew us closer was our shared values. In my ideal open adoption, our birthmom will be attracted to us because she likes doing some of the same things we do and has some similar outlooks on the world. It is so much easier to build and maintain a relationship with someone when we can, for example, gab about the same books or movies, and when we don’t have to avoid a flippant comment (say, about our last president) because we fear it will offend.

Honesty. I want our birthfamily to know that M. and I have and will continue to represent ourselves honestly – warts and all. When we say we want an open adoption with continuing contact, we mean it. When we match, she should feel confident that she is basing her decision on authentic information and genuine intention. We’d like to have the same confidence in her and all members of the birthfamily.

And, our hope is that we will be able to continue to be honest with each other throughout our lives together, and especially with the child that we share. We don’t want to keep any of our child’s story hidden from him or her, and will work hard to make sure s/he knows it well (in an age appropriate way, of course).

Trust. So important, yet so slippery! One of my greatest open adoption-related hopes is that we will be able to easily earn – and then keep – our birthmom’s trust. In my experience, there are two important parts of trust in a relationship: trustworthiness and trusting. To have a good open adoption, everyone involved will have to behave honorably (see “honesty” above) so that they can be trusted by the others to do what they say and say what they do. This won’t be difficult for M. or me. But being able to trust someone else, in my opinion, often has more to do with the “truster” than the “trustee.” Past experiences, early observations, and/or natural proclivities can influence a person’s ability (willingness?) to trust another, regardless of true trustworthiness. Trusting is sometimes hard for me, and I know I will have to push myself to assume the best of a person or situation.

Placing a child with another family must be the ultimate act of trust. It will be critically important for us all to know in our bones that the others have our child’s very best interest at heart. I’ve come to understand that the biggest fear – and a common disappointment, I am afraid – for birthfamilies is not having the level of contact with the child that they desire. This makes me so sad. I suspect that trust – or rather, lack of it – is at fault in many of these cases. What I wish for our open adoption is that our birthfamily will trust that we will follow through on our oath to stay in touch to whatever extent they are comfortable…and that M. and I trust our birthfamily enough to continue to believe that their ready presence in our child’s life is what’s best for him or her.

Good Communication. I think that at the root of trust and honesty (and affinity, for that matter) is good communication. And conversely, trust and honesty are essential elements in communicating well. To have a strong open adoption, we must be open. We all will have to risk sharing what we think and feel – assuming we know what we think and feel – in ways that are fair and compassionate but direct. And we must especially work to listen.

Acceptance. I dream that as our child grows, so will awareness and appreciation for adoption and with that, new laws that protect all members of the triad and new practices that support us. I wish that when the time comes for our little one to do the "family tree" exercise at school, there will be no raised eyebrows or difficult questions.

Hand in hand with broader societal acceptance is, of course, individual acceptance. I hope that our birthmother can always feel proud of her decision, M. and I and our extended family can always feel confident about how our family was formed, and our child can always feel good that s/he is different and yet no different than the kids next door.

Respect. Like trust, this must be both earned and given. Respect means understanding and feeling okay with boundaries (we won’t need to know everything about our birthparents’ lives), reaching beyond our comfort zones in a effort to ease someone else’s, recognizing that our child’s story is his or hers – not ours – to tell, and understanding that, like all relationships, there will likely be ebbs and flows, peaks and vallies in our open adoption but that persistence is important. I suspect that in open adoption, birth and adoptive parents must sometimes stretch to understand that although their lives might be quite different, they are equally deserving of respect.

It should go without saying that our birthmom will have our deepest respect – and gratitude – for her adoption decision and placing her child with us.

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Looking over this little list and my notes, it strikes me that they are mostly wishes for our relationship with a birthmother and her family, which perhaps minimizes the most important member of the adoption triad: the child. Suffice it to say, even when I don’t explicitly allude to it, I believe these things will be critically important in both our and our birthfamily’s relationship with the kid at every stage of life.

