Hidden Pregnancies

[Brian and Cathy]

Here's a story of a birthmom in Montana who hid her pregnancy from everyone until right before the end-- and recently reunited with her son, forty-five years after she'd placed him for adoption: No Secrets, No Lies.

Nice to see another happy ending

I think it's sad that so many times adoptees have been told their birth mother is no longer living Why are they told that if it's not true? To keep them from looking?

Cathy

[ElizabethAnn]

I think it's sad that so many times adoptees have been told their birth mother is no longer living Why are they told that if it's not true? To keep them from looking?

PRECISELY.

[LovingBoo]

What was sad about my cousin (through birth family) was that her birth mom (my Aunt) died in a very tragic accident, and she never even knew. When she was an adult and searched on her own (without her a-parents help or blessing) she was so sad and hurt to find her first mom had died many many years ago. She does have a great relationship with her birth dad but it is on consolation for her loss. I am sad for her to think of all the years she dreamed of meeting her birth mom and in an instant her hopes were gone. I don't know if her a-parents knew that her birth mom had died or not, but I think it would have been easier if my cousin knew this way before she found out. My mom and dad tried to get info on her after my Aunt died, but it was 100% closed and they wouldn't give him ANYTHING.

We were not surprised at all whens she found us, as people had been kind of counting the years till she was 18 and would feel she had the "right". She was 18 too, when she searched. The tricky part was, my grandmother didn't even know she had existed because my Aunt did hide her pregnanacy from her. My dad and his brother went and told my grandmother when my cousin found us. It was a shock since she had no clueand she was sad, but very happy too. My grandmother never got over that loss of her daughter and it was nice for her to see her daugther living on through her long lost granddaughter.

It was a very sad situation, but it's all right where and how it should be now as far as we, her birth family go! Hopefully, one day her adoptive parents will see it for the good it is instead of not wanting to hear anything about it/us. They were not supportive in her search and relationships.

Jenny

[karen&scott]

My grandmother never got over that loss of her daughter and it was nice for her to see her daugther living on through her long lost granddaughter.

Jenny

This is a loss they will share together, and even though the daughter's Birthmom (your Aunt) is already gone, look at all the birthfamily she did find, all life connections to her Birthmom. How wonderful for grandma to see a beautiful reflection of her daughter through the granddaughter she never knew about until now.

Many adoptive parents do not realize what a gift they are able to give their child by way of blessing (approval and support) any search and reunion of their child's birth relatives. Because even if child is not ready to search until after their parents are no longer here, they are able to go forward knowing they have your unconditional blessing. No one else can give that blessing to your child.

Thanks Jenny for sharing.

Karen

[Brian and Cathy]

It was a very sad situation, but it's all right where and how it should be now as far as we, her birth family go! Jenny

That is sad, Jenny But, so nice that you and her other birth family members have welcomed her

Cathy

[Stork Central]

Here's another sad tale of one hidden pregnancy that ended in tragedy, several years back:

Mom Mourns Tiny Baby Kept in Shoebox

Aug. 18, 2004

By Jonathan Lipman, Daily Southtown staff writer

An infant boy was found dead in a shoebox in the home of his 15-year-old mother in Lansing, Ill., on Monday.

That girl wants you to know she didn’t kill the baby. She wants you to know what really happened to her infant son.

How she hid her pregnancy from her family for seven months.

How she gave birth on her own, in a bathtub, at 4 in the morning last Friday.

How she slept next to the tiny body, born two months premature, for two days, without telling a soul, even though she knew her child was dead.

About his name — Raphael Pierre.

She wants you to know she was trying to do what she thought right. But she made mistakes.

“I would like people to know I loved him,” she said. “And I tried to do the most responsible thing I could do.”

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office lists the child’s first name as “Baby Boy.” On Tuesday, the medical examiner ruled the infant died naturally because it was born premature. Police are investigating, but already have said they don’t believe a crime occurred.

The teenager, whose name is being withheld, nevertheless feels at fault. With hair pulled back by a headband and a black Snoopy shirt on her small frame, she looked at the ground and described what happened to “my baby.”

“He was born premature because I didn’t get any natal care,” she said. “And because I was so young.”

The teen said she got pregnant Feb. 4, by a boy she knew from school whom she had been dating for three months. She learned about the pregnancy in May and knew it was a mistake.

“I regret making that mistake, but I understood my pregnancy,” she said, her voice full of conviction. “I wasn’t going to have an abortion ... if I couldn’t give him away, I would have just left (with the baby).”

The girl lives with her parents and brothers in a two-story home on a quiet street in Lansing. Proud of her family, she was afraid of letting her parents down.

