It was 1980 and I was 17 years old when I gave birth to
my first child. I was single, a grade-twelve student in high school.
I had been hidden away by my parents during the time I was pregnant,
living in a wage-home, so that the relatives would not find out. But
I never expected what was going to happen to me once I was in the hospital
giving birth -- no-one warned me that my baby would be taken.
I went into labour at 1 am in the morning. My parents
drove me to the Victoria General Hospital on Fairfield Road and signed
me in. I expected a normal labour and delivery, with nothing out of
the ordinary. I didn't expect to be treated differently because I was
"unwed."
After being admitted, I remember being wheeled into a
storage closet, on a guerney, and given sleeping pills and left alone
for the night to "sleep' for the first 6 or so hours of my labour.
But the labour pains kept me awake. The nurse checked on me part-way
through the night and I told her I had been unable to sleep. I can't
remember if she gave me more sleeping pills or not.
In the morning, I had been awake for 24 hours. Being in
labour, I was not permitted anything to eat or drink. The resident or
intern gave me Demorol for the pain, which only made me disoriented
and nauseous.
By the time I was fully dialated, at about 5 pm, I had been awake for
30 hours, without food or drink for the last 18.
I remember being wheeled into a cold white-lit delivery room and strapped
flat on my back to a delivery table, feet up in stirrups, my arms bound
to the table with leather straps -- at the time i thought it was to
keep me from falling down and to protect my baby from germs.
My baby was immediately whisked out of the room the moment
the cord was cut. I could not even catch a glimpse of him. (He was still
my son legally, and was taken without my permission. This how the system
worked - to try to prevent me from bonding with him so I would surrender
him.) I passed out as the episiotomy was sewn up (the same way it was
made - without anesthesia).
I woke up in a hospital room a few hours later.
I was too weak to walk. No-one would tell me about my baby and
I was too scared to ask about seeing him - I was afraid they'd say "no."
I also had no idea that i had the right to see him. The nurses told
me to sleep and I was given heavy sedation. On about the third day,
when I could finally shuffle some distance, finally I asked if I
was allowed to see him. The nurse said yes, much to my surprise.
He was in a nursery far down the hall from my room. The doctor
had put me into the gynocology ward rather than the maternity ward.
Weak, and hurting from bruises and a 4-inch-long stitched-up episiotomy,
i slowly walked alone to the other end of the hospital wing to see my
baby.
I had no idea that seeing my baby, for the first time,
would change my life.
I fell in love with my son as soon as I saw him.
MOTHER-LOVE. A love that comes from the blood and the body and
the soul. No-one had told that when he was born, I would ALSO
be reborn, as a MOTHER. No-one had told me about the instincts,
the bond of one-soul-two-bodies, the shared-needs of mother-and-baby,
the NEED TO BE WITH MY CHILD!!!! This is the reality of birth - that
happens to all women. This is what I found out about, first-hand.
I loved my baby more than life itself. With all my heart, with
every cell in my body, I loved him and I wanted to hug and hold him
and keep him!!!!!
But as I stood there in the nursery, the nurses kept a watchful eye
on me to ensure I didn't pick him up. I felt I was trespassing, just
being there, committing a crime just by looking at him sleeping in his
basinette.
I wanted to keep my baby, but no-one
ever asked me if I wanted to. The social worker came
to my hospital room to give me papers to see me and
bring papers. I cannot remember clearly what she said
to me, but I remember being left with a feeling of
hopelessness. She sent in another of her "clients"
who had surrendered a son three months previously,
to talk me into it, telling me in glowing terms how
it was such a wonderful thing to do. My parents were
firm that there was NO WAY I could bring home my baby
- i was already a family shame to them. What i found
out years later that totally crushed me was that my
fiance had been allowed to see and actually hold his
son with no restrictions, where I had not been given
the chance.
My parents drove me to the social workers
office the next week. I cried when I signed those
papers a few days after his birth. No witnesses to
my signature in her office, or to how she gave me
no options other than adoption or he would be in foster
care "until i decide" (to sign). But the
adults around me had all told me that I had no alternative.
They said it was the best thing for my baby and that
(in my parents' eyes) the main thing was that I was
giving joy to a childless couple. My father told me
not to be selfish. Whatever papers I signed in the
social worker's office, I was never given a copy. No
lawyer was there to explain my rights to me.
I was never told if welfare for single mothers under
the age of 19 was available (I found out 22 years
later that it probably was).
All I could do was to tell the social
worker that I would be back in my son's life in 19
years, when I was legally allowed to search for him,
and to tell the adopters that. I also asked for her
to ask them to write me a letter during the first
year to tell me how he was doing. She promised that
she would tell them this. The letter never arrived.
And NO-ONE told me the truth about
the aftermath. No-one told me about the consequences
(grief, pain, loss), although I have found since that
the social work profession at that time WAS
well-aware of them. Part of me died when
that final phonecall from the social worker came,
telling me that my precious baby had been picked up
from the hospital.
So, having lost my son and with my emotions frozen in
a state of shock, I finished off Grade 12 in 4 months, but eight or
so months later the shock wore off, and I spent the next two years failing
at university while trying to cope with the deep pain of losing my son.
The pain of what happened to us both led to the break-up of my relationship
with my soul-mate.
And no-one ever told me about the pain
that would never go away - the extreme pain and loss
that is a hundred times worse than losing a close
relative to death (comparing it to when my brother
and father died). All I had left was to
wait: counting down the years, months, and weeks
until I was legally allowed to find my son again.
I tried searching for him myself, even hiring a P.I.
when he was about 8 or 9, but I had no success in
finding him. I had three more children in the
meantime, in order to try to fill that "black hole"
in my heart. It didn't work. I found out
the hard way that no child can ever replace another
child. That the pain does NOT go away.
This is my story. I never ceased to love my son.
I never ceased to miss him. And the anger that i feel at
myself for failing to find a way to keep him is stronger than any anger
he might feel towards me. But it comes down to this: I was a 17 year
old mother, manipulated and used as a broodmare to produce a baby for
the social worker's customers. When an underaged woman is coerced by
adults into having sex, it's called sexual exploitation. What about
when they take advantage of her fertility for profit? It is reproductive
exploitation!
When I read the messages from young
women on "adoption option" message boards,
saying how they think that adoption is the best thing
for their child, I wish there was some way I could
let them know the truth about what they will experience.
I would not wish this existance - the pain I feel
every moment of every day - even on my worst enemy.
And when I hear adoptees talk about our "choice
to relinquish" - I want them to know that for
many of us, there
was no choice.
Reunion Postscript: when my son was 19, my sentence
for fertility-beyond-marriage ended and I was finally legally-allowed
to search for him. My banishment from his life was over. I searched
for him and found him. And when I looked into his eyes, our souls recognized
each other, and I recognized my child whom I lost to adoption so long
ago. I broke down uncontrollably crying as the walls broke down inside
me and the grief that I had buried for 20 years came to the surface.
My strong, tall, broad-shouldered, blue-eyed son hugged me until I was
able to stop crying. My beloved son is once more reunited with his family
- our family - and with his Papa (what he calls his natural father).
He is again using his birth-name, lives with us, and we both hope in
the future for me to able to adopt
him back so we can legally be family once again. And my heart heals
a little bit more each time he hugs me and says "I love you, Mom."
