“So you couldn’t have your own child?” She says to me with a tinge of sadness and pity in her eyes…..
Here’s the thing lady-
I am a nurturing maternal woman who has felt no need to carry a child in my own uterus to be considered a mother and frankly your comments are oppressive.
My body. I have autonomy over my body. I have the privilege to decide exactly how I want to use my strength, my power, my health, my everything. It is oppressive to hear people ask me if I’m going to “try for my own” or assume we came to adoption because I was unable to carry a child. The comments insinuating that adoption is 2nd choice. The women who love to tell me about “a friend who adopted and then got pregnant!” Like that’s supposed to make me feel better? One would have to assume I feel bad about my choice in the first place. People assume the 1st way, perhaps the best way, to mother is to carry a child for 9 months. This is not my 1st way of mothering or my best way. My first way, my best way, is mothering through open adoption. To think that I would not know R- that he wouldn’t be my child if our life and choices had been slightly different makes me marvel at this world.
I am using all of my woman to prepare for our second baby. Just not in the way society expects me to or wants me to. My body is doing miraculous things as I begin the adoption process again. The miracle of pregnancy and the miracle of adoption. Both are miracles. I am relying on my body to keep me healthy. I’m relying on my body to push me through the stress and the fear and the unknown that is part of adoption. My brain will be working overtime as I fill out financial info, autobiographies, create a profile book about my family, and begin to think about the complexities of my second child’s birth family. My breasts are preparing to try to breastfeed (yep- this is a thing adoptive moms can do). My heart is on the line as I will no doubt fall in love with a baby before it is determined if I will be their parent. This wreaks havoc on my body. This could happen over and over again. My body will build me up again. No, I did not grow a human in me, and that can make me feel like less of a mother. In particular, hearing society constantly say after a woman gives birth, “rest, you grew a human in you!” I will eventually bring home our child and my body will also need time to heal from the adoption process. Us adoptive moms deserve a little sugar from the world too- “rest, you adopted your child!”
I am a strong, powerful, woman who is all things mother. My ability or inability, my desire, or lack of desire to carry a child makes me no less of a woman or mother than a woman who experiences the awesomeness of pregnancy.
That’s what I should have said to that lady this morning :)
Love to all, but a little extra love to all of the mothers and mothers to be out there just trying to do our best. Xx