[riarecht]

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum. I was adopted when I was about three months old, and lived with a silver spoon in my mouth for most of my life. Life has always been good, though I always knew I didn't look like anyone else, and it bothered me from my earliest memories of finding out I was adopted.
Anyway, I had my first child at eighteen which I would later find out that I was following my birth family tradition. He was born with a heart murmur which stayed with him for some years though never caused any real problems. My next child was born five years later and ten months after he was born he was rushed to ICU for congestive heart failure due to an enlarged heart. He was okay a week later and after a very scary week in ICU he came home with medicine for the next two years.
I decided this was the end of not knowing, so I embarked on a mission to find my true medical history. I had been told I had Native American in me so when the agency I was adopted thru gave me nothing I went to the courts citing the more recent ICWA laws. The judge had compasion for me and granted me my records. He cautioned me though and wrote me a long letter explaining that people in the state offices didn't want people like me to have access to the records thirty years later so they blacked out all identifying information on all of my birth/adoption records. And he was right, they had blacked out all identifying information except for 1 mention of my birth mothers name.
I gave the name to a women I worked with at the time and she and I got busy on the internet looking. I made my first call and spoke to a women who said she had a niece by that name but she didn't have any children. I left my number with her just in case and left it at that. Later that night I received a call from this woman who said she was my birthmother and gave me all of the right identifying information.
I felt like I was in another world, this was so strange to talk with the woman who gave birth to me. I had live 24 years being adopted, but now I had a new identity it felt like.
She sent me pictures of her and my birthfather and explained the story over the next ten years. My sons heart problems were a problem for two nephews of hers, go figure. My only thoughts initially were, not mad at her, but at the system for depriving me of so much essential information.
So, that is my story, I realize it's a bit strange and long, though opening my own doors has opened a passion I have for finding others pasts.

[mymotherssacrifice]

Thanks for sharing this story. It is another example of how adoptees should be able to have contact with birth parents. There is always that chance that someone really does not want contact but what someone does in their youth is not an indicator necessarily of who they will be in 18 years. I'm sure it happens but it really does sound like most birth parents are happy to be found. I hope your children are okay now. Take care.

Amanda

[Jackiejdajda]

The history of adoption/relinquishment after the second world war is very interesting.. Before the second world war a woman was expected to go to the poor house with her baby if she had no way to care for herself and baby.. she was a fallen woman and the child was.. a bad word..

After the war society thought that the child could be saved.. redeemed.. and the woman could give the baby up and then go back to her sinning ways.. and the adoptive parents could pretend that the baby was theirs.. and were told to not tell..

That is the worst scenario of this.. but I think the closed records are part of it..
The shhhhh don’t talk about it.. scenario..

Rickie Solinger wrote some amazing history type books on this.. Wake Up Little Susie.. and Beggars and Choosers..

Jackie

[Dickons]

I just wrote about this subject in the following thead.

Kind regards,
Dickons

PS...most adoptee's from this era are just coming into the years when a lot of medical issues happen.

Adoptees - Did Reunion bring Health Empowerment?