Adopting-Back My Son

by Cedar Bradley
(Originally published at http://cedartrees.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/adopting-back-my-son)

This is the first time i have “come out” about this on-line. Last summer, one year ago in 2007, i adopted-back the son who was stolen at birth for adoption from me when I was 17.

I say ’stolen’ because the coercion that was used on me left me with no choice at all but to surrender him — it is not a “choice” or a “decision” if there is only one viable option given or allowed. To say i “placed” him denies the reality that keeping him was NOT an option I was given and thus there was NO choice. I loved him, I wanted to keep him, and i never wanted to lose him. I was NOT unfit! But unwed mothers where i lived, in 1980, had babies removed at birth by hospital staff if they were unwed minors with no family support for keeping their babies (I have plenty of testimony from other mothers that it was done to them as well). It was truly a form of rape — just as traumatic.

Looking back, I felt so powerless at the time, so much without choice, that I had no way of fighting what they were doing to me. Plus I was entirely naive. I had no idea that nurses taking and withholding my baby from me was not what was done to all mothers. It was only when I “woke up” from the medicine-induced fog I was in, several days later, that I realized they had not brought my baby to me, and that this was not right. I was allowed to see him (but not touch) for about 5 minutes, under the gaze of hawk-like nurses (but I found out much later that they then moved him to another hospital to prevent me from finding him — he told me he had been picked up from the Jubilee, when I had given birth in St. Joseph’s). And I now now first-hand that only when a mother has given birth, has fully recovered from birth without her baby being taken from her or coercion being applied, can she make any decision about adoption.

My 62-yr-old Fundamentalist parents made it clear that they considered it rightful punishment for the sin of fornication, and the social worker had a waiting list of clients she was under pressure to provide babies for — i was forced to sign papers in her office under blackmail that unless i did, my baby would be indefinitely held in foster care. I was not told about welfare or any other resources and my abusive parents (they would use the belt on me if i so much as “talked back” to them) made it clear that i was not allowed to bring my baby home.

After 19 years of searching, i found my son again, and we hugged for the first time one day before his 20th birthday. It was the first time I was allowed to touch him.

His adoptive parents first told him that they supported our reunion — but he found out as time went on that their view was that “reunion” meant a one-time or limited-time event, that his curiosity would be satisfied and he would say “thanks and bye” to me. Their attempts to control him, to force him to end contact with me, escalated into abuse — culminating in 4 hours of confinement and torture (his words) one night when he was 21 yrs old. He eventually left their house one New Years Day on the advice of the Victim Services units of two police departments.

We began talking about me adopting him back. After several years of discussion, after the complete breakdown and ending of the relationship between him and the people who raised him, we decided to go ahead with it.

We first got advice from 2 law firms — one specializing in inheritance law and the other in family law with ties to legislative lawyers. The jurisdiction i live in does not permit adult adoption, so we acted on our lawyer’s advice to get it put thru the courts in another one, and as fast as possible before laws tightened up.

… so i got an apartment in another location a short flight away — to fulfill residency requirements in a place that permits adult adoption. I set up a bank account and a phoneline there. Got a drivers’ license there to prove legal residency with photo ID. Had a blast travelling there every few weeks, doing research as is my profession, and shopping at one of the largest malls on the continent. Then we submitted our court paperwork and our $200 payment… and three weeks later the adoption decree arrived back in the mail — a certificate worth framing! July 27, 2007 will always be a special day for us.

Yes, it cost about $10,000 in travel and rent expenses, but it was worth it. And we compare it to how healthy white infants are now sold by agencies for $20,000+ and know that our expenses on airfare and a nice apartment in a beautiful and clean capital city was well worth the cost. And our money did not go to keeping baby brokers in business.

So we did it. And we have not looked back. It is a dream come true for both of us.

So, indeed, reunion can go places beyond what one first expects. And it also proves that anyone who is promised that adopting an infant will provide them with a “life-time guarantee” of “a child of their own” should sue their broker for making false promises. No-one can make promises on behalf of another human being, especially an infant who cannot speak for themselves.

But the best thing of all is that we are back together again, and both of us have reclaimed what was taken from us.

About the author: Cedar is the mother of 4, living on an island on the West Coast of Canada. She is a writer, former government policy analyst, and is currently finishing a Masters degree. See Cedar's blog, about her adoption experience and analyses of adoption as a social institution, , at "On a Little Island in the Pacific: An Adoption Blog."