“I would rather be a missing girl than have me living off my family like that. Why should they provide for me and my mistake?” she said.

So she made a plan: She would conceal the pregnancy and would arrange for the baby’s adoption on her own. She started calling adoption agencies and settled on The Cradle, based in Evanston, in June. The agency agreed to work with her without telling her parents.

“I wore big shirts,” she said proudly. “And it was a small pregnancy. The day I tried on my graduation dress, that was the day I almost got caught.”

But her parents never figured it out. Last Thursday night, she was supposed to meet a counselor from the adoption agency at a nearby restaurant.

But she began to feel cramps and couldn’t go.

“I didn’t know I was in labor, I just figured I was cramping up,” the girl said.

Determined to keep the pregnancy secret, the girl crawled into the bathtub.

She had no medication, no medical help, and no idea what to do.

At about 4 a.m., she gave birth, all alone.

“It wasn’t bad. I figured it would be worse. I just kept that in mind.”

Right away, she knew the baby was in trouble. He came two months early, and the girl could hear no heartbeat from her new son.

“He didn’t cry. He just shook a little,” she said.

Within 15 minutes, newly named Raphael Pierre was dead.

“I just sat there, I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I didn’t call police. I didn’t have a phone, and I still didn’t want to tell my parents. ... After watching him die in my arms, I just couldn’t do that to them.”

Instead, she took the body of the infant back to her room and curled up with him in her bed.

She kept him there for three days.

“Even though he was dead, I still wanted to be with him,” she said, crying. “Because he was so pretty.”

She spent as much time as she could with the little boy’s body, but still tried to hide what happened from her parents. On Friday, the day she gave birth, she spent the afternoon doing yard work. On Monday, she decided it was time to tell the boy’s father. She placed the baby’s body in a shoebox and went to meet him at school.

After he saw the child, the couple decided to call the adoption counselor.

The agency told them to call police, who came to the home, found the baby, and told the girl’s parents what happened.

She still hasn’t talked to her parents directly about the pregnancy. She says she can’t.

The girl’s parents declined to be interviewed.

The mother said this has happened too fast for her to explain clearly what she feels.

“My daddy, he was worried about my health, and my mommy, she was just confused,” the girl said. “She was so confused how I could go through labor and then smile the next day.”

The girl was hospitalized briefly with an infection, but was told she’ll recover. What she doesn’t know is how she’ll face her family again. She’s still afraid of what they may think.

And she doesn’t know how to make it up to Raphael Pierre. She said she know she owes him.

“I would rather be,” she said, speaking slowly and fighting back tears, “in his situation.”

http://www.News%20-%20Post-Tribune%20%28No...st%20Indiana%29

[ElizabethAnn]

In another tragic tale of a teenager in a panic, a Colorado girl is standing trial for the death of a newborn delivered into the toliet, and her defense attorney is also a mom by adoption: A Very Sad Ending to a Very Young Life. Most likely, the older man who impregnated this teen will never be charged, but her father (who knew of the infant's demise, apparently) is in jail and facing trial.

How do we get the word out to these young women, to help prevent such tragedies? They aren't processing rationally, so whether or not they ever thought of adoption as an option, at the moment, they are in such a dissociative state, critical thinking skills are not of avail to them... but somehow, we need to reach these troubled moms before the panic sets in and the tragedy strikes!

Another reminder, for any moms-to-be out there who may be contemplating their options and need to hear it again; Abrazo's counselors can be reached any time of the day or night, should you need us in an emergency! Just call 1-800-454-5683 (in Texas) or call collect (210/342-5683) and ask our answering service to page the staff member on call.

Let us help you make the kind of plans that you (and your baby) can live with!

[donnag]

So sad!

[ElizabethAnn]

Dr. Cara Barker, who is the daughter of an adoptee and a mom-by-adoption, has written a very thought-provoking column on Huffington Post, about The Lost Girls. (Text appears below in case the link goes bad.) Read it, and share your thoughts?

THE LOST GIRLS: WHEN DOES "ME" BECOME WE?

Dr. Cara Barker

Huffington Post, 1/12/09

With all the news of global challenges lately, you might have missed one story that's been taking place in the Pacific Northwest. No, I am not referring to the battering we've gotten from the four atypical snowstorms in the Greater Seattle area. Nor am I referencing the natural disaster our governor has declared, due to flooding from torrential rains in combo with melting snow.

There is another sort of challenge to be faced. This particular story involves the murder of a baby in a small town by the name of Port Orchard, Washington, just a few days ago. The remains of this newborn were found in the garbage. Apparently, the baby's 16 year old mother has been charged with homicide, dumping her neonatal infant into a dumpster's trash, which was then sent to a compactor. The investigators found the baby's body after combing through the debris of 60 tons of compacted refuse. Unspeakably horrid.