I want to give a special shout out to Ginger at Puzzle Pieces: Adoption. Her Roundtable contribution is so astute, and it obviously shaped a lot of my own thinking and writing on the topic. (Thanks again for sharing, Ginger!)

I fear that in open adoption – as in all relationships – preaching these values is easier than practicing them. Still, I think it is helpful to envision perfection, so that I have something recognizable to work toward. Besides, at this point, so much of our adoption experience is about dreaming and wishing. And as I’ve been known to say, “If wishes were horses…I might be trampled by the stampede.”

What's In A Name?

Apparently, quite a bit. We have learned anecdotally that birthmothers often ask before or during a match what the adoptive parents intend to name the child. This makes sense to me, as names can be such an important part of an individual’s identity. I suspect that knowing what a child will be called helps to fill in a vision of his or her future.

...Which makes the question of what M. and I will name our child all the more troubling. What will a potential birthparent think if she asks and learns that we not only don’t know our kid’s first name, we don’t know his or her last name either?!

When M. and I began contemplating a life-long partnership, I brought up the question of changing my last name to his. I was somewhat surprised by our respective positions. Here I was - a proud feminist who emphasized in her undergrad thesis the importance of women retaining their family names in marriage to preserve independence – sharing that I’d be willing to take his last name as my own if it was important to him. And here he was - the only male descendant of his generation - indicating that he always assumed his wife would keep her name and that his family name would die with him. (Another example of why I love him.)

Fortunately, neither of us is so attached to our names – or was overly concerned about what our own families would think – that it became a big, contentious issue. But, we both do like our last names, particularly because they are evidence of our own dim cultural heritages.

So, when we made it official and got hitched, we didn’t do anything. We both happily (read: lazily) retained our own last names and chuckled (okay, sometimes we ground our teeth) when mail would arrive addressed to Mr. and Mrs. HisLastName.

Of course, the topic raised its head again as soon as we began planning to have a child. I expressed the preference that our nuclear family all share the same last name, to which M. concurred. We debated hyphenating, and also agreed that it isn’t ideal, as it usually just defers the naming dilemma to the next generation. We debated determining in advance that, say, if our child is female, she have M.’s last name, and if he’s male, he have mine, or vice versa. But then there’d be one person left out of our "family" name.

The solution that now seems most attractive to us is to create a whole new, original last name that we all could share. But which? I know of one couple that selected the name of the National Park where they met as their new last name. Unfortunately, Match.com just doesn’t work as well for us as Yellowstone did for them. The idea we like best at the moment is to combine the first syllable of his last name and the last syllable of mine. It makes a nice sounding last name that works pretty well with both of our first names. Truth be told, though, we are both a bit intimidated by the idea of announcing this change to our professional colleagues, not to mention the rigmarole of legalizing it.

So, we’ve got to come up with a good way of explaining all of this to a prospective birthmother without scaring her off. Any suggestions?

And then there is the issue of first names. This is something I spend more time thinking about than I probably should. It’s fun (most likely for the same reason it is a common question asked by birthmothers). When I hear of a name I hadn’t considered, I squirrel it away on a little list and wait to bring it up with M. after he’s had a glass of wine and seems in the mood to dream a bit about this child who is so late to arrive in our arms.

Fortunately, we are on very similar pages on this one. Matt expressed an early preference for avoiding: trendy names (like Ava), names that are spelled cr8tvleigh, and “made up Irish names like McKenzie and Declan.” I agreed…although I’ve noticed what we each think is too trendy hasn’t always matched, and some of the names he thinks fit into the last category, I think would be a nice tribute to his heritage, like using his very nice middle name: Quinn.

I suspect that if we had to this week (and I really wish we did!!), we could narrow our list to a half-dozen names for either gender that would be acceptable to both of us.

