by Jenny Molloy
I’d leave the house with Parti so swaddled she looked like the Michelin Man. For me, the outside world was a place full of hazards: slippery concrete staircases; reckless cyclists who would crash into the pushchair; joggers who would knock her from my arms; escaped lunatics who would snatch her away from me.
My heart would start pounding as I neared the park on our daily outing. What about dogs? How would I stop a dog from attacking her? I zigzagged my way across the park, cutting back and forth, avoiding dogs and the unsavoury-looking types who seemed to be everywhere these days.
With the fear came doubt. Thoughts that I couldn’t do this. That when I had sworn before a court, in front of a judge, that I would do anything to keep this child safe under my protection, I had lied.
Parti was difficult to feed and often irritable, wailing unexpectedly, when something wasn’t just right. Her cry terrified me, especially at night. It was so sad, like she was mourning, as if she was in pain or lamenting – maybe for her real mother.
I would go to her with Andy but she carried on wailing no matter what we did, until she was exhausted and sleep claimed her once more. She also wailed whenever I put her down during the day, leading me to pick her up and hold her for hours at a time. I just couldn’t bring myself to leave her in her pram or cot for any length of time. Every time she wailed I felt like I was failing. I had to stop it.
I’d been warned that some of this behaviour came as a consequence of the heroin her mother took; but I wasn’t helping. If anything, I was reinforcing her behaviour and, although I knew this, I didn’t know how to stop myself, to change what I was doing. I was inexperienced and didn’t have the answers.
Maybe I didn’t deserve to be a mother. This was a fear that came from the fact that I couldn’t have children. Neither of us could. My husband had a low sperm count and the sperm that were there were, in the words of the report, ‘sluggish’.
When I mentioned this theory of mine to Andy, he dismissed it but I knew he felt it, too. We had spent a long and unpleasant period grieving for the fact that we were unable to have children. We’d tried for two years before admitting defeat and going to the doctor. And then we each went through the humiliation of testing and ‘failing’. The next possible option was IVF, for which we turned out to be poor candidates; there was no point in us trying.
Each stage had been a blow – not being able to conceive naturally, then finding out there was something wrong with us, then being rejected even for IVF, which everyone seems to think is so easy these days.
So we decided to adopt. We both loved the idea of giving a child in desperate need a home. It was a stressful process, a strange thing to go through as an adult. You have to place your life, your history and your family and even your friends under great scrutiny – and open up like never before to complete strangers. No matter how good the social workers are, it all feels a bit one-sided, and you spend months feeling as though you’re being judged.
The whole road to Parti was a series of stressful events.
Now we had her, all that stress was coming out.
In the UK four babies are born every day addicted to heroin, crack or other drugs. That’s around 1,500 babies every year, all of them entering the world suffering from ‘neonatal withdrawal symptoms’. Not the greatest of introductions to the world. I couldn’t believe that Parti had been one of them. She was so perfect and such a delight – but she kept falling ill. She came down with several bugs, then an eye infection, followed by a stomach infection that gave her a fever which terrified me beyond words.
Parti’s mother hadn’t wanted to meet us. Social services said there would have been complications attached to any meeting anyway, as she had become closely associated with some serious criminals.
Still, I would have liked to meet her. Maybe it would have helped me to know what kind of woman kept taking heroin while she was pregnant. It might also have helped me to make the mother realise that this outcome was the best option and that she could at least know we were going to take good care of Parti.
Perhaps I was hoping she would give me a reason not to feel anything bad towards her – that she had been a victim of circumstance and couldn’t keep her baby, as much as she might have wanted to. Instead, I wondered whether the part of the mother that made her go off the rails was in Patti. Was the same fate waiting for her, years down the road? I’d heard stories of adopted children falling apart when they reached their teens.
I still wasn’t sure what to tell Patti about her birth mother. This thought weighed heavily on my mind, as did the fact that Patti was not my child. I was not her mother. I was a substitute. Maybe that meant I could never be her mother, our bond could never be that close.
I was supposed to be the winner in this situation. I had the baby I’d so desperately wanted. But I didn’t feel like that at all. Andy moved the cot into our room and I lay awake listening to Patti sleeping at night, checking every few minutes when I couldn’t hear her breathing, looking to see her chest rise, make sure that her face was uncovered.
Every day my doubts grew. I was helpless. Cot death, dogs, accidents, viruses and diseases. I couldn’t fulfil my promise. I couldn’t keep Patti safe from all those things. I wasn’t her mother. She wouldn’t love me. She would grow up to be a drug addict.
I barely ate and only showered when Andy told me I should; I didn’t bother to change and let my clothes pile up, then I stopped changing. I was on alert throughout the night and resented Andy’s casual and uncaring ability (as I saw it) to sleep right through. When he tried to talk to me about how I was feeling, I’d get angry. He didn’t understand. He was a man. He couldn’t possibly understand what I was going through. I wasn’t a mother; I didn’t know what to do – how ‘real’ mothers did it.
