[Volfe]

Date: Sunday, October 24, 2004
Section: LOCAL STORIES
Edition: SUNRISE
Page: A01 GABRIELLE GLASER - The Oregonian

Last fall, Mandy Phibbs was a girl in trouble. But her predicament also
put her in demand.

Mandy, three months pregnant, had decided to place her baby for
adoption. One afternoon, she sat at the suburban Portland agency she had
chosen, sifting through stacks of "Dear Birth Mother" albums filled with
notes and photos from prospective parents. All had the comfortable
middle-class lives Mandy, then 17, knew she could not provide her
child.


The agency had suggested that she set a list of conditions. And so she
had: she wanted the parents to be Christians older than 35, married for
several years and already raising a child. She ruled out families in
Oregon: "Schools are better in Washington," she said.
The most important requirement also created the most complexity: Her
baby's family must be within driving distance so that she could continue
to be part of her child's life.

She would eventually choose a couple in suburban Seattle to become her
baby's parents. They would be with her on the day of delivery and will
be in her life from now on.

Such open adoptions, in which a child develops relationships with both
birth parents and adoptive parents, are a striking departure from the
secret dealings of a generation ago. Adopting families had scarce
information about birth mothers, who after delivery left hospitals with
little hope of ever seeing their children again.

The lifelong sorrow, well-publicized, of adoptees and birth parents
eventually led to another model. The first open adoptions are believed
to have started in California in the early 1980s.

Word of them has slowly spread. Officials are seeing an increase in the
number of babies placed for adoption after decades of decline.

"Because of open adoption, more birth mothers are coming to adoption
than ever before," said Shari Levine, executive director of Open
Adoption & Family Services. The Northwest agency, with headquarters in
Portland, facilitates only open adoptions. Its placements have risen
from 20 in 1985 to roughly 60 annually in the past few years, Levine
said.

No central agency tracks private, domestic adoption statistics. But
adoption officials who specialize in open adoption have likewise noted a
rise.

Sharon Fitzgerald, of the nonprofit Independent Adoption Center in
Pleasant Hill, Calif., said placements at the agency, which has offices
nationwide, have increased 8 percent in the past five years.

"What's more important than the raw numbers is that the nature of
adoption is changing," said Adam Pertman, author of "Adoption Nation"
(Basic, $17, 272 pages) and executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson
Adoption Institute in New York. "Birth mothers are no longer treated
simply as baby making machines."

From 1970 to the late 1990s, the number of children placed for adoption
declined from roughly 90,000 to 50,000, annually according to a recent
issue of "The Future of Children," a policy journal jointly produced by
Princeton University and The Brookings Institution. The drop is
attributed to the 1973 legalization of abortion, the availability of
contraception and the growing acceptance of single parenthood.

Meanwhile, as many as 1 million families hope to adopt, said Brad
Imler, president of the nonprofit American Pregnancy Association in
Irving, Texas.

And as many as two-thirds of them, officials say, are now willing to
welcome women like Mandy into their lives.

The process is not universally accepted. Thomas Atwood, the executive
director of the National Council for Adoption in Alexandria, Va., sees
problems with open adoption.

"It is not necessarily in the best interest of the child," he says.
However, there is little data to determine how openness affects
children. He is concerned about cases in which the birth parents'
behavior may be damaging to the child.

Harold Grotevant, a University of Minnesota professor who is the
co-author of a longitudinal study on open adoption, has found no
evidence of harm to the child or to the parents involved.

"Everything we've looked at disagrees with the premise that openness in
itself is harmful to children," he said. His studies have found that the
open adoption process lessens the grief for birth mothers and was not
harmful to the adoptive parents.

It is in the West, with a tradition of independence that lends
flexibility to the notion of family, where open adoption predominates.

"In many parts of the East Coast, open adoption is just smoke,"
Fitzgerald said. "But it's wildfire in the West."


In her first trimester, Mandy weighed her future as a mother, and it
looked bleak. What could she impart to a child? She hadn't yet graduated
from high school. Her parents, young themselves, had divorced when she
was small.

"They did the best they could," she said, "but I wanted more for my
child."

She was raised by her father, Shawn Phibbs, a contractor. But at 16,
she chafed at his rules and struck out on her own. She had a bout with
drugs and drinking, started seeing a man many years older and moved into
his trailer on the coast. She soon discovered she was pregnant.

