Читать книгу Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood - Eric Rosswood - Страница 12
ОглавлениеBAY AREA, CALIFORNIA
On July 25, 2013, at 5:02 P.M., one sound changed me forever: the first breath of a new life. We had just walked through the door of a midwestern hotel room, not a moment too soon or too late. Our son was finally here.
Becoming a parent wasn’t something that generally came up in conversation, even with my best friends. In 2011, as our wedding day approached, I joked that I couldn’t possibly have a child outside of marriage—a reference to the ironies of the marriage equality debate more than anything else. Little did we know that soon after that magical day, Eric and I would indeed begin our journey to parenthood.
It still feels strange to talk about “options” when it comes to being a parent—one of many things that provoked unexpected feelings from the start. That’s not what they teach you in sex-ed class, but that was our reality and we reflected on them all. Adoption became our choice (a much better word) for two reasons: we would both be equal parents and it felt like the most selfless path to us. I wondered what the world would think of the choice—something I seldom cared about in my general journey through life. Was I really ready to be “that family”?
In June of 2011, we decided to find out and attended an information session at a nearby adoption agency. Every combination of family was present and, while we weren’t the only same-sex couple, we were not in the majority. But everyone was there for the same reason and that had a way of making the differences between us seem not so different after all.
As the session evolved, I realized that the other people in the room were about to embark on the same journey that we were. We all had the same goal and I started to think of them as competition. Did any of them have traits or characteristics that would help them match with a birthmother before we did? Instead of thinking about how we could match in the quickest way possible, I started thinking about how we could match before everyone else. How could we “win”? I wasn’t ready for that feeling, either. I found it uncomfortable that we saw others in the room as competition and not as comrades who could help each other out. Apparently this is a common feeling for adoptive parents, but knowing that didn’t make me feel any better.
The first step in the process was a two-day weekend intensive program. “If you are patient and do what we say, you will get a baby,” they told us in the opening session. I wondered again how many times I’d feel uncomfortable on this journey. We met our counselor for the first time and left with binders, books and contracts.
As I read through all of the information and started to understand the next steps, I felt another emotion I hadn’t expected in our journey to parenthood: anger. Reproduction is part of the natural order of the human race, a right acquired at birth that no law denies, at least in the United States. As I learned of all the hoops we were about to jump through, the thought did cross my mind: I’m a human being and I have the right to reproduce like everyone else. All I needed was a willing human of the opposite sex. Instead, we were about to take one serious parenting test: get fingerprinted, go through a background check by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have our financials rummaged through, get poked and prodded by a doctor, have our blood tested, provide references and go through an afternoon of interviews, all to become parents to the child of some straight couple who couldn’t fulfill the role that the natural order ordained them with. All they did was have some fun. That made me angry.
I know our son will read this one day. That is not how I think of his biological mother or father. I also know the beauty that is life can come from some truly harrowing circumstances, but at that moment, I was indeed mad at those who just “did it” without a care in the world or a questionnaire and then abused or discarded their children, straight or gay.
Then we began to do all of our homework and that anger gave way to a much deeper emotion. I felt like a normal human being—more unexpected feelings. I realized I knew very little about being a parent, something I now know many first-time parents feel. Not that this made filling out the parenting questionnaire any easier. I was trying to answer questions I had never asked myself before: What is the difference between discipline and abuse? How am I going to talk to our child about sex?
Where does one go to find answers to those questions? In the modern age, online search engines aren’t a bad source of inspiration, but there was another place I could go to for expert advice—my own parents. I don’t remember when I first told them we were planning to adopt, but we were on a family vacation when I asked them about parenting. We explained all of the things we’d been doing to “qualify” as adoptive parents.
“What did you talk about before I was born?” I asked.
“The only real thing we’d decided beforehand was that we would always be on the same page in front of you, even if we disagreed afterward,” my dad said. There was that “normal” feeling again, along with the realization that all of this question asking and book reading was actually helping Eric and I, both individually and together, to prepare to be parents and to think about things we otherwise likely never would have thought about or discussed before. I wasn’t so angry anymore.
