Parenting After Placement: Dealing with New Emotions – Part One

In my previous two posts, I had talked about how birth mothers viewed their parenting ability prior to and shortly after bringing their first parented child home. I then asked them if their successes as a parent brought unexpected emotions or if it further solidified their adoption decision. As always, responses varied:

Did your success as a parent bring up any new emotions that you hadn’t experienced prior to the birth of your first parented child? Did you feel angry with yourself or others involved in your adoption? Did the feelings further solidify the decision that placement was the right option for your situation?

An emotionally charged question at best, the answers I got ranged from angry that I had asked something so ludicrous to angry at the world to having little or no opinion on the matter. It’s hard to make heads or tails of a situation when the answers are so varied but from what I’ve gathered, the successes of parenthood either made some women even more convinced that adoption was the right option for their first born or just the opposite. Throw in some other emotions that I neither thought to ask nor they thought to expect and we have proof that parenting after placement effects us all in different ways.

One mother, M, did experience anger as she realized certain truths about parenthood:

I was VERY angry, angry at the adoption center for not informing me that financial reasons werent a good enough reason to place, angry at birthfather for being a wimp, Angry at myself for not trying harder to inform myself when no one else did.

I think an important point in what M had to say on the matter was not the anger with the adoption center but the anger with herself. We always want to hear how it was easy and there was no anger, hurt or adjustment period when we’re talking about motherhood. However, I think it’s important for birth mother’s gearing up to start their own family to realize that anger falls within the realm of possible feelings. Hopefully that knowledge will better prepare some mothers if they happen to feel that way.

C brought up, again, how outside forces affected how she felt about this particular topic.

Seeing how my mother totally got so into being grandma for #2 was also hard..as I think the situations were very much the same and she also was prepared to embrace and accept the second pregnancy..and if made to ..would have for the first too.

Many (many!) birth mothers have discussed this issue with me: how their parent(s) shunned their first pregnancy but jumped right into grandparenthood with the second child, acting as if it was the first time. Sometimes situations had improved and sometimes they had not. Friends, family members and others will most likely treat this like their first experience with your children. It might be hard, it might hurt and it might make you frustrated or angry. I think the most important advice I could give to a mother on this particular subject is to speak up. If you don’t want this child referred to as the “first grandchild” on your side, tell them not to do it. Will they be upset? Angry? Annoyed? Maybe. That’s their issue to deal with: not yours.

Continued…

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More from the Parenting After Placement series.
13. Ability As A Parent – Part Two.
12. Ability As A Parent – Part One.
11. Our First Four Days Home.
10. The First Weeks Home – Part Two.
9. The First Weeks Home – Part One.
8. Personal Labor and Delivery Differences – Part Two.
7. Personal Labor and Delivery Differences – Part One.
6. Delivery Differences.
5. Differences During Pregnancy – Personal Experience.
4. Differences During Pregnancy – Part Two.
3. Differences During Pregnancy – Part One.
2. About the Mothers.
1. A Series Beginning.

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