Not long afterward, she left the man and returned to the home of her
father and stepmother, Fawn, 44, in Forest Grove. Fawn, mother of a
24-year-old son, is an advertising agency executive who grew up in
foster homes.

Both insisted that Mandy, who hopes to join the Air Force, continue her
education, and Shawn, 39, encouraged her to consider an open adoption.

After their own two decades of child rearing, they felt ill-prepared to
raise another child. And Shawn told Mandy: "You can't go to college with
a baby in your back seat."

Throughout her pregnancy, that crisp sentence became Mandy's mantra.

Abortion was out of the question. She had had one, at 14, and her eyes
well up when she thinks about it. She still can't forgive herself for
it, she said.

So one by one, she called adoption agencies listed in the yellow pages
and met the one she felt accorded her the most respect. Some of them,
she said, treated her like she was just a number.


The first "Dear Birth Mother" album Mandy saw was from Jan and Ken
Sharp, a suburban Washington couple in their 40s with a 2-year-old son,
Sam. As she sorted through all the others, the Sharp family kept drawing
her back. Jan, a former teacher, and Ken, an assistant suburban fire
chief, seemed to radiate warmth even from the laminated pages.

"There will rarely be a day that I won't think of you and wonder how
you are doing," Jan wrote. "Just as you will think of your baby and me,
I will always remind this child that they are lucky enough to have two
mothers who love (him or her.)" The words were compelling -- and
revealing.

"It wasn't all about her," Mandy said.

Other details hit Mandy just as powerfully. In a photograph of the
nursery, Mandy saw the same white crib she had picked out for the baby
if she decided to raise the child. In another photo, Mandy spotted a
pair of papier-mache figures from Mexico. A friend of Jan's had given
them to her as souvenirs, and they perched on a living room coffee
table.

Mandy recognized them instantly; Fawn had some nearly identical ones in
the Phibbs' home.

To Mandy, the figures took on a totemic meaning. They represented the
steadiness Fawn, whom Mandy calls her mother, had brought to Mandy's
life.

"When I saw those things, I just started bawling," Mandy said. "They
were the right ones."

But that didn't help the conflicting feelings Mandy had about the
strange relationship that drew them together. The Sharps were unable to
have a baby but could educate and care for one. Mandy, 17 and pregnant,
was unprepared for motherhood.

"I felt like I didn't deserve my baby," Mandy said.


Last Halloween, Jan was chatting with some relatives when the phone
rang. It was the Sharps' caseworker, calling to say an Oregon birth
mother wanted to meet them.

Jan was stunned -- and wary. Nothing in her path to parenthood had been
easy. Infertility was painful enough, and adoption was proving no less
trying. Sometimes, she wondered if she wasn't destined to remain a
teacher, shepherding children to adulthood only in the classroom.

Once the Sharps turned to adoption, they were chosen quickly by a birth
mother. But the adoption fell through at the last minute when the father
refused to sign termination rights -- from prison, no less.

Nine months later, the Sharps adopted Sam after a surprise call. He was
7 weeks old and had been in interim foster care as legalities formalized
from his birth father's home state of South Dakota.

Ken, 46, had a daughter from his first marriage, now 22, and together,
he and Jan had Sam.

"Let's count our blessings," he told her. He couldn't bear to see his
wife endure any more torment.

But Jan, 41, an energetic woman with expressive hazel eyes, was reared
in a large Roman Catholic family in Wisconsin. She couldn't imagine just
one child in her life and persuaded Ken to keep their file active at the
agency just a few more months. Then the call came.

Within weeks, the Sharps drove to Portland to meet Mandy at the agency.
They had instant rapport, and the couple went with Mandy to her
obstetrician's appointment.

Jan stood watch over Mandy's gel-covered belly as she peered at the
ultrasound screen. A 9 ounce fetus floated peacefully, spine and organs
intact.

"It's a girl," the technician announced.


During her pregnancy, people stopped Mandy to ask her what she was
having, what she was naming it, and if her nursery was ready. She was
blunt with all questioners: "I'm having a girl, I don't have a nursery,
and I'm not naming her. Her parents are."

People looked at her strangely, but she didn't care.

