Dealt a bad hand

I am a mum. I am a mum, a birth mum.

That will never change, but what did change was how I perceived myself. It’s how many birth parents are perceived by others the moment you no longer hold your child. It’s that moment you look into your child’s eyes, hug them tight and say goodbye.

I can still hear the crying and the pitched scream of my son as he was carried away in the arms of his foster carer.

Grief: the process to which is the response to the loss of someone to which a bond and attachment was formed. You grieve as a birth mum, but you grieve for a child that has not died. They are still living, breathing, and growing. But you say goodbye knowing that you’ll never see them again.

You’re vulnerable. As a first-time mum. The expectations that are put upon you, the spotlight. You are judged on your feeding methods, breast, or formula. Whether or not you co-sleep, putting them in front of a screen or a book. It was hard enough feeling judged on needing a C-section, yet the judgement was even more prominent when my whole life had to be mapped out in front of social services.

There was no shadow I could hide in. From how I presented, if my hair was brushed, if I wore deodorant, even down to if I had bags under my eyes and what I had posted on social media. Everything was judged, to be scrutinized, to see if you met the benchmark for “good enough”. I guess I was dealt a bad hand.

I never backed down in my fight to keep my son in my care. I applied for a mother and baby placement, but the more the time went on, the more I saw my son in the contact centre, taking him out for walks, bathing him, talking to his foster carer on his milestones, it became clear that he was settled, and to take him out of that just to prove myself, it would break him, it would break me.

So, I withdrew the mother and baby unit application. I continued to do every they asked for, and more. It broke me every time I had to walk away from the contact centre, but I couldn’t let them see how much it killed me inside. I would cry myself to sleep, with his elephant teddy that had sat with him in his NICU cot, placed under my head. I would look over the photos taken during our time together.

It hurt. It burned. I still have nights where the memories play in my mind, like a horror movie. There was this horrific heavy feeling in my chest. The closer the date came to the final court hearing, the heaver it became.

I didn’t agree with the LA position, I didn’t agree with it for a long time, but in my heart, I knew it was best for my son. He needed a life that I could not give him. He needed that permanency, he had the right to a family that could. As his mum, I owed it to him to make sure that nothing stood in the way of that. I was open in sharing that, even in my statement to the judge, I openly admitted that I could not do the best for him… No amount of support from the LA, the foster carers, the contact support workers, the agency that was brought into help prepare me

22nd September 2017…. “I award the LA with the Adoption order…” the words that tore me into a thousand pieces. Words I still hear. I crumbled. My two friends tried to comfort me as best as they could, but the Medway River became the only thing in my mind that could surround me to mend the pieces of me that had just been broken. I wanted to, but I didn’t. That was the longest drive home.

Knowing that others would soon be found to call him theirs, and him to call them mum. That broke me again. I knew then I could still do right by my son.

Adopters, they are people wanting to start their family, possibly expand it. Who was I to be resentful of that? It was never their fault as to why I wasn’t “good enough”. The TTFN (Ta-Ta-For-Now) contact came and went. It was 3 months before I heard anything about him being placed, but I had made it clear that I had wanted to meet the people that were to be his family.

I had to meet them, I had to look them in the eye, I had to know that my son would be safe. How could I not meet them? How could I let time go by (in the hope that one day he might come looking) and tell him that I never met the people who gave him a life, kissed his knee when he fell, gave him hugs and reassurance. I needed to meet them, not just for my own reassurance, but for him as well.

I did meet them.

****** There are 2 cards on the table when it came to meeting his new parents:

1) being that the adopters would not want to meet with me or

2) that they would.

1) post-adoption contact “could” be 1 basic letter a year or

2) there wouldn’t be any contact.

I had been delt a bad hand from the start of my life.

Luckily for me, the adopters held the 3rd card.