I’ve studied for plenty of tests, written plenty of papers and essays and given presentations on all manner of topics, but I was at a loss as to how one prepares for a parent interview. Is there a right answer to a parenting question? Did I say the right things in my biography? Was I too honest or not honest enough? What if my “discipline versus abuse” response wasn’t good enough? What if Eric said something different from what I had when he was interviewed or disagreed with me—what would that mean? I figured I would just go with my gut instincts—isn’t that what parents do? I didn’t know. But that made me no different from any other prospective parent.
We passed the interview. I wondered if people ever failed it but didn’t ask. The home study came next. At the time, we lived in a newly-built condominium that we had bought together shortly after our engagement. It suited us perfectly as a couple, although now we needed to make some changes—installing carbon monoxide detectors, buying a fire extinguisher and moving everything potentially harmful to an infant out of reach (even though a newborn couldn’t reach it for a number of years). We did everything we were asked to do. It seemed to take forever. Then the envelope finally arrived to say we had passed the tests and were now approved adoptive (and foster) parents. We were excited to be one step closer to becoming dads.
We spent weeks writing and rewriting and designing our Dear Birthmother letter, picking photographs and changing layouts. When it was finished, it looked like four pages from People magazine. We thought we had the best letter ever written—more enthusiasm than arrogance—and were convinced we would be picked almost immediately. We finished our online profile with the agency and set up the required e-mail address and 800 number so a birthmother could reach us anytime without cost to her. Then we were all set to start waiting for the call.
We wondered how we would feel when it rang for the first time and didn’t have to wait long to find out—about as long as it took us to learn that 800 numbers are recycled and otherwise prone to misdials. The first call I excitedly picked up was someone trying to get her cell phone fixed. These numbers also seem to get easily placed on automated call lists, so the phone rang at all hours, day and night. Each time we hoped it was “the call,” only to usually find no one on the other end of the line. Then we would wonder whether we should call the number back in case it was a birthmother trying to reach us, even though the agency told us not to call the birthmothers back—and for good reason. If the birthmother hadn’t told anyone about her pregnancy, you didn’t want to accidently unveil her secret if another family member answered when you called back.
Eric and I had said at the beginning of our journey that we were going to try to live a normal life during the wait. The agency told us the same thing and discouraged “nesting” or anything nursery-related before placement. For six months, nothing really happened, so we decided to try some new things. Eric started a few social media accounts while I tried my hand at website design. We talked about redesigning “The Best Dear Birthmother Letter Ever,” which had only been sent out once, and about whether we wanted to change our client profile.
The client profile sets out the adoptive family’s preferences regarding the birthparents’ racial heritage and religious background. It also specifies the behaviors they find tolerable in regard to smoking, drinking and drug use during pregnancy, as well as the level of physical and mental disability we would accept. Of all the forms we had to fill out, that one was by far the hardest. We were told that the more “liberal” we were on the form, the greater the chance of us being shown to a birthmother who had contacted the agency. We’d done a lot of reading on drinking and drugs—many of the people I know seem to have some form of fetal alcohol syndrome, the symptoms of which include being grumpy and angry—and so we weren’t too particular about those boxes. When it came to hereditary medical history, however, things started to get more complex.
Consider this question: If you could choose between an unimpaired child or a physically or mentally challenged child, which would you choose? Biological parents don’t have that choice, whereas adoptive parents do (to some degree, because nothing is ever certain). So what choice do you make and does it show you as a good or bad parent in the eyes of a birthmother? The options available on the form are not extensive: no condition, a mild condition of any type or any condition. Eric and I both have or have had close relatives with mental impediments. Would we pick a child with a mental impediment or a notable risk of one if we had the choice? What would we do if our child was born with an otherwise undiagnosed physical or mental impediment? Adoptions can be “broken” at any point before they are finalized by either party. Would we ever consider doing that? We talked about it for a long time, agreeing that the universe would grant us whatever it did. So we checked the “mild” box and entered the adoption pool.
