The birth mother I’m in touch with finally admitted that she gave birth last month. Told me only because her eldest asked her if she had told me. I didn’t want to say anything harsh or condemnatory when she already feels the way she does, but you can guess what I thought.
1. I’ve read how some adoptees wonder why THEY were placed yet younger siblings born into the exact same situation are kept. Why weren’t THEY kept too? Why were THEY not worth being kept?
Do I ever want to reveal this fact? Will my child ever even ask? Unlike my friends’ children at even much younger ages, she hasn’t said anything much about being adopted, especially this year. It’s just a fact that she knows but it’s meaningless to her.
On the other hand, my one friend’s child asks to speak to her birth mother on the phone and calls her Aunty B and speaks to her bio aunts. My other friend’s child asked why they can’t adopt her other (older) siblings so they too can eat the kind of food she eats…. And my other friend’s child prays for her birth mother every day, hoping she is happy and is eating enough.
Mine says.. nothing. Even birthdays don’t trigger it. I know it’s part of her “challenges” as she calls her disorders and disabilities. She knows she didn’t come from my tummy and has known someone else gave birth to her, but last year when I asked her what a birthday is-referring to her upcoming one-she said it’s the day when she came out my tummy.
Maybe she will never be curious about other siblings. I especially hope not about the younger one because –
2. This third child has been born exactly into the same situation the other two were born in. The eldest child was raised and mothered by an aunt till Covid came along in 2020. The second child is mine. Both fathers were not fathers though my child’s father is there emotionally, but is not employed and finds food in nefarious ways that have seen him doing some punishments where the courts of law house him – if you get my drift…We even communicated while he was ‘away’ last year.
This third child is in trouble. The birth father didn’t want the little one to be born so he has disappeared. So she’s raising the child alone and has been unemployed since 2022. She’s asked me for old baby clothes already.
3. I wish we could learn from our past mistakes so we don’t repeat them. Stress in the womb, stress outside the womb, no real food. The cycle is continuing and I don’t know what the eldest will learn.
What I do hope is that if the eldest ever gets a man, she will get a real man who will acknowledge that he made a child possible and must therefore help with that possibility if it becomes real, instead of wanting the easy way out. Easy for him and other females who choose it, but not for those who are tormented by guilt thereafter.
She makes beautiful babies. I just wish the relationships they came from were just as beautiful so there’d be peace, not turmoil. When someone tells you they’ve “dug a hole” for themselves and are “trapped,” you know that all the feelings boiling inside you are justified.
She’s looking forward to the child grant from the government. (Social benefits for indigent mothers). A friend said that’s R510 a month. Not enough for even two weeks of diapers. I am sad. Troubled. Disheartened. And worried for both dejected mother and little one. What kind of a life will either of them have?
They said I should write a book 