Birth Mothers and Adoptive Mothers

At dinner:

Turtle: Is my sister in your tummy?

Me: No, she isn't.

Turtle: Where is she?

Me: She is in China.

Turtle looks a little puzzled. So I continued, "She was in another lady's tummy."

Then a man walks up to our table and says, "CCAI?"

I had no idea what he was talking about. I was giving Turtle all of my attention and couldn't wrap my brain around his question. My husband, much quicker on the uptake, understood he was asking if we adopted Turtle through the agency CCAI and he said, Yes. The man then told us about his 8-year old daughter from Sichuan Province, and his eyes lit up as he talked about her. It's always amazing to me when this happens.

Turtle continued her questions as I hoped she would, "Mommy, was I in China when I was little?" Turtle knows she was born in China, but at 4, I think she is really beginning to explore what that means.

Me: Yes you were.

She looked at me intently and didn't say anything.

Me: Do you have more questions?

Turtle: Mommy, why do I love you so much?

Me: Because I'm your mommy.

Turtle: Why do you love me so much?

Me: Because I'm your mommy and mommy's love their children more than anything in the world.

I welcome and dread these conversations. I welcome them because it's absolutely vital that she feel safe enough to ask these questions and that she knows deep down in her insides that they are allowed and welcomed.

I dread these conversations because I have very few answers to give her. Someday she is going to want to know why her birth mother abandoned her. And I don't have an answer. I'm fairly certain that her birth mother loved her very much because she left her in a very public place. She clearly wanted her to be found and taken care of. But beyond that, I know nothing. Did her birth mother live in the city in which she was abandoned or did she come from a more rural area or a bigger city? Was she shipped across the country to give birth by embarrassed relatives because she was pregnant and not married? Was she a single mother in danger of losing her job and being fined an amount she couldn't pay in a lifetime all because she was pregnant? Was she married but had not yet received permission from the government to have a baby? Was she under intense pressure from her husband's family to have a boy? The only one who knows the answer to these questions is Turtle's birth mother. 

Turtle is clearly beginning to wonder about the woman who carried her in her tummy. The question, "Why do I love you so much?" makes me wonder if she is grappling with how to love someone who didn't birth her. She is a deep thinker for one so young and it wouldn't surprise me if she was trying to figure it all out. And the only answer I could think of was, "Because I am your mommy." It seemed appropriate as it makes clear that even though she didn't grow in my tummy I am still her mother. 

It's a paradox I am in, because being Turtle's mother is the best job there is and yet I weep for her birth mother who is missing out on this beautiful child. What would she think about her child being loved and raised a world away? Would she be content? I hope so, because nobody could love Turtle more than I do. Would she be content that her child is learning Mandarin, Spanish and English? Would she be content that her child is taking swim lessons and has dabbled in gymnastics and piano? What opportunities would Turtle have in China? Was her birth mother poor or well off? 

My guess is that we will never have the answers to these questions, but I hope against hope that she is one of the few who can find her birth mother when the time comes. I would love for her to be able to fill in the blanks with facts instead of questions and imaginative answers. 

Being abandoned is a soul-wrenching experience, and children adopted like Turtle are abandoned at least twice: once by their birth mother and once by their orphanage or foster family. I truly had no idea how soul-wrenching it is until I adopted Turtle. My sweet, loving, happy little girl sometimes just screams and screams because she was abandoned by the one woman who should have remained constant. I can only hope that as she gets older she can find peace.