by Ann Fessler
My identity somehow got wrapped up in having the longest hair and the coolest guitar player in town. I was so frigging proud of that hair. Yeah, I was way cool. I dressed really well and supported an entire band on my salary. People wrote songs about me. That was my identity. I didn’t have any sense of myself at all. So whatever I attached myself to, that was my worth. I didn’t know who the hell I was. I knew that I was not a good person, though. That, I knew.
—Nancy III
Although these women were released from the hospital without any documents related to the birth of their baby, some did manage to hang on to artifacts from their days in the hospital, or to acquire pictures that provided a tangible link to their child.
I remember going home and then trying to start my life over, with all the secrets and hush-hush and all that. I cried every night with the diaper I took. I had this diaper and I could still smell her. They took pictures of my daughter and I couldn’t wait to get them because I just wanted to have something. I cried and I waited for the pictures to come from the hospital, but they never came.
—Carolyn I
I got a picture of him in the mail. You know, they have photographers that go to the nurseries and take pictures of the newborns. Well, I got the picture. I kept it for probably ten years. I had it in a little brown frame in my drawer, hidden away. Every once in a while, I’d take it out. I always cried and cried. Finally, when we lived on the farm in the seventies, I burned it. Oh, how I wish I hadn’t. I thought it would somehow get rid of the pain, but it didn’t.
—Glory
I had a little black-and-white photograph of my daughter, and on the front of the little folder it said “First Picture of Life,” and it had little gold stars and little angels on it. I would only allow myself to look at the photograph on her birthday every year. I would take it out and it would take me quite a while before I could even open the little cover, so I knew the cover with the little stars very well. I would study that cover and try to compose myself enough to look at the picture.
You go on with your life but you know out there in the world is a piece of you floating around. I’m not a religious person, but I would pray to trees or stars, or the moon, or whoever is in control, to please make her safe.
—Pamela I
Women often experienced extreme sadness on the anniversary of their baby’s birth. The birth of subsequent children was also a powerful reminder, triggering not only memories of the earlier birth but also fears that this new baby might also be taken from them.
For a while I was abusing alcohol, especially during the month of June, because my daughter was born in June and I couldn’t face any part of that month. I would cry most of the month and feel miserable. My youngest daughter had no idea what bad, bad thing happened to me in June, but she knew that June was the month you couldn’t talk to me. When she got a little older, I told her about her sister and she understood. Out of all of my kids, my youngest girl is very, very sensitive to other people’s feelings.
—Bonnie
I always wondered where my little girl was, if she was being fed and loved and held and cuddled. Every birthday I would say to myself, “Happy birthday, Kelly Maureen. Mommy loves you.” My calendars were always marked in really, really tiny print. I always thought that maybe when she turned eighteen she might want to find her mother. Or maybe when she was twenty-one or twenty-five. Those were the years I figured. Nothing happened, but you never stop thinking.
I remember after she turned eighteen I started going through the brides’ section in the newspaper every Sunday. She could have been anywhere in the world, but I’m checking every Sunday. Eight years, I’m looking in the newspaper for anyone that looks like me. Anybody that happened to have the name Kelly—because I didn’t know they changed the name—and every blonde, I’ve got to read the whole thing and check it out with a magnifying glass. That’s just what I did on Sundays.
—Karen II
I wanted more children so bad. I got pregnant and that’s when it all started coming back to me. That’s when everything started. That’s when I couldn’t run away from it anymore. She was due almost the exact same time of the year that my first one was born. It was, like, I had my baby back. I just held on to her. I was in heaven for a month, but then I had to go back to work because my husband didn’t have a job. I couldn’t handle it. That was the beginning of the end of my marriage. That was the beginning of me becoming aware of what I’d gone through. I had to put her in day care and it was devastating for me. It felt like I had given her up. It felt like I had abandoned her. It was terrible.
I knew nothing. I’ve never met another birth mom in my life. I still know nothing except that when my baby was three days old they took her away. That’s all I know. It’s like my blood runs cold when I think about it.
—Suzanne
One of the most common consequences of relinquishment for the women I interviewed was difficulty in forming healthy relationships with men. The low self-esteem, anger, resentment, and lack of trust they felt made it difficult. Some women dated, and some married men who treated them badly. They felt so worthless that they believed they didn’t deserve a decent guy. Others married the first man who showed any interest in them because they were eager to normalize their life and, in some cases, have another baby as soon as possible.
I never told my husband about my experience with having a baby and giving him up for adoption. We were married for fourteen years. We had two children—two girls. The only thing that was wrong with the marriage was he drank and it got worse as the years went on. He lost a couple of jobs, cracked up a lot of cars. In the back of my mind I was thinking, “My God, I can’t believe I live with this.” But also, “Well, this is what I deserve.” I’d say to myself, “You know, you’re no great shakes. Look at your past.” It was always, “Well, this is what I deserve.” I mean, how could I even expect to have anything better than this?
