Easing Birthmom’s Pain

I asked my dad once when I was a kid, driving alone together in our family van, how you know you love somebody. He told me that love is a pure emotion that pushes us to act. When you love someone, you truly want them to be happy. If your actions don’t go along with those guidelines, you’re not acting out of love.
Those weren’t his exact words, but that’s the general idea of what he said and I remember it clearly. So where does that put us with open adoption? I read a series of posts on a Facebook site about someone wishing they could do more to help their birthmother to cope with her loss and to heal. The birthmother was having a hard time, as I’m sure pretty much all of them do, and the adoptive couple wanted to be able to do more to help her. Anybody who has been near that type of situation (whether birthparent side or adoptive parent side) knows it’s not quite that simple.

There is only so much that an adoptive couple can do to support. Being on the receiving end of our birthmothers’ pain, being the one who took in the baby that she has had to let go of, the ability to give her the support that she needs is different than it is for someone who is not the adoptive parent. It’s hard to give support when we are part of their pain. And still, that’s exactly what my wife and I have wanted to do. We want to somehow take away their pain. We want to find a way to make them comfortable in their life after they gave us the most amazing gift. We want to make them comfortable, to find a way to be their support, carry their burden, etc.
My wife and I have felt responsible for that role, but is it really our role to fill? We are close to the two birthmothers of our children, but there comes a point where you have to let other people be the supporting role. They need other people.
The best that we can do is to keep the promises we made when we chose open adoption- whatever those promises were. Your child’s birthmom needs to process things in her own way and in her own time. We support our birthmothers by encouraging them to attend support groups and be in contact with other birthmothers because, after all, those other birthmoms are some of the few people who they can actually relate to. We support our birthmoms by doing our best to be consistent with pictures and info so that they can process it in their own way and in their own time. We are there for them and they know it. If they have a request or a question, we’re here to listen and help. Sometimes that’s the most we can do.

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