Revisiting Places

There are some places that will be forever attached to your pregnancy, birthing and adoption experience. They may be the place in which you lived during your pregnancy, whether it was your own apartment or your parents’ home, the hospital in which you delivered your child, the physical agency building or attorney’s office where you were counseled or the courtroom in which your rights were terminated (if your state requires your presence or if you attended). Most birth parents will go out of their way to avoid returning to these places, even if it means avoiding their childhood home. However, there are some cases in which avoidance simply doesn’t work. Sometimes you simply must revisit a place that brings you emotional turmoil or brings back vivid memories of those times.

Like what? When couldn’t you avoid such a time? Do I have a personal example? Of course.

Shortly (as in a week) after the birth of our son, my Husband and I had to drive to Pennsylvania to visit my Great-Grandmother in the hospital. She was very, very ill and, at the time, not expected to make it. I was summoned to the hospital so that we could smuggle her newborn Great-Great-Grandson into the hospital. The problem? You got it. The hospital in question was where the Munchkin was born. It held a lot of very bad memories, as I was treated poorly by some of the staff, and was also just full of vivid, emotional memories of her birth, our time together and that awful goodbye.

I didn’t want to go. I’ll be honest. If my Great-Grandmother wasn’t so special to me and her health wouldn’t have been in actual question at the time, I wouldn’t have gone. I’m all for avoiding places that make me feel like that hospital does. Yes, me. I’m usually all for facing your fears and emotions head on but that place really, really just throws me for a loop.

Pulling into the parking lot, I felt immediately defeated. The wave of emotions was so intense that I could hardly function. I am thankful that I had to concentrate on other things, like trying to figure out how to use our travel system for only the second time, and thus didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on the sadness that had washed over me. I am also thankful that I had discussed my fears with my Husband on the drive to the hospital; he was supportive and made sure that I was okay as we went through the evening.

Long story short? I survived. Would I have survived as well if I had to go to the labor and delivery area of the hospital? I’m not quite sure. Even our current hospital’s labor and delivery area (of which I’m a frequent customer because of my pregnancy health) can freak me out (mostly at night). (And I never, ever look in the nursery windows.) But I survived.

I don’t have any problem visiting my parents home as I didn’t spend the majority of my pregnancy there, just some hectic health weeks. Mostly, I was alone in my apartment at the time. Have I ever gone back there? No. And the thought makes me nauseous! I didn’t go to a court room; the papers were signed in my apartment. (More shadiness on the part of the attorney and part of the reason that everything had to be signed a second time, four months later!) I don’t have a physical aversion to the physical building of the agency since I never went to it and never met one of those people face-to-face. (Though, let me tell you, I’d sure like to.) But that hospital? Can’t really handle it. I did because I had to. And I imagine that other first parents also “do it” because they “have to” with their physical places.

How have you handled revisiting hard adoption-related places? Do they bother you at all or can you separate the experiences? Do you have advice for readers (and, uhm, me?). If so, please share!

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For more, read:

1. Relinquishment Video: Hard to Watch.

2. Dealing with Milestones.

3. The Years Didn’t Get Easier for Me.

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Photo Credit.

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