I was almost an adoptive parent once. Before my husband and I got pregnant with our son, we had experienced unexplained infertility, including two devastating early pregnancy losses. I became convinced that we were being “called” to adopt. In spring of 2004, we signed up with the same agency I had relinquished my daughter through many years prior. At the time, my journey into the online adoption world was in its infancy, and I was still very much immersed in framing adoption in a wholly positive way. I thought it was destiny for me to be a first mom and an adoptive mom; I practically sang “The Circle of Life” whenever I talked about adoption.

However, our journey into becoming waiting adoptive parents led me to some unsettling revelations about myself as well as about the adoption industry. For example, I routinely heard things like “We guarantee that at the end of this journey, you will have a baby.” That is a direct quote right there, folks. I’m not making it up or exaggerating for effect even one bit. We also heard about so-called outreach efforts where volunteers (sometimes agency staff, sometimes waiting adoptive parents) would visit OB-GYN’s offices with boxes of candy or other treats, along with literature about the agency, and ask the staff to pass along a brochure to pregnant women who seemed to be “good candidates” for their services. In other words, they were asking the medical office staff to target pregnant women who were already in crisis situations. Expectant parents were always, always referred to as “birthmom/birthdad”. These are just a few examples of things I witnessed, and the agency in question isn’t even close to the worst of what’s out there. In fact, I would venture to say that insofar as adoption agencies go, it was at least trying to be ethical in some key areas.

This kind of thing is troubling to me now, but at the time, I dismissed my sense of growing discomfort. I shoved it down inside me and I told myself it just made sense to make the agency’s services known to places where pregnant women were likely to be. I soothed my inner alarm bells at the “you’ll get your baby one way or another” mentality because the other couples we met seemed so nice, and they were mostly reeling from years of heartbreak from infertility, and why shouldn’t they get some reassurances that this wasn’t just another set-up for more pain? Finally, if I am to be very, very honest, I pushed my doubts and unease aside because I wanted a baby too. In the end, I did not stand up and say “this is wrong” when I saw the little injustices piling up. Instead, I wrote a relentlessly chipper “Dear Birthmother” letter with pictures of our pretty suburban house and our cats and us on vacation and called it a “profile” because I was just so conscious about how patronizing “Dear Birthmother” sounded. I needed to believe that this was a good thing, the right thing.

It wasn’t until we were actually introduced to an expectant mom who was considering adoption (full disclosure – this was not an agency-arranged meeting, but an introduction by a neighbor to an acquaintance of hers) that my carefully constructed primrose path began to sting me with the thorny nettles of those injustices. Today, I don’t even classify this as a “match” because nothing ever really went beyond that initial meeting stage. However, it was the closest we came to actually adopting, and it taught me some painful, rather unflattering things about myself.

This expectant mom – let’s call her Rachel – gave me her phone number after our first meeting. I would hesitantly call once a week or so “just to chat”. I offered to take her to doctor’s appointments if she needed a ride, “regardless of what you decide about the baby”, and congratulated myself on being so supportive and caring. Make no mistake, though; I wanted it to be us Rachel chose. I pictured her daughter as my daughter. I imagined meeting my friends with Baby Gia* (*the name I selected, naturally) dressed in the adorable pink and white romper set I’d bought and hidden away in my closet, and how they would all coo over her and tell me what a great mommy I was. Luxuriating in all my privilege, I dreamed up scenarios where I would have Rachel over for visits and magnanimously proclaim, “Go on, you hold her as long as you want; I hold her all the time”. I imagined introducing my relinquished daughter to my newly adopted daughter like I was showing off a new puppy, and seeing that storybook adoption circle of life I thought I was being called to create finally completed.

Secretly, the cracks began to widen in the afore-mentioned primrose path. I told myself my vague anxiety about trying to talk another mother into giving me her baby was just proof of my compassion. I couldn’t quite admit how awful it was that I sometimes felt like shouting – “Can’t you see we are the perfect ones?!” After all, I was already a first mom! I was so open and enlightened! Why, I knew exactly how she felt! But if that’s true, a little voice whispered faintly, why would you ask her to do this? Shut up, I told it frantically, holding fast to my manifest destiny theory. Shame and longing wrapped me up together in a suffocating embrace, warring for my heart, and I couldn’t understand why my perfect plan felt so off.

Something had to give, and it did. I looked in the mirror one morning and I knew, I saw, I finally admitted to myself that what I was doing was not okay for me to do. I told my husband I didn’t feel right about the situation anymore, and just quietly stopped bothering her. I suspect Rachel was even more relieved by this than I was, because we never heard from her again. Obviously, I don’t know what happened to her, but my hope is she found a way to keep her baby with her. A few weeks later, about one month before the baby girl I’d been salivating over was due, I found out I was pregnant. Our son was born just after Christmas in 2005. My life was perfect. Right? I’d had a textbook pregnancy and gotten a big baby shower and I was finally a mommy to an adorable, healthy baby nobody else got to take home and call their own. I had everything I’d ever wanted.

For the most part, yes, I was very happy. Except I began dreaming about my daughter’s birth. I remembered that once I told the nurses “adoption” I was treated like a pariah and my requests to see my own baby girl, to room in with her, were ignored…and I just shut myself down instead of fighting. I began having periods of sadness, anxiety, and crushing guilt. All the love I was lavishing on my little boy was the same love I should have shown her too. Instead, I left her at the hospital, with strangers. I gave her away. I could pretty it up with flowery language all I wanted, but at the end of the day, that is what happened. I found that I could not reconcile the adoption is 100% win-win-win scenario with my feelings any longer.