"Why lie?" she said. "People look at you like you are a terrible
person, but really, it's the opposite. You love your baby so much, you
want to do the best thing for it."

Sometimes doubts filtered through, but Mandy considered her reality.

"My baby deserved two parents who didn't fight and the opportunity to
go to college. I'm an 18-year-old barista with a high school diploma and
no health insurance. How could I support her?"

Adding to the picture was the birth father, who could not be reached
for this article. He was reluctant to sign off on the adoption, Mandy
said, but finally consented.

In late April, Mandy was ready to give birth, and the Sharps drove
three hours to the hospital. Only Fawn stayed in the delivery room.

Finally, little Chloe was born. She weighed 6 pounds, 2 ounces.


Within hours, Mandy asked to sign the papers that would relinquish her
parental rights. The birth father came to the hospital to sign them,
too, and quickly left. Mandy wanted to do it soon so she could just
focus on the baby.

On Chloe's first night, Jan slept with Mandy and Chloe in the hospital
room. Mandy didn't want to be alone, and Jan didn't want her to be. So
Jan slipped on a sweat suit and climbed onto the room's pullout chair.
Whenever Chloe budged in her cot, Mandy woke up and fretted that she
needed a bottle. But Jan told her: "Honey, she's just stirring. Go back
to sleep."

The next day, Mandy didn't let Chloe out of her sight. She put the
baby, swaddled in the hospital receiving blanket, in bed next to her.

"I just wanted her to know how much I loved her," she said. "Knowing I
was all she needed, it was perfect. Everything we did was good.

"I'm better off and she's better off, but those first few days . . "
Her voice trails off. "They were so sweet and so perfect."

The goodbye, however, was not. As she prepared to leave the hospital,
Mandy held Chloe tightly. She told her how much she loved her and
explained her decision.

"I knew it wasn't logical," she said.

Then she dressed her in a flowered cotton outfit and asked the nurse
for a duplicate set of footprints. Chloe slept, oblivious to the
emotions around her.

Jan and Ken stood by, both hopeful and helpless.

"What do you say to someone?" he asked. "Thanks?"


There is perhaps never so much expectation for a human being as when a
newborn leaves the hospital: Tired but glowing new mother, surrounded by
flowers and balloons, holds a bundled infant. The baby's face is
obscured by a little hat, and it is almost always asleep. But that never
stops relatives from snapping dozens of pictures.

In open adoption, though, even that scene is tinged with grief and the
sense that perhaps things might have been different.

Tears slid down Jan's face as she took Chloe from the nurse. She kept
thinking about Mandy. "Focus on the baby," she told herself.

Once outside, Jan and Ken locked Chloe, snug in her infant seat, into
their car. Shawn helped steady his daughter as Fawn loaded her trunk
with Mandy's bouquets, the giant birthing ball and a teddy bear.

And like Chloe in the car driven by her father, Mandy slid into the
back of the car driven by hers.


As Jan and Ken fastened their seat belts, Jan turned to Ken and said:
"This looks good on paper, but it sure doesn't feel right."

Mandy dove beneath the windows so her weeping would be out of sight of
the Sharps. She gulped for air like a fish on a boat deck as Fawn
stroked her hair.

But she had to compose herself for a meeting at a restaurant with the
Sharps and Chloe. Agency officials recommend such "placement ceremonies"
after the families leave the hospital. They serve as an emotional
punctuation point at the end of one chapter and the beginning of
another.

Shawn suggested going to The Spaghetti Factory, a Portland
establishment known for its raucous family birthday parties. He thought
the restaurant's commotion might detract from the occasion's sadness.

Everyone was exhausted. At the restaurant, Chloe was perched in her car
seat between Jan and Mandy. Mandy had no appetite and looked over often
to check that the baby was breathing.

Ken and Jan presented Mandy with a gift, a necklace with Chloe's
birthstone, a diamond.

The couple had pondered what to give her for weeks. Even now, Ken
perhaps still wonders. "What is appropriate?" he asked as he bounced
Chloe, now 5 months, on his knee.

"Here we are, with the big pay-off, a beautiful, healthy little girl.
After our dinner, we were driving her up to a big celebration with her
brother, her grandparents and a whole family of aunts and uncles."