After the stress of the night came the lonely day filled with fear. I worked from home and hadn’t taken maternity leave. After all, I hadn’t actually been pregnant and given birth, had I? I just brought a fully formed little girl home and was ready to go. My friends had left me alone, telling me I must be rushed off my feet with friends and family wanting to see the ‘new arrival’.
I cried for no reason. Went to bed exhausted. Woke up after what felt like five minutes’ sleep that came the moment the room started to lighten – I’d made it through another night. But now my heart filled with dread as the day lay before me – night-time was, if anything, the safest; hours of precious isolation in the bedroom.
This was all so crazy because Parti was wonderful. She gave me no cause to doubt her. She giggled, played and was full of desire to learn everything about this amazing, magical world she found herself in.
Eventually, I would go to bed wishing I wouldn’t wake up the next morning.
The doorbell rang. This was Lisa, our social worker, who’d seen us through the adoption and was now coming by to check up on us as we moved towards the day when Parti would be decreed ours by the courts, when we would have just the same rights as any parent in relation to their child.
I dreaded it with every fibre of my being. I tried to stop shaking as I looked at my trembling fingers, smoothed down my clothes, plastered some kind of smile on my face and opened the door.
Lisa was about the same age as me, mid-thirties. I didn’t know that much about her personally, but she’d been kind, professional and genuinely interested in how Andy and I were doing throughout the adoption process, as we crossed off each milestone on our way to our dream of having our own child.
And that was a problem. She knew us both well. I was terrified that she was going to see how badly I was failing, the bags under my eyes, my run-ragged look (I’d lost a lot of weight), the clothes shoved behind the sofa, the wash basket filled to the brim. That she would see Parti looking ill and letting rip with her mournful wail and then she would know I was failing to provide Parti with the environment I’d sworn to provide her with that day in court. And that would mean she would take Parti away. I was a total failure as a mother. I’d spent so long tryin
g to adopt and now I was going to lose my baby through neglect, through my sheer incompetence.
I’d made a superhuman effort to clean up for Lisa. Teapot, mugs and the good biscuits were on the kitchen counter.
It only took her five minutes to notice.
‘I think you have something called Post Adoption Depression,’ she said. I genuinely didn’t understand. My mind had a ‘Say what?’ moment.
‘I know,’ Lisa continued. ‘You didn’t go through pregnancy, the morning sickness, the physical and hormonal changes. You didn’t face the excitement and fear of delivery and you’re not breastfeeding. Your hormones aren’t all over the shop, right?’
I nodded, still unable to speak, unable to keep the fear from my face.
‘It’s a fairly recent discovery. For years there’s been anecdotal reports but, in the last few years, some serious scientific studies suggest that one in five adoptive mothers suffer from this.’
‘But I’m not depressed,’ I said. ‘I’ve never had depression.’
But I’d suffered all the symptoms Lisa then listed: extreme fatigue, unrealistic expectations of parenthood; a lack of community support. Coupled with this are the assumptions people make about adoptive parents; the belief that the mother who doesn’t go through pregnancy and childbirth doesn’t need as much, if any, help, as a natural mother does.
‘Did you take maternity leave?’ Lisa asked.
I shook my head.
‘Thought so. Classic sign. You didn’t feel there was a need. You hadn’t been in hospital and given birth. By not being pregnant and not giving birth you hadn’t earned it. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t do with some support from friends and family – some help around the home, to help clean up and – heaven forbid – babysit to give you some respite.’
Lisa smiled, looking at Parti who was clinging on to the sofa by Lisa’s knees and slapping it with her hands, enjoying the feeling. ‘Besides, I can tell that this little madam is a full-time job.’
Lisa suggested that I should talk to a qualified therapist and that, perhaps, if the therapist thought so, I should see my doctor to talk about the symptoms of depression. For some, mild antidepressants can help. She would check in with me every few days to see how I was doing.
I promised Lisa I would and, once she left, I realised she was trusting me to take care of Parti while I worked through this Post Adoption Depression.
I told Andy and we told each of our parents. Then I told a couple of trusted friends. Not only was it a great unburdening, the help I then received was so much better than I could have imagined. Having a little time away from Parti to readjust, day by day, to her presence and to start enjoying her development, the things that amused and amazed her. The fear and anxiety stayed for a long time but eventually started to fade. I slept for longer at night. But still I worried about the effect of Parti’s past on her future and this dominated my thinking, it was almost all I thought about.
A few months later, I was walking in the park with Parti – who was now chasing unsteadily after dogs and squirrels, something I would have found intolerable not long ago. I crouched down with her to look at a fearless squirrel that was watching us, hopeful for food, just a few feet away. As I did this, for the first time I noticed the squirrel, I mean really saw it, and suddenly I was present in the moment with Parti – being fascinated by the funny, furry, cartoon-like creature sitting on its haunches watching us closely. It was the first time I’d been able to be truly present, not obsessed by my usual gamut of worst fears: that I would somehow let my baby come to harm, that I wouldn’t be able to adjust to this new presence in our lives, or be able to live with the fact that there was this other world from which Parti came, that she would grow up and hate me, that I would lose her, that I could never be her mother. Suddenly I was enjoying the moment – I was in the here and now. At that moment, as if to reward me, Parti threw her arms open wide and launched herself, lips first, against my cheek. My first true moment of happiness as a mother.