—Maureen II
The only other relationship I ever had with anybody that I was serious about turned out to be a bad person. I didn’t think I deserved a nice guy. That relationship was my last opportunity to be with somebody that I loved enough to have a child with. So I decided I was never going to have kids and I found a doctor and went in and had a tubal ligation when I was thirty.
You feel different than everybody else. That never went away. I mean, if you’re normal, at some point you meet the right guy, your parents plan this big wedding and you have a family. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to have a “normal” relationship. Most guys want to have kids at some point. Maybe that gave me permission to do what I did, I don’t know. But the men that I was meeting were not appropriate husband material at all. I worked for a halfway house and met real criminals; I dated real criminals. It didn’t occur to me that I should be dating a banker or a lawyer or somebody like that. You can’t expect anything from a drug addict, so they never disappointed me. All the other men in my life were big disappointments. The semiserious types, who had regular jobs, always disappointed me. Only afterward did I realize that this is a self-esteem issue.
—Diane II
Another profound impact of surrender was evident in the women’s subsequent response to babies. There seemed to be no middle ground. Some women had a very strong desire to have another child immediately and were conscious of trying to replace the baby they had lost. Others said they could not stand to be around babies.
I met a young man when I rented a television set. He was working part time as the television-rental person, so we went out. I suppose I would have dated anybody at that point—a frog, a hamster, whatever, anything breathing and warm. We ended up having a very quick romance and marriage. I married this guy after knowing him for four or five months. Looking back, I wanted another baby. That was all it was, that was the focus of my life.
I was married for three years and I told him it wasn’t working, that I didn’t want to be married anymore, probably because I couldn’t get pregnant with him. I had
to go find someone else, which I did do in short order. An old high-school boyfriend was home from the army. He was kind and nice. I thought I was madly in love. We met up and lickety-split, we got married. About a month after we were married, I got pregnant.
I was the happiest person in the whole world. It was unbelievable. I savored every little ounce of that pregnancy. I was in absolute heaven. When it came time to have this baby, I was in such heaven that I had no labor pain. My endorphins were so active from my psychological state that I didn’t feel a thing. They put that baby on my chest and…this is the one that I could keep. The whole thing was ecstasy for me. It was joyous. It was heaven. It was totally, totally, totally wonderful, absolutely, spectacularly wonderful, and filled up that hole inside me a tiny bit, but not completely.
My level of devotion to this baby, I think, sealed the fate of my marriage. I loved my husband, everything was fine, but way down deep inside of me, I needed that baby, I didn’t need a husband. He must have sensed that on some level. We were married for eleven years and then he found somebody else. I remember him asking me early on who was more important to me, the baby or him, and of course I said, “The baby.” I made some lousy decisions about men, that’s for sure. I should have just gone the turkey-baster route—had artificial insemination and gotten my baby that way. And that’s the truth.
—Pamela I
Although many women were anxious to get pregnant again, others were decidedly not. For about 30 percent of the women I interviewed, the child they surrendered was their only child. A similar high percentage has been found in other studies of surrendering mothers.7 Four of the mothers I interviewed resorted to extreme measures to avoid having more babies: they surgically ended their ability to have children before they were in their mid-thirties.
I couldn’t stand to be around children, couldn’t stand it. I didn’t want to look at babies or be around babies. If my friends had babies, I vanished. It was too painful. It was just too much. I would pooh-pooh it, you know, like it was an undesirable thing to do. That was my self-defense.
After I left my ex-husband, there was a thirteen-year period before I lived with another man and that’s the man I’m married to now. During that time, they wanted me to go off birth control, so I had my tubes tied. I couldn’t allow myself to have a normal relationship and have a family of my own. So there’s a huge thing that is irretrievably gone. I will never have that experience of being a mother. I gave that up when I gave her up.
—Nancy III
The women cited a variety of other reasons for not giving birth again, such as early menopause or cervical cancer. Still others did not form the stable relationships that might have increased their chances of parenting. Some women did try to get pregnant again but experienced secondary infertility, which is defined as “the inability to become pregnant, or to carry a pregnancy to term, following the birth of one or more biological children.”8 Secondary infertility is a condition thought to be common among surrendering mothers and it is often mentioned anecdotally as the primary reason that such a high percentage of these mothers never had other children. However, among those I interviewed, unexplained infertility was no more prevalent than the conscious decision to remain childless. Some women did not have other children because they felt they would be dishonoring the baby they relinquished if they raised another child. Of those I interviewed, five who did not give birth to other children either adopted a child or raised a foster child.
When I was around twenty-nine, I met my first husband. I wanted a family, I think that was the number-one reason I got married. I found out I couldn’t have any more children. I went through whatever was available for fertility testing at the time and they could never find a reason. There was nothing medically wrong. I did find out in therapy later that oftentimes that happens as a result of trauma.