Buried, Silent Cries

If you missed the story, it's not surprising. The news has been jammed with stories of ongoing disasters, including those in the Gaza strip, leaving over 700 dead. Meanwhile, the toll mounts in other war-torn parts of the Middle East. And, we must not forget the ongoing, alarming levels of warnings over the economy, as well as distractions from politicians like the governor of Illinois. There has also been extensive coverage on the new battleship launched with George H.W. Bush. We are obsessed with war.

With this in the limelight, it is all-too-easy to overlook one baby's death. Such an oversight, however, would speak to the sort of crimes against humanity that get hidden underneath the consequences of that lust for power that always seems to get our world in trouble. But if we turn away from the silent cries of one lost baby, if we tell ourselves the story that 'there is nothing we can do' then we turn away from all that is good, decent, and meaningful in our time here on Planet Earth. As long as we continue to focus on 'me' issues, we fail in our most fundamental task of this millennium: to find a way of becoming 'we' in ways which build a better world.

The Truth of the Matter

We are here to make a difference. We are here to bear Witness. We are here to live on purpose with what holds most central value to our individual hearts. We are here to live out greatness, to create beauty out of darkness, to remember that when one creature suffers, we are either part of the problem or the solution. We are here to do better and we know it.

Up to Now

When a child is murdered by its mother, the media focuses on the individual accused, while flashing footage on makeshift memorials composed of teddy bears, flowers, candles and hand-scrawled notes. Something deep inside us urges these ofrendas, these altars commemorating the fact that a life was prematurely snuffed out. We ruminate on the unlived life. We speculate as to motive. We feel sad. We know there is a deeper story going on, yet we fail to find it.

There is another level of such an act that goes unspoken, unaddressed. Based on results, our society itself is not without culpability. What I know with certainty is this. Whenever a mother kills her own, she is unconscious of other options. Such acts, assuming they do not stem from a psychosis, are born from silent desperation.

This is true throughout nature. I recall a time some years ago when this was demonstrated for me in an eery way. One morning before dawn in Arizona, I was walking along one of those man-made lakes. In the center of which I heard the sound of a duckling who was suffering. Its mother, and her brood, came over to the baby, who, apparently, had gotten caught in an old fishing line. Nudging the line with her wing, the mother could not extract the hook from her baby. To my shock, she then turned her back on this duckling, and swam off into the distance, leaving her baby to perish. If the hook didn't do him in, the waiting crows would. At first, I was in disbelief. Yet, soon I realized she did what was instinctual: she must save her other children.

Now, you might be asking yourself, what is the relationship to human situations of baby killing? All I am saying is that nature is nature. Everything rides on perception. If a mother, human or not, believes she has no other options, she will do what she will to save her life, and that of those around her, even if it means sacrificing the innocent lamb. Of course, this does not excuse the act. What I am saying is that somehow perpetrators, like this teenage mother, do not comprehend any feasible way out of their desperation, and they turn to desperate acts. Even when the community offers a 'newborn' drop-off option, as we do in Washington State, somehow this message is not heard. And this does not even begin to address situations like that of the Anthony case.

How is it that a young woman comes to such a terrible state of mind? Why is it that we, of this society, fail to hear such silent cries for help? What is it that keeps us from registering the symptoms of these lost girls? What could possibly be more important than extending our own hand, not in judgment, but as an offering of help and hope so that babies do not come to ends like this? Because whether these girls are in our family or not, such lost girls belong to us. They birth our future, or our demise, and we co-parent the result through our attentiveness or our indifference.

The tragic thing is that this is neither the first, nor will it be the last time we hear breaking news of another lost innocent, at the hands of a parent. In the meantime, my question is this: How can you and I get better at hearing the silent cries of our youth before another life is lost? What must we do to get better, as individuals, and as a people, to let go our attitude 'it's not my problem'? Who is willing to first convert their focus from 'me' living' to 'we'? What will it take? What do you believe causes this deadly condition, where a mother feels so helpless and hopeless? I know my maternal grandmother must have struggled with her own unwanted pregnancy that was to become my mother, causing them to immigrate to the United States. I know I would not have the blessing of my daughter, had her own birthmother not found an adoption option, and the courage to pursue it. So, I am asking you: What can we do to turn the compost of this lost child into new life for those at risk in the future?

[Stork Central]

In Michigan, a hotly-disputed case of neonaticide is about to go to trial, involving a birthmom who had placed four years ago, but in 10/08 birthed a baby at home by herself, a child that subsequently was found dead in a trashbag: Emily's Compounded Losses. How tragic, for all involved...