After six months of nothing, I did start to wonder whether we had made the right choices on the form and whether we should have checked another box or two. It was around that time when we got our first e-mail. It arrived at about 11:30 P.M. one night. We both had our adoption e-mail address synced to our phones and so far had only received random junk mail. But this time, our devices went “ping” and it was a birthmother. We were excited, apprehensive and eager to respond, so we jumped out of bed to reply—and then realized we had no idea what to say! It probably took us two hours to draft a two-paragraph message, redraft it, bicker a little about what we were going to write, redraft it some more and finally send it. Then we forwarded our reply to the adoption agency and tried to get some sleep, wondering all the while if we had said the right things and when she would reply, if she ever would.
Two e-mails later, we realized we were being scammed. The person was just trying to get money from us. We had been warned several times that this could and would likely happen. Knowing how raw and vulnerable adoptive parents are during “the wait,” it’s hard to imagine how a decent human being could prey on that, but people do. One of the many benefits of working with an agency is that they are very quick to spot a scam and let us know before we become too emotionally invested. To be fair, though, after a six-month wait and a sleepless night writing perhaps the most important e-mail of our lives, we were up to our ears in emotional investment and it was hard not to be a little sad that this wasn’t the one.
We put it behind us, along with a few other scams among the random calls we got. Before we knew it, one year had passed and we became eligible for the “last-minute list.” This meant we would be one of the families presented to a birthmother who decided to place immediately after birth. If she liked us, we would have thirty minutes to decide if we wanted to move forward. We tried to make that the positive outcome of a year spent waiting—we could now become a family instantaneously—and signed up.
Five days later, my cell phone rang while I was in a meeting at work. It was a number my phone didn’t recognize, so I ignored it. When I got home, we had a voicemail I hadn’t noticed earlier. It was around 9:30 P.M. when I pushed play in the kitchen and, after a moment of silence, we heard Stephanie’s voice for the first time.
“Hi, Eric and Mat…” There was a long pause. “Wow, this is awkward. My name is Stephanie. I saw your profile online. I’m thirteen weeks pregnant and I’m looking to place my baby for adoption. And I really liked your profile and would kinda like to get to know more about your parenting style and things like that. If you could please give me a call, I look forward to talking more with you.”
This was real and now it was our turn to be silent. From her phone number, we deduced that she was in the central time zone, so it was past 11 P.M. and had been almost twelve hours since her call. Do we call her back now? Do we wait until the morning? What would she be thinking? What do we say to her when we call? What are we supposed to do? We decided to send a text—that way she would know we got her message when she woke up. Stephanie replied in about fifteen seconds. After a brief exchange of texting small talk, we called her.
Our first call lasted close to two hours. We told her to ask us anything she wanted to know. She started with our views on pediatric vaccinations and circumcision. We were not prepared at all to start there, but were honest and answered every question she had as best we could. I took lots of notes. By the time the call ended, we were overwhelmed and could only imagine how she felt. Of all the things we covered that night—the fact that she was declared medically infertile after the birth of her second child, the night the baby was conceived (Halloween, Eric’s favorite holiday), her family situation, her decision not to terminate, her desire to have a home birth and her disdain for adoption agencies—the one that sticks in my mind the most is the response she gave to our question, “What drew you to us when you read our profile?” Stephanie said that she is a Capricorn and her best friend is a Libra. Since I’m a Capricorn and Eric is a Libra, she took that as a sign. The stars really were shining on us that day and they all seemed to be pointing towards Stephanie being the one.
The following day, we had another long conversation with Stephanie over video chat and met the birthfather, Josh. We all seemed to get on well, cracking jokes and laughing and getting to know each other. We gave Stephanie the number for our adoption agency and e-mailed our adoption coordinator to tell her about the contact, hoping we were not in fact seeing stars and that this was for real.
Eric and I spent much of Sunday discussing everything we had learned about Stephanie and Josh. We counted the weeks from thirteen to thirty-nine and tried not to think about the twenty-six weeks during which she could change her mind. We also tried to fathom how a non-hospital birth would work. Stephanie told us she had recently separated from her husband (not Josh) and was currently living in a shelter with her two children. Even though her living situation was complex, Stephanie did not want a hospital birth, which left us with the big overhanging question: “How do you have a home birth without a home?”