But then what? Should the birthfamily have any input? What if a birthmother is REALLY attached to a particular name, and we hate it? What if she just can’t stand any of our top contenders? And if we see names as a way to pay tribute to heritage, and birth heritage is an important part of an adopted child’s identity, how should the birthparents’ culture(s) influence our child’s name? Would it be just too weird to name our little Black son Lars, for example?

In most cases, birthparents determine the names that will go on the child’s original birth certificate, and adoptive parents determine the names that will go on a child’s amended birth certificate. I know of a few families, however, in which naming was well negotiated in advance, and everyone was happy about what name would go on the first document. That sounds really ideal.

I can tell you that if the names are determined and agreed upon before our baby arrives, they will NOT be widely shared until our kid is home with us. I know I’ve wrinkled my own nose reflexively too often upon learning a name of a loved one’s anticipated bundle of joy to risk the disappointment in opinions that advanced scrutiny might bring.

At least there is one (seemingly) simple part of this whole complex naming issue for our kid: we’ve determined the middle name! If it’s a girl, it will be Marie, like M.’s sisters’ middle name. If it is a boy, it will be Martin, as my mother and father both oddly share this middle name

….I’m glad I can’t see you wrinkling your nose.

Accidents of Birth

M. and I just returned from 12 amazing days in Vietnam. We marveled at the lantern festival in HoiAn and were overwhelmed by the street life in Hanoi. We ate well, swam in warm water, bowed before Buddha, and visited Uncle Ho at his Mausoleum. But the undisputed highlight of this trip was an incredible over-night home-stay with a H’mong family, high in the green rice terraces of the northwest.

With the exception of two dim light bulbs, a mobile phone, and a few other household items, when we stepped over the threshold of their home, we could have been stepping back several centuries. It is a small structure constructed of sturdy hand-hewn boards and a metal and tarp roof. The floor was packed earth, and the “stove” was a pit in the floor with a metal tripod. All of the furnishings (a couple of bamboo platform beds, a low table, and several very low stools) appeared to be handmade. There was no latrine, just Mother Nature. We slept in their grain loft, next to big bags of rice that they’d grown and would sustain them throughout the year. Three hogs were in a pen just a few steps away and piglets and chickens wandered about.

Also wandering about were four small children, all under the age of 12. (There were two older children in the family as well, a daughter away at school and a son in the army.) They all wore what in the U.S. would be considered dirty rags and no shoes. Two of them had terrible coughs and regularly spit gobs onto the earthen floor. The littlest guy had some kind of splinter in the sole of his foot, which his mother attempted to extract with an unsterilized needle before we offered the tweezers and some antibiotic ointment from our little travel first-aide kit.

We went to visit the home of our other guide, and it was quite similar. (It should be mentioned that we did notice a satellite dish and a latrine at at least one other home in that village!) This home appeared to be part of a larger family compound with several buildings scrunched together on the same small, relatively flat piece of land on the hillside. Again, there were a half-dozen very small, dirty – and adorable – children racing around. We couldn’t communicate well enough to figure out who were siblings, and who were cousins, and who were just extended clan. But we did learn something that really moved us.

We were asked not to go back to part of the compound because the extended family had gathered there to mourn the death of a two-year old niece of the guide, who had passed away the day before. I think we understood that the little one had been sick for a few months, but that her death was unexpected.

What stood out to me is that this situation was probably not all that unusual for these people. More than 23 of every 1,000 Vietnamese children die before their fifth birthday. (Vietnam’s rate is between Albania and Panama. In the U.S., it’s 7.8 children.) This is actually better than I expected. But given the extreme poverty and remoteness – and apparent lack of awareness regarding germ transmission, as evident by the spitting and splinter removal - of the village we visited, I suspect the rates there are much higher than the national average.

During all of our visit to Vietnam, not just in this H’mong village, we saw so many children, in such tough conditions. I hasten to add that none of them seemed to be suffering. But so many of them were working – in the fields, on fishing boats, in the markets, or in the family’s restaurant, hotel, or shop. And we observed many, many young children who seemed to be in charge of their younger siblings, such as girls who appeared to be five or six carrying infants on their backs, with no adults in sight.