"And poor Mandy," he said. "Mandy was just going back home to her room.
Mandy wasn't pregnant any more, she didn't have any doctor's visits
anymore, and she was all alone. You can't imagine how awful you feel.
Overjoyed you have that baby but awful thinking of what the birth mother
is going through."

He was right to wonder. Certainly, the dinner hadn't brought much
"closure" for Mandy. That night, Mandy took one look at her room and
turned around. Without her belly, without her baby, her own double bed
seemed enormous.

So she slept on the living room couch, just outside her parents' room.
In her hands, she held the receiving blanket that still smelled like her
baby.


During Mandy's pregnancy, Shawn had detached himself from its
realities. "She'll give it up and we'll all go on," he thought to
himself. A trim, muscular man with a boyish face, Shawn is a recovering
alcoholic who has been sober for a decade. As he recalls holding Chloe
for the first time, he brushes tears away with his fists. "I just wasn't
prepared for how much I'd love her."

As he held his granddaughter, the possibilities, and the past, flashed
before him.

"I wasn't the perfect father to Mandy," he said. "With Chloe . . ." He
looked outside, unable to finish his sentence.

Now, though, his role was to help his daughter through her grief.
Though Mandy had the help of agency counselors, the truth was
unavoidable: she had, at least in part, lost her baby. Fawn tried joking
that they needed Costco-size supplies of Kleenex, but no one much
laughed. Privately, Shawn told her: "Let's just go buy a crib and tell
Ken and Jan, 'We're going to raise that baby.' " Fawn replied: "I
absolutely agree."

He shakes his head, as if shivering will somehow loose his sadness.

"We're intelligent enough to separate emotions from our actions, but if
we'd been given a choice at that moment, we would've grabbed Mandy and
Chloe and brought that baby home -- and not regretted it to this day."

"It's hard to give part of your family away when you never really had
one yourself," Fawn said. "Ken and Jan are giving Chloe the best
childhood she can have. Raising a family is hard work, and it's tiring.
They're only just starting. They're giving her better than we could give
her. Better than Mandy could give her. That's the intellectual
reality."


But when babies are involved, emotions often eclipse reason. So the
night before the Sharps left for home, Mandy, Fawn and Shawn drove to
see Chloe at their hotel room.

Mandy held and fed Chloe and thanked the Sharps again and again. In
turn, they thanked her yet again.

"We all knew, in our heart of hearts, that it was the right decision
for Chloe, for us to adopt another child, and for Mandy to allow herself
to grow into the young woman she could be without the pressures of
motherhood," Jan said.

But most everyone knows that "It's-for-the-best" thoughts often feel
much like bitter pills. Ken and Jan tried hard to smile as Mandy and her
parents said goodbye and stepped out into the warm night.

A few moments later, the sound of Mandy's sobbing drifted up from the
parking lot. Jan glanced at Ken. Without a word, they crossed the room,
away from the open window.


Early this fall, Shawn drove Mandy and a friend, Annie, to visit the
Sharps.

Mandy and the Sharps have agreed to two visits a year. Sometimes a
birth parent and the adoptive family will exceed an agreement if both
parties are comfortable. Experts say birth mothers often want to visit
more in the first year but will reduce their visits as the grief
subsides.

In the best of times, hosts want the house to be clean, the food to be
delicious. But when you are receiving the biological family of your
baby, the stakes are perhaps higher. In open adoption, etiquette comes
with experience alone.

"You wonder: Are we extending ourselves too much? Too little?" Jan
asked.

"We know we're good parents and that things are going well," Ken said.
"But when the birth family's coming, you want to be on top of your
game."

But the meeting was relaxed. Mandy played with Chloe as Annie and Jan
looked on. Shawn and Ken watched football on television.

A few hours later, they left. Moments into the trip, Annie discovered
she had left her coat. Shawn left the girls at a coffee shop and
returned for it.

Shawn recalls that when Ken saw Shawn at the door, he looked anxious --
until Shawn said, "Annie forgot her coat."

Ken, though, remembers only finding the jacket and chatting pleasantly
with Shawn. The fathers agreed that Mandy was doing well, and Ken saw
Shawn off.

"Totally innocuous," he said.

But the contrast in the impressions of that small exchange reveals
something greater: Ambivalence will likely hover for years to come, on
birthdays, during visits, and as the two families hang their Christmas
stockings.

It is perhaps as much a part of the equation as tiny Chloe herself.