Monday came around and we called the agency to fill them in. Stephanie called them later that week and started the intake process and pregnancy validation. Like I said, the agency doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to ensuring their families are not being scammed.
Eric and I had agreed not to tell anyone about the call until we knew for certain that we were going to move forward—it was the hardest secret we’ve ever kept. Every call to our respective parents (and to everyone who knew of our family plans, for that matter) always included some reference or question about the adoption and whether there was any news. We told them not to ask, but couldn’t blame them for asking, either. We appreciated everyone’s questions and concerns, particularly our parents, who tried very hard to understand how the whole process was going to work. After all, they were as novice to this journey as we were, despite being grandparents already. We didn’t want to jinx anything, so we waited until the match meeting was confirmed before we told them about the call.
Our first meeting was scheduled for February 13 in Stephanie’s hometown, which was a good 1,800 miles away from us. We flew in the day before and she met us at the airport at 10:45 P.M.—you may note that she’s a night owl. We had spoken a number of times since that first call and texted incessantly, but we were still nervous as all hell when we met in person for the first time. Before us was the impossible dream and it could have been shattered in a heartbeat if we had done something wrong. And there was no way of really knowing what “wrong” might have been. We made our way through checking into a hotel and having dinner without her leaving, so we hoped we were on the right track as we arranged to meet again in the morning.
I never expected to feel pregnant as part of the adoption and had no idea what that would even feel like. I don’t mean cravings (even though I’ve now tried pickles with whipped cream and it’s totally gross), morning sickness, backaches or sleepless nights, although somehow Eric and I managed to gain a sympathetic fifteen pounds each and we have been working it off ever since. I mean the pre-natal journey itself. We had expected to match with someone much more advanced in her pregnancy—maybe six months along—and really not be that involved. But there we were, standing in an ultrasound technician’s laboratory at the hospital, watching the monitor and learning we were having a baby boy. I had never expected to have that experience.
The match meeting took place at our hotel later that morning. It was facilitated by not one, but two adoption agencies: one from our home state of California and one from Stephanie’s home state of Illinois. Together, we all started to talk about a birth plan and post-adoption contact. There were a lot of forms to be filled out and the “transactional” feeling in those moments still makes me uncomfortable. The end result, though, was a successful match! And all too soon, it was time to fly back to California. We were elated and scared to death.
We spoke with Stephanie about once a week after that and swapped endless text messages. We’ve printed many of the early ones so our son can read them for himself one day. It was difficult to know just how much contact we should have with Stephanie at that point. We didn’t want to overwhelm her by texting, calling or e-mailing too much, but on the other hand, we didn’t want her to feel like we weren’t very interested. Sometimes a day or two passed between messages and we silently hoped that the pause was just another day in the busy life of a single mom of two, rather than a change of heart. Then another message from her came, along with a deep sigh of relief.
I had buried my head in the sand about the home birth for three months, hoping that Stephanie might change her mind or the agency would require a hospital so I wouldn’t have to think about it again. That ostrich syndrome was accompanied by a deep-seated fear that, if I couldn’t get my head around it and we couldn’t make it work, our journey would come to an untimely and unhappy ending. We had to find a way. But how do you arrange a home birth when you don’t have a home?
To add to the complexity of the home birth situation, certified nurse midwives are required to have a signed collaborative agreement with an obstetrician in order to practice in Illinois. For some reason, that is extremely difficult to get and doesn’t happen often. The result is an underground group of midwives unofficially performing home births, which doesn’t really work for an adoption where everything needs to be official.
Quite the dilemma! So two months before the due date, we got on a plane to figure everything out together. Stephanie had already solved the midwife challenge: Kathleen Devine, a fitting name for the person who was to deliver our gift from the heavens. Kathy lived about an hour from Stephanie in the neighboring state of Iowa and was thrilled to be a part of our journey. The only catch was that we now had to cross the state line to give birth—not that this was getting complicated or anything.
We also still had to solve the “where” of the actual delivery. First we looked at some vacation home rentals, but the neighboring towns were not exactly big vacation destinations. There wasn’t much in the way of corporate housing either and we were starting to despair when a friend of Stephanie’s suggested the hotel we stayed at when we first visited, which had two-bedroom suites. Stephanie could stay in one bedroom while Eric and I stayed in the other. We toured the rooms that afternoon and booked before we left.