I thought a lot about poverty while we were in Vietnam. Does being desperately poor make these people unhappy? Certainly not. But does it limit the possibilities for self-determination? Absolutely. And why do poor people seem to have so many kids? Then again, why shouldn’t they? Does having one more mouth to find make them any less capable of parenting well? Unfortunately, in many circumstances, I think it does. So often, poor parents are just too overwhelmed making ends meet to have the wherewithal to provide the kind attention and support their children need to thrive. I’m not saying that there aren’t wonderful parents with very meager resources. I’m saying that it must just be so much harder when you are also struggling to put food on the table.

Of course, I was also thinking a lot about adoption and the increased opportunities we could provide for a Vietnamese child. But one of the ethically thorny things about adoption – domestically as well as internationally – that has been niggling at me is the likely role that a wide disparity in incomes often plays in placement. If I wasn’t comparatively rich, would I be able to adopt (even adoption through foster care requires a steady income, a safe home, etc.)? If certain birthfamilies weren’t comparatively poor, would they even be considering giving up their child? Am I okay with that?

I’ll conclude with what I feel is a revealing anecdote. M. and I have occasionally gone to support groups coordinated by our agency. At the last meeting, one of the fathers said that he thought it was a real red flag when a potential birthmother indicated her motivation for placement was “because she had other things she wants to do.” He felt this was a horrible reason. I told him I thought it was a great reason, and asked what he thought would be a more encouraging answer. He said he’d feel more comfortable if she was placing because she couldn’t afford to have another baby. I wondered (perhaps more out-loud than I should have) how things might be different if, rather than the agency, this birthmom received our sizeable fees directly.

I’ve wandered a long way from telling you about our trip to Vietnam. I think it is because I returned with more than just many of M.’s incredible photos, some beautiful H’mong textiles, and a touch of jet lag. I have returned with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for being born when and where I was to my wonderful, upwardly mobile family.

A Few to Spare, Perhaps?

Since late January of this year, I have joined millions of other Americans in an absurd obsession: an irrational fascination with Octomom. When I first heard the announcement that a woman had given birth to healthy octuplets, I didn’t realize that she would touch my life in so many ways.

My immediate reaction was, “Wow! Clomid overdose! Someone wasn’t being appropriately poked and prodded.” Clomid is the “gateway” fertility drug, often doled out before there is any real diagnosis of the problem conceiving. Its main function is to boost the number of eggs that ovulate during each cycle. Responsible doctors and clinics will require their Clomid patients to come in on a regular basis (like every other morning during some weeks, in my case) so that their egg follicle development can be monitored closely via vaginal ultrasound. This monitoring has a couple of very important functions. First, it should reveal when there is a follicle ready to ovulate – thereby indicating a good time to meet up with sperm, either via Intra Uterine Insemination (IUI) or the other, much more romantic way. Second, it should show how many follicles are ready to go.

In most cases, if there are more than two or three follicles of a certain size, health professionals will cancel insemination and strongly discourage intercourse. The most catastrophic side effect of Clomid and other follicle stimulating medications like it is multiple births. So, when I heard about the octuplets, I assumed that either someone had made a huge error in counting developing follicles, or the mother had ignored the advice of her doctor. (Of course, we’ve now learned that I was wrong about this; Octomom conceived through the reckless implantation of at least six embryos during IVF, while the best practice for a woman her age is implantation of no more than two or three.)

How can I call eight healthy babies a catastrophic side effect? Well, of course the births of healthy multiples aren’t that for the parents who so desperately want children. In fact, I bet many subfertile parents of twins and triplets feel like they hit the jackpot. After all, if they’ve always envisioned having more than one child, the prospect of repeating treatment for a subsequent baby must be daunting, and multiples are often welcomed as an “instant family.” (In some circles, boy/girl twins are considered the gold standard.)