And I started to appreciate every moment my baby had to give me – my depression had taught me to enjoy what I had right here in front of me. Take care of today – and tomorrow, with all its unknown dangers, will take care of itself.
SEAN AND CARL
We’d come a long way for this moment – mentally and physically, across space and time. Several months and several hundred miles from home. Now we were on the verge of achieving the dream of having our own son. But first, we were going to meet his mother in a nondescript room in a social services office about three hours’ drive from our home. We were early, she was late. While we waited, we made nervous, awkward conversation with a social worker we hadn’t met before.
We’d both wanted children for as long as I can remember. When we first put ourselves forward we faced a long wait and assessment before we were eventually approved to adopt two children up to the age of six. Most people tend to put in requests for children closer to baby age rather than school age, but it was still early days for gay couples in terms of adoption – like many of the older children out there waiting for adoption, we were at the bottom of the pile. This has since changed, as agencies have started to place more children with gay couples.
We were quite open – boy or girl, any age up to six was fine with us. It was more about a sense of personality and we hoped we could get a feel for that from the child’s appearance, once we saw a photo. As much as social workers don’t want them to, looks do play a part, especially when that’s all you’ve got to go on in the first instance to find something to bond with.
We had researched the subject of adoption and it was quite frightening. We’d learned that it’s not easy at all. Some adoptive parents had been left at their wits’ end by children who – damaged by abuse, living out incredible anger, fear and pain – had kicked, hit and hated, day-after-day, and the parents who gave them so much love, got almost nothing back.
I didn’t think I could manage that. I don’t think I’ve got what it takes to be that resilient. We never expected adoption to be that challenging. I didn’t think we could go as far as these other adopters who took on the most troubled children. I wondered if many of these adopters of older children had their eyes wide open. Saying, ‘Oh, we’re happy with children of any age,’ is great, but they need to talk to other adopters of children that age, which is something our social worker encouraged. The teenage years will hit these children hard – not because of hormones as for most kids, but because that’s when the childhood trauma comes back.
Because our local authority was struggling to find us a child of any age, we looked further afield. We were amazed to discover that there were agencies who supplied you with catalogues. Photos of dozens of children looking into the lens for their forever home – there seemed to be more boys than girls, and lots of brothers, no doubt desperate to stay together.
Another council a long way from home got in touch. ‘I’m sorry we can’t tell you much,’ the caller said. ‘But we have a twelve-month-old boy you might be interested in adopting. The reason I can’t tell you much is that there are some serious issues with regard to some of the people the mother is associated with.’
‘Can we see a photo?’ I asked.
‘No, not at this time, sorry.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘I can’t tell you right now, but if you’re interested then we will come down to see you and tell you more.’
Well, there was nothing there for us to fall in love with but after a quick chat with Carl, it was clear to us both that our instincts were telling us to go for it.
So this baby boy’s social workers travelled down from the Midlands to visit us. We were both so nervous. It felt like such a big deal. I’m used to tough interviews and presentations – I run my own business – but I was really nervous, as was Carl, who was used to dealing with all kinds of children in his job as a primary school teacher. After years of hard work and saving, we felt like we were finally in a position to raise a fam
ily and Carl was planning to take some time away from work to be a stay-at-home dad for a few years.
We talked with the social workers for an hour or so, mainly about ourselves. As things were drawing to a close, I asked if we could see a photo. They took out a file, unhooked a picture and we saw this little boy for the first time. He was beautiful.
‘Can we know his name?’
‘Donald.’
I looked at Carl and I could tell he was feeling just as emotional as I was. We still had so little to go on but we knew we wanted to keep going, whatever was waiting for us. We were both speechless for a few moments before we could finally say that we were ready.
We understood their caution with regard to information. If you’re told too much right at the start, then it may be that you’ll be scared off. And maybe no one will ever come forward. At the same time, there has to be a balance so that you aren’t left with a misleading rosy picture. All we knew was that his birth mother, Michelle, as well as being associated with some unpleasant people, was a drug addict and had been unable to end her dependency on heroin. That’s the way adoption has changed. Fifty years ago, most adopted children came from unwed mothers abandoned by the father of their child, left unable to support their children (or to find a husband to support them). These days it seems that they come from drug addicts.
MICHELLE – A YEAR EARLIER
The nurses had changed.
They thought I was asleep but I couldn’t. I just lay, quietly, waiting until they would let me go, or would leave me alone, so I could go and score. I badly needed to score.
They’d been nice at first when the taxi had dropped me off. Arms around me, lots of questions: ‘Is it your first?’ ‘Who’s your doctor?’ ‘Who should we call?’ ‘Any medical conditions we should know about?’
I knew that my answers – Yes; don’t have one; no one (except maybe my mate Del, who could bring me some drugs); and Yes, but I’m not telling you ’cos I know that will lead to trouble – would not go down well. So I just sighed and moaned and collapsed on to a trolley, where I lay until they found me a bed.