After she had pushed the baby's head to the end of the birth canal, I nodded to the anesthesiologist who, without hesitation, began to put my patient to sleep. Moments later, after applying forceps to the baby's head and delivering the child, I quickly handed it to an awaiting pediatric nurse who, without saying a word, turned and rushed out the door.
As my patient awoke in the recovery room, I explained that everything had gone as planned and that her child had been born without problems. Two days later, I discharged by patient back to the Florence Crittendon Home for unwed mothers where she was to spend the next two weeks recovering from her childbirth experience and readying herself for life back in her home town outside Nashville.
What made this experience different from other patients of mine was that this patient never touched nor saw the child to whom she had just given birth. The year was 1974, and my patient had just given her child up for adoption.
Today, things are quite different for women who chose to give their baby up for adoption. Fully awake during the birth process, encouraged to hold, bond, feed and room-in with her newborn, today's woman giving her baby up for adoption goes through an entirely different process.
The birth mother of today often knows the couple with whom she is placing her child and, on occasion, even participates in her child's up-bringing. Unfortunately, and tragically, all too often the birth mother takes back what she had previously given up...her child.
Every day it seems the system is being tested. In the past few years two specific cases have created an aura of concern. Angelina-Megan Maria was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1991. Her birth mother walked out of the hospital 10 hours after birth, resulting in her abandoned child being placed for adoption.
Months later, after Cindy and Jerry Leflamm were in the process of adopting Angelina-Megan Maria, her birth mother showed up with a lawyer and demanded her child back. In June 1992, a Connecticut judge took the child from the only home she had known for a year and gave her back to the birth mother.
Jessica was born in February 1991 in Iowa and was placed for adoption by her birth mother as well as the man she named as the birth father. Her adoptive parents, Jan and Robert DeBoer of Michigan, took Jessica home from the hospital and began adoptive procedures.
However, the birth mother, claiming that the real birth father was a different man, wanted her child back. In response, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered the return of Jessica to her birth mother, taking her away from the DeBoers and the only home and family she had known for the first two years of her life.
I have always considered adoption one of the choices women have when deciding what to do with an unwanted pregnancy and have always offered this as a reasonable and, often, very satisfying alternative.
However, adoption is no longer a very popular choice in this country. Only 2% of babies born to never-married women are placed for adoption, with only 50,000 babies actually placed each year. In addition, 1% (or 500) of these adoptions are contested each year.
Adoption is a risky process regardless of the situation. However, sending a message to the public that an adoption process can be so easily reversed, regardless of the circumstances and without consideration of the effect on the child, will turn even more potential adoptive parents away.
That is not only a wrong message, it is a shame.
(Frank H. Boehm, MD is a professor of OB/GYN and Director of OB at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, TN. He can be reached at his web site http://dr-boehm.com. Dr. Boehm resides in Boca).