But I’m not talking about twins, or even triplets (although study after study shows that even their gestation can be very dangerous, for them and for their mothers). I’m talking about higher order multiples, which have skyrocketed in the last couple of decades and are a hot topic among fertility specialists and medical ethicists.

So when I first heard about Octomom, it was with some sense of connection and gratitude that I had received more responsible care than I supposed she had. Then I learned that her children were born at the same hospital where we went for our treatment! It came out later that she arrived at Kaiser Bellflower already very pregnant, but for awhile there, I wondered if it was MY docs who’d goofed!

My sense of a bizarre personal connection was further strengthened when I learned that she lived in the town to which I’d just moved. In fact, her mother’s home, where she was reported to reside, was less than a half-mile from my office. When we learned Octomom’s name, I discovered the weirdest of all my personal connections. Her last name is what we call our precious cat! (Maybe I’ll share how Suleyman got his name sometime. For now, I just want to be sure everyone knows he got it long before Octomom’s 15 minutes of fame. As proof, his name is spelled differently than hers.)

These coincidences piqued my interest. They also generated a lot of conversations around me, many of which I found fascinating, and some of which I found very disturbing.

To be sure, this case of a woman - who already had six young children with the help of a sperm donor and a fancy Beverly Hill doctor, who was manipulating public assistance - brings up controversial issues about reproductive freedom, the role of government intervention and support, medical responsibility and liability, privacy, and good parenting.

One interesting conversation I had was about selective reduction, which some would say is the recommended medical procedure in pregnancies with high order multiples that removes one or more fetus so that others can thrive, and to prevent sometime life threatening complications for the mother. Others would say it is the heartless murder of innocent life. At the risk of getting overly political here – and even worse, spouting off about something I’ve never been faced with, thankfully – to me it seems ironic that many of the people who become pregnant with multiples but refuse selective reduction for religious reasons are the same people who relied on extreme medical technologies to achieve conception and pregnancy. Why does Octomom think it was God’s will for her to have eight babies at once, but not His will for her to be infertile?

Perhaps the most interesting – and heated – conversation I got into about Octomom was with another waiting adoptive mother. We began by only half joking that it seemed she should share her good fortune with us, and that we’d be glad to take a few of her children off her hands. It led to discussing whether the government has the right – or the responsibility – to remove some or all of Octomom’s kids. And then in meandered even further, to whether the government has the right – or the responsibility – to prevent Octomom and other parents deemed “unfit” (by whom?) to have more children. Yes, I agreed with my friend that it is horrible that abusive/drug addicted/homeless women sometime seem to get pregnant without any concern about the difficult lives to which they have almost certainly doomed their progeny. But I vehemently disagreed that it is the role of my government to sterilize such women. (I must say, I believe I have more faith in my government than most Americans; I feel that – for the most part – it is still a democracy of, by, and for the people. But I suppose I don’t trust my fellow citizens enough to make such deeply personal reproductive choices. And I imagine most of us can identify atrocities committed by leaders of nations who were democratically elected.) This increasingly difficult chat with my buddy ended when I blurted out a somewhat non-sequiter: “So, you don’t want your tax money to be used to ensure everyone has access to good health care, including safe abortions. But you do want it to be used to eliminate the opportunity of parenthood to anyone who’s made some bad choices at one point in life?!”

By far the hardest things for me to hear about Octomom, though, have been the angry statements that she and her family should not receive any further support. To me, what gets so lost in the outrage about Octomom are those eight (errr…make that fourteen) innocent little children.

All of the vitriol does not help them. And they need help. As distasteful as it may be to swallow, ensuring that their likely unstable mother has the resources to keep them in school, receiving attentive care, eating well, etc. is probably the best chance they have in life. Unless she is truly neglectful or abusive, removing them from her home and placing them in (and out, and back in to) foster care - separating them from each other and their extended family - would not improve their lots in life.

Truly, I wish Nadya Suleman and all of her many children the very best. Perhaps I’ll invite one or two of them over for playdate someday.