After our rooms were secured, we met up with Julie, our Illinois adoption coordinator, to finalize the birth plan. We went over who was going to be in the room at the time of birth and who was going to hold the baby first. Eric was mostly worried about the noise and mess of the whole thing, since Stephanie was giving birth in a hotel room. But Stephanie reassured us that actual births are less messy than the ones portrayed in movies and on TV. She also said that Kathy would lay out puppy pads to absorb everything and make the clean-up easy. We laughed at the thought of a fully pregnant Stephanie crowning while squatting over puppy pads in a hotel bathroom. It sounded like a comedy series waiting to happen.
“What about the placenta?” Eric asked. It seemed like an odd question, but seeing as the placenta couldn’t really be absorbed in a puppy pad, I guess it was a fair one to ask.
“We’ll put it in the freezer,” Stephanie replied.
“For what?” Eric quipped. “A snack later?”
“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly. “We’ll dry it out in the oven and use a coffee grinder to grind it into pills.” Our eyes widened and our jaws dropped when we realized she wasn’t joking. “The nutrients are really good for your body. We can even bake it into a lasagna.”
“You mean plasagna?” Eric joked. We all broke up laughing at the table.
Everything was coming together. It was all very real and only two months away. Eric and I owned nothing baby-related at that point. We’d been told all we needed was a change of clothes and a car seat to leave the hospital, but as there was no hospital involved, we had to make up our own rules. We took our first baby-shopping trip and came back with way too much stuff. Everyone else was banned from buying any baby things until three days after he was born.
While it seemed like forever as we lived it day-to-day, the month of the birth arrived before we knew it. We had been capturing potential names for about two years. Eric even bought me a book of 20,000 baby names for my birthday, as if we didn’t have enough to choose from already. I had a fantasy when we started the adoption process that our birthmother would let us choose the baby’s first name, so that it would match on both of his birth certificates (the one issued at birth and the one issued with our names as the parents after we finalized the adoption).
Reality turned out to be much better than my fantasy. As Stephanie had no attachment to either her married name or her maiden name, she had already decided to give the baby our last name and whatever other names we wanted. For his middle name, we initially thought about asking Stephanie to choose it but, as she had insisted it was our decision, we selected Stephen in her honor. There were a few tears that day. And while everyone around us was getting excited at the pending arrival, we kept his name a secret until three days after he was born.
Having been part of the pregnancy pretty much since the beginning and given the complexities of the birth arrangements, we had planned to fly back to the Midwest ten days prior to our son’s due date. We arrived to a very pregnant Stephanie and settled into our hotel suite together—she (and sometimes her two children) in a room at one end and us in a room at the other end. Josh, the birthfather, stopped by and we all took turns guessing the actual arrival date. We were all convinced the birth was imminent. How wrong could we be?
Every morning we woke up, ate breakfast together and politely inquired if there was “any sign of arrival” before going about our day. Every twinge or cringe from Stephanie prompted the same. After ten days, the due date had come and gone and we were all going a little stir-crazy holed up in a hotel room.
At five days late, we all went to see the midwife to find out if the baby was stressed. Thankfully he wasn’t, unlike his parents-to-be. Kathy handed Stephanie two capsules containing a specially blended homeopathic labor inducer. We had talked before about induction—Stephanie was very clear that she wanted everything to happen naturally—so this was as close to a natural induction as we could get.
On the way back to the hotel, we picked up some children’s paint and spent the evening painting pictures on Stephanie’s stomach to have a little fun and relieve some stress before she took the pills, just in case they worked and tomorrow was indeed the big day. We all laughed together as we painted a giant sun on her belly, followed by a huge rainbow. When we started this whole adoption journey, we envisioned meeting a birthmother close to her due date and never really imagined having a relationship with her, let alone living with her or painting her giant, pregnant belly. We were really bonding and it felt good. It felt right.
