As I was researching post-pardom depression for a story I am writing I came upon this post and since I was already a member of adoption.com I decieded to post something about this subject myself.
I'll start in Jan 1977; my first son was born, natural child birth with no complications before, during or after this pregnancy. Feb 1978 my second son was born same thing; no complications.
By the end of 1978 I took my sons and left California for good returning to my home city, Buffalo, NY.
Being a single parent of two very active boys plus holding down a 40 hr week job wasn't easy but I seemed to manage since I worked nights while they slept until my return.
When I found out I was pregnant again and told the father, well... anyway it was too late by the time I quit denying and made an appointment to find out for sure. He left.
I had to quit working and go on Welfare. Easter Eve, I had a fire! In August of 81 I gave birth to premature twin daughter's. One would not make it and the other came home after 9 weeks in the NICN only to return to the Hospital 11 days later. than again in Nov for another 10 days. They sent her home this time with a heart monitor, my daughter used to like to go apnic and bradicardic.
In all this mess I moved the end of Nov to be closer to a Hospital just in case. In those days Welfare checks came out twice a month not like today; anyway my second check arrived Christmas Eve. My family was one of the first famlies twenty-five years ago (Buffalo News also donated to this Fund) nominated as one of the most neediest thru the Community Center where my sons attened headstart.
Christmas Eve, in one of the worst snow falls I found myself walking two miles each way in order to pay this woman for some things she set aside for me. So my kids would at least have something under the Center's donated tree that now stood in my dining room.
Alone, no help from family or close friends; days became nights and nights became days again. One stormy night in late Jan I stared out my front picture window at another one of our famous 'lake effect' snow falls. The next day while crossing a very busy street to catch the bus that took us to the Center; I fell climbing over a snow pile left behind by the city's plows. Me on the ground holding my daughter in a plastic nip-nap and my two young sons in the street with cars zipping past them.
For days I stayed in the house and didn't really speak to anyone. There was no one to talk too. Feelings of shame, guilt, my life as a child growing up all the events that took place the last few years; I fell apart.
People back then called it the baby blues; today it's called post-pardom depression.
Feb 1982. I made a phone call to a dear friend, a woman I called, Mom; to ask several childless couples I knew from the community if they would consider adopting my daughter. One would decline the other was very happy about having a daughter of their own.
My adoption was open as I knew this couple for many years.
Twenty-five years later I still hear in my head that I did the right thing but in my heart the pain of giving up my daughter has never gone away.
Last year, at Christmas I was to finally see her again, but as some things happen this really upset her Mom and I haven't written to her or she to me in over a year now.
What started out as a one time article printed on Mother's Day, 1996 turned into an almost finished story in which I describe all these feelings.
Peggy
|