Slowly, my views on adoption became defined and shaped by this new feeling. I started thinking more about how my choices had affected my children. Both of them. Timidly at first, I began to interact with people who spoke out strongly about the broken parts of adoption, people who had always impressed me but also intimidated the heck out of me, and I found that they welcomed me and listened to what I had to say even as they taught me.

Blogging opened up a new avenue for speaking out about issues I felt strongly about, and my personal experiences with adoption. However, I admit I am an easily exhausted activist. I wearied of telling people over and over that open adoption doesn’t magically fix all the issues in adoption. I was worn out by explaining to people why expectant mothers are not “birthmoms” and especially not “our birthmoms” and being scolded that I was misunderstanding the good intentions of the people using those terms in those ways. I got tired of hearing about how I was being mean to adoptive parents when I tried to gently advise against closing promised open adoptions except in the cases of true danger to the child. I was heartily sick of being informed that I was not my daughter’s mother, that I had no right to the term mother at all where she was concerned. I lost sleep; I had heart palpitations and broke out in hives. I was tired of adoption, period.

So I left adoption discussion forums altogether and changed the direction of my blog, Mommyhood and Life. For almost two years I have only rarely written about adoption. There were smarter people writing about adoption reform, I told myself. Better writers, more educated, qualified people; people who had degrees and websites and got invited to speak at conferences. I told myself my voice didn’t matter much, and I turned my attention to other, more amusing things. Lately, however, I got to thinking that I was failing my daughter in some important way if I did not speak up and speak out. I knew I needed to keep talking about adoption. I just didn’t know if I had the energy or time to do it on my own blog, and then I happened to see the call for potential new writers here, and I applied for consideration. To my surprise and pleasure, I was invited to write as a first mom.

I’m telling you all of this because I am going to eventually write some posts here that are not going to back away from difficult topics, or spend two paragraphs going through the obligatory disclaimers so people don’t feel like I’m attacking them personally. I’m going to write about things like my opposition to almost all pre-birth matching and why I believe it is inherently coercive no matter how nice you are to the expectant mom. I will tell you why I feel there should be a minimum mandatory 6 week period after the birth of a baby before TPR can be signed and then a minimum revocation period of at least 2 weeks after that. I’ll remind you I once loudly proclaimed that adoption was the BEST thing that could have happened for me and my daughter at the time, and my daughter would never have any issues, and neither would I, because everything worked out so perfectly…except there are problems and issues and nothing is ever perfect. I will tell the story of my friend, a hard-working single mom who truly thought she could place her baby with another nice couple with a big house and lots of love to give, but ultimately could not stand to lose him, and brought him home within the legal revocation period, as was her right. I’ll explain how she was vilified and ostracized for parenting her own baby, while the would-be adoptive mom was showered with sympathy and praise. I can direct you to hundreds of shockingly cruel comments, blog posts, articles and discussion boards where first moms who dare to express grief and sadness and anger over losing their children are literally and figuratively told they have no right to those feelings.

The reason I am going to write about hard things, things that make even me uncomfortable sometimes, is because there is more than enough happily-ever-after adoption writing out there. If you comment in response to something I write and ask me why I am saying these thorny, painful things that make you feel bad, I will gently point you here first. Because I have been one of those generally nice women sitting in a roomful of other generally nice women, all with loving arms and no baby to fill them, and I know how easy it is to believe only all those feel-good warm fuzzies about adoption and overlook the tiny pinpricks that are not sitting quite right in your heart.

I am not anti-adoption, nor am I here to hate on adoptive parents. There will most likely always be a need for adoption in some form and I recognize the need for children to have permanent ties, not just temporary guardians. I am, however, for keeping children with their biological mothers and fathers whenever possible. I do hate coercion; I hate the shaming of young, poor, and/or single moms and dads that is used so ruthlessly by many adoption agencies to make them surrender their children to others. I hate that adults who were adopted are denied access to their own birth records, medical histories, and identifying information. I hate that money is too often the determining factor in driving adoptions. I hate that adoption lobby groups can still use ignorance and propaganda to batter down so many attempts at reform.

Therefore, if any real change is to be made in adoption, then I think every voice in the wilderness is required, including mine. We have to reach out beyond the sphere of those who are already in the know. In this age, we have the tools and the knowledge to reach out and share and try to understand the painful things, as well as the joyful things. I do not seek to diminish or destroy, only to raise awareness that adoption is not the unequivocally delightful thing for all parties that much of the adoption industry would have us believe it to be. We must acknowledge the loss inherent in adoption, and validate those affected by that loss, not seek to frantically squelch its mere mention with platitudes and denial.

Seventeen years ago, I had nothing to hold on to but that life preserver that adoption seemed to be throwing me, so I placed my firstborn child in it and set her adrift on an uncertain voyage. I have the feeling that a Big Conversation is coming with her, and soon. It makes me sad that the main answer I will have to give to her questions is: “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry, I just didn’t know.”

I don’t want even one more mother or father to have to say that.

This, above all else, is why I write.

Coco Rogers blogs (rather sporadically these days, alas) at Mommyhood and Life. She also spends time writing fiction that she hopes might someday pay the bills, or at least get read by someone other than herself; baking, and chasing a very inquistive 4-1/2 year old boy with the dexterity of a spider monkey. There are handprints in impossible places on the walls to prove this.