There was no guarantee the labor inducer would work, so when we all got up the following morning to have breakfast and watch Stephanie take the first pill, we figured it would just be another day. Lunchtime came and we called the midwife, who told Stephanie to take the second pill. Within about thirty minutes, Stephanie came back into the living room of our hotel suite. She looked profoundly different and announced the baby was on his way. Stephanie had labored for a day with her previous two children and so when Kathy and her assistant, Monica, arrived an hour later, followed by Josh shortly after that, we figured we were in for a very long night. Wrong again!
At 4:47 P.M., her water broke. Stephanie was in the bathroom and we were at the other end of the suite in our room. She asked that we leave, so Josh, Eric and I took a walk across the street. We were gone about twelve minutes when everyone’s phone started to beep and we raced back to the hotel.
Our Connor had finally arrived. We walked into the room the moment he took his first breath and, although we couldn’t see him, we heard his first cry. Fortunately, no one had a camera pointed at us at that time—our faces would have made quite the picture.
About thirty minutes later, Kathy came into our room to give us an update. She had a puppy pad for an apron that was covered in blood. So much for there not being a mess! The midwife told us that Connor had gotten stuck on his way into the world. His cord had wrapped around his neck and snapped upon delivery, spraying blood and stem cells all over the bathroom and its occupants. But thanks to Kathy and her quick responsiveness, a life-threatening situation was avoided and everything turned out fine.
Kathy told us that Stephanie was getting settled and that she would come back to get us shortly when Stephanie was ready. To this day, the hotel has no idea what happened in Room 908 that afternoon. If anyone ever takes a blacklight into that bathroom, they will likely call the FBI.
The next thirty minutes felt like forever. When Kathy finally came back into the room to get us, every possible emotion swept over me. Most of all, I just wanted to see him. As we walked across the hall, our hearts in our throats, I wondered how it was going to feel when my eyes met his for the first time. I soon discovered it was like nothing I’ve ever felt before in my life. There he was, curled up against Stephanie, feeding. We knew he was feeding before we went into the room—it was at the midwife’s recommendation to help Stephanie heal physically—but I couldn’t stop the feeling of dread that suddenly came over me.
We had discussed long before that there would be no breastfeeding, given the bonding it promoted. This was Stephanie’s position and we had supported it. Now I was overcome with doubt that she might change her mind. She smiled as she saw us, looking more beautiful than ever despite being completely exhausted. She motioned for us to come and hold our son. I held him first. I’d never held something so precious in my entire existence, an existence that now felt more complete.
I quickly realized just how instinctive parenting is—although I defy any man to be truly ready to change his first meconium-filled diaper, complete with a birthmother and midwife audience. As we fumbled around, the fear of Stephanie changing her mind about the adoption still lingered in the back of our heads. It had just taken us ten minutes to change a diaper. What if she thought that meant we weren’t ready to be parents?
I mentioned earlier about waiting three days before telling everyone the baby’s name and a three-day ban on buying gifts, but didn’t explain why. Every state has its own adoption laws, including the point at which an adoption can progress after birth. For us, that was three days. The next seventy-two hours were the most complex of the entire process. We were still living in the same hotel room with Stephanie, as we had been for three weeks. Eric and I were in a state of exhausted joy as she began to grieve. It was a humbling irony; there was nothing that could be said, nothing that we could do to fix it or heal it. Of all the unexpected things we had experienced on this journey, those three days were by far the most profound. They made us ever more grateful for Connor as the process reached its conclusion and we could take our son home.
It has been over a year now and we are still in constant contact with Stephanie. We text, phone or video chat once or twice a week. Video chat is wonderful since it allows Connor and Stephanie to see each other and it’s an added bonus when Stephanie’s two children are able to join in as well. We also have an agreement to meet in person once a year. We just flew back to Illinois recently to see Stephanie, Josh and Josh’s mom. We had a wonderful time with plenty of great photo opportunities.
If you were to ask her, Stephanie would tell you that she didn’t give Connor to us; she gave us to him and we are forever blessed that she bestowed that honor upon us. Stephanie is now a part of our family, as we are a part of hers. Although life will take us all in many new and exciting directions, we will be forever bound, because the bond of love between parent and child is the strongest bond of all.