—Kathi
After I gave up my baby girl, I don’t know how to explain it but it’s almost like you go about your business day after day, and you do what you have to do, but your heart is so broken. I never had any other children. I know this isn’t going to make sense to a lot of people, but in my mind I had my baby and I gave her up. I really wasn’t…worthy. Maybe it’s because I gave her away, I don’t know—I just felt I should not have any other children. That’s the way I looked at it. I had my chance.
—Karen II
Most of the women who did have subsequent children described themselves as overprotective mothers. They worried constantly that something was going to happen to their children. Some of the women talked about the difficulty they had in forming strong attachments because they feared their children would be taken from them or would die. They stayed emotionally distant in order to protect themselves from another loss.
My three children from my marriage suffered because I didn’t allow them to do anything. I kind of broke their spirits because I was so overprotective. I didn’t allow them to do so many things, because I was just so sure they would die.
When my first child from my marriage was born, I was terribly afraid. I was a nervous wreck. I was just so uptight…just the fear. I was calling the doctor almost every day. I just knew this baby was going to die because God was going to punish me for what I did. As a human being, it is wrong to give your flesh and blood away. I never, ever felt relinquishment was the right thing. So I knew God was going to punish me and he was going to do it with my secondborn. I was a little more relaxed with my third, and then more so with my fourth child. But with all three of the kids I raised I was never really affectionate. I just felt somehow somebody was going to take them from me or something was going to happen to them.
—Christine
It did affect my relationship with my subsequent children in this way. When I had the first child that I raised, five years later—I don’t know, it’s like because you’ve learned this pattern of keeping yourself distanced it’s not so easy to break that pattern. So part of me always held myself away. Part of me always holds some part of myself away in every intimate relationship. I’ve really had a pretty hard time with intimacy, because it doesn’t feel safe. I really have to force myself to be intimate with people I love. I really have to make a conscious decision. It doesn’t come naturally.
—Ann
Quite a few women reported that they had problems with intimacy in general. Some women felt they were afraid of closeness in all of their personal relationships. A few described going through their entire lives feeling somewhat numb.
For a long time afterward, I was really emotionally closed down. I definitely got a life going, but it took me a long time to do it. I really didn’t want to be too involved with anybody. For one thing, it just leaves you too vulnerable and so in a kind of self-protective way I vowed that I would never get in that position again. I would never be that dependent on anybody again for my emotional happiness or for my direction.
I think it was a necessary position to take up and it certainly got me through. But, you know, it also becomes a little dysfunctional after a while. So eventually I did, you know, need people. That was hard, to sort of come back to the center again.
—Deborah
I think one way that it’s been detrimental to me is that the things I should feel very excited about I can’t really feel them. I know I’m excited but I’m not in touch with my feelings. I’m detached from a lot of things that I know I should be closer to. I just can’t respond the way I’d like to because, I don’t know…maybe I feel I was nullified, or just not considered a person. I wasn’t considered a person worthy of receiving help to keep her child.
—Carole II
I got my bachelor’s degree, I got married, I got a job, we moved, I got a master’s degree. I kept going to school and I worked with emotionally disturbed children. It’s like I had to work with the hardest kids, put in the most hours, and just keep doing and doing and doing, which is what I did for most of my life. I just kept doing, but something was missing.
There was a whole part of me, the e
motional, compassionate part of me, that was just simply dead. I lacked a real, deep ability to feel and have compassion for people. I just couldn’t. I had closed it off entirely. It was easy to be compassionate with strangers. It doesn’t require the ongoing, deep intimacy. Especially if it’s a stranger you do something for once and walk away. But an ongoing kind of compassion and intimacy, that’s the kind I would close out, because it could hurt. There was nothing I could do except blame myself for not being a good enough person. Something was wrong with me. And that’s how it went for thirty years.
—Glory
Many women became very successful in their careers but in retrospect felt that their drive to overachieve was an attempt to keep themselves too busy to think deeply. Others felt they needed to excel in order to prove to their family, or to themselves, that they were not the failures they had been made to feel they were.
I did go on, but I kind of went on by myself. There’s always this kind of depression, this sadness, but I never addressed it. I never paid much attention to it. I was always able to just be pretty functional, in fact, overly functional. I would be overly busy and I would juggle. I didn’t just want to go to school, I wanted to go to Cal Poly. I didn’t just want to get a degree, I wanted to get an engineering degree. I started running, I had to run marathons. It was, like, “Look at me. I’m really good. I’m spectacular. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. There’s nothing wrong with me.” I was just out to prove that constantly, over and over and over again and I still do that.
—Suzanne
Some women thought they had coped fairly well, but they developed recurring dreams or physical ailments that could not be suppressed. In some cases, they did not connect their symptoms to their surrender experience until they were reunited with their child years later and the symptoms disappeared.