Unpopular in thought. Every time an expectant Mother posts on the forums asking for advice on whether to parent or place, I say a prayer that she parents. I give the advice she’s seeking, because I remember how hard it was to try to research things and have no one willing (or able) to help. I’m honest in my responses. I say that adoption hurts but, yes, it can work. It’s just hard. Very.

Needless to say, I jump up and down in my seat when a woman decides to parent her child. No, it’s also not an easy road. Most of the time, these women are looking at single parenthood. Being a parent now, I can see how hard it would be to raise a child completely by yourself. That said, I commend and applaud every single parent. Ever.

Recently, an online friend of mine asked why a co-worker would email her, exclaiming joy that his unwed, young daughter was pregnant. A few friends responded that he’s probably trying to be optimistic because, heck, there’s nothing he can do about it now. True. So true. I wish every parent whose child came upon an unplanned pregnancy would realize that fact: what’s done is done. In the words of my (soldier) Husband, “Drink water, drive on.”

My reply went something of the sort:

Better that he try to act supportive than to pressure her into placing or an abortion if that isn’t what she desires to do. Parental support is often hard to come by when it comes to young, unplanned pregnancy.

I give him props.

And it’s true. Two other people agreed with my thread, also stating that, maybe he didn’t want the “I’m so sorry,” sympathy comments. Another brought up the point of, hey, who are others to judge them anyway?

Unplanned pregnancies happen. Hell, folks, I’m the result of an unplanned pregnancy as was my brother. Granted, my parents were married when my brother implanted himself in my Mother’s uterus, but unplanned all the same. Part of me is still dealing with some residual anger in the fact that I wasn’t offered support but, we tried the best we knew how. Really.

In short: to any woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy, I say, “YOU GO, MAMA! Don’t let ANYONE tell you that you won’t be a GREAT Mom. You can do WHATEVER you put your mind to… ANYTHING.”

This post brought to you by the sheer joy and excitement of someone on the forums posting that she has decided to parent her child. I want to turn a cartwheel. I want to say, “YOU GO, MAMA!”

The Stages of Grief.

1. Denial and isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

Simply put, those are the five stages of grief. As this is a new(er) subject to me, I am curious to find out if one can skip over certain stages, regress and(/or) get stuck. (I’m pretty sure one can get stuck.) I think I did the depression stage much earlier than the anger stage. Though, to be honest, I keep popping in and out of anger. Perhaps that lies in the fact that I never fully deal with said anger; I just graze the top of the issue. Avoidance much? Who? Me?!

I did a more specific search regarding birthparents and the stages of grief and came up with the following quote from the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse.

When birth parents first deal with their loss, the grief may be expressed as denial. The denial serves as a buffer to shield them from the pain of the loss. This may be followed by sorrow or depression as the loss becomes more real. Anger and guilt may follow, with anger sometimes being directed at those who helped with the adoption placement. The final phases, those of acceptance and resolution, refer not to eliminating the grief permanently but to integrating the loss into ongoing life.

Well, I guess that answers the few questions I asked up above. Grieving is a personal process. (Though I still need to know if it’s possible to regress.) The above quote follows, more closely, the line I have gone through in relation to my grief and loss.

I don’t remember much about my denial phase other than it possibly being while I was pregnant. I kept telling myself, “If I could only win the lottery.” But, the thing is, I didn’t play the lottery. I was in a large amount of denial as I left the hospital. I felt very disconnected, as if the whole thing was some movie I was watching on, none other than the hated, Lifetime.

I then went through the depression and sorrow. There were days in which I didn’t get out of bed. I cried in J’s arms every night. Seeing other children made me ache in so many ways. I just wanted to hold my child.

I briefly slipped into anger when I found out how dishonest and unethical my(our) agency was on so many different levels. I reported them to the Better Business Bureau and really let them know what I thought. And then, I thought, I let it go.

As our visits began four months into the adoption, I think I may have slid back into denial. (The regression?) I told myself that since I could see her with my own eyes and touch her with my own hands that this was okay. Sometimes I would remove myself from the equation, telling myself that I didn’t have a right to be sad because she “wasn’t my daughter; she was D’s.” Yeah, I see that as denial now. While she is D’s daughter, she is also mine. I went through about a year and a half of this denial.

During my late pregnancy with BigBrother, once I was confined to bed with, yet again, complications, the sadness crept back into my heart. Memories swirled. I had flashes of moments while pregnant with Munchkin. It was, at times, overwhelming. I just wanted to be happy during this pregnancy since that had been robbed from me while pregnant with Munchkin.

The sadness continued for awhile after he was born (and to a point, still lingers). Each time he does something extremely cute or hits a new milestone, I see my firstborn and wonder what it would have been like to have been present for the same happening(s) in her life.

I’m definitely in the throes of anger. I am angry at those who allowed this to happen: the agency (especially), the birthfather and, to an extent, my family. I am not fully angry with my family as they were just trying to support me in the way they thought was best. But I guess I just wish they had said, “Please keep this baby; we will help.” I am angry with myself. To an extreme. I am angry that I had been irresponsible with money prior to getting pregnant so that I didn’t have any savings when I got sick during my eighteenth week of pregnancy. I am angry with myself that I allowed myself to fall prey to everything the agency had to say. I am angry with myself that I wasn’t who I needed to be, when I needed to be.

And, the guilt. I can’t even touch the guilt right now. But there’s guilt.

So, at the same time I’m dealing with the sadness, the anger and the (*sigh*) guilt, I’m trying to accept everything as it is; not elimiate the pain but integrate it into my daily life. That’s the point of my writing here: I can’t change it. There’s just nothing to be done in that form or fashion. So I have to figure out how to live this life that I made for all of us.

I guess my question as I finish this assignment is, what do you do when you’re stuck in the midst of three different phases? Interesting.