This is a guest blog. It contains significant references to child death, infertility, foetal alcohol syndrome, and other trauma.
“If your baby hadn’t died, I wouldn’t ever have lived with you,” our adopted daughter declares in her usual matter-of-fact way. Her words are heavy and unexpected. I’m unsure what has prompted such a seemingly out-of-the-blue statement.
I find myself lost for words, grappling for an appropriate response. She is, after all, completely right. She was born just months after our daughter died. It’s like the Schrödinger’s Cat problem of family creation—a paradox where two potential realities cannot coexist. Had our birth daughter survived, our adopted daughter would not be with us. Or at least, she wouldn’t have come to us when she did.
Let me be clear, and this is important. We did not adopt because our daughter died. I come from a foster background; my grandparents fostered seven children; the youngest a similar age to me. Fostering was always part of our long-term plan, after we had raised both birth children we intended to have.
And then our daughter died.
We endured recurrent miscarriages and failed fertility treatments. At what point do you say, “enough is enough” and move on to the next stage of your life?
We were approved as foster carers a while after our daughter’s death and had a toddler placed with us for short-term foster care. Removed at birth and shuffled through multiple foster homes, her current placement had broken down due to “behavioural difficulties.”
‘Short term’ quickly became six months, and six months a year. She was diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome and global development delay, labelled “difficult to place” on paper.
Having fallen deeply in love with her and knowing that the chances of her being placed with an adoptive family were becoming slimmer as she became older, we decided to adopt her, fully aware that this decision meant closing the door on ever continuing our birth family. It was the hardest decision we have ever made.
Our daughters are only two months apart in age. Through our adopted daughter’s eyes, she might see herself as a replacement child. Her existence in our family – the exact time she was born – is indeed intertwined with our birth daughter’s death even though we didn’t meet her until much later.
She is no less wanted, no less loved. She does not—will never—replace our birth daughter. She holds a place in our family in her own right. But how do you explain this to a highly sensitive preteen girl with attachment trauma? How do I ensure that she does not believe that she was brought into our family to ‘fix us’ or to ‘heal our grief’? Each day we are learning to place her experiences as central to the adoption narrative of our family. We are learning that “adoption should serve the children who need parents, not the childless couples who seek children” (Newton Verrier 1993, p. 89). We continue to learn that to be separated from your birth mother is deeply traumatic and our daughter needs this validating. She needs to know that we see her pain and that we do not expect her to fill a gap that our birth daughter left.
However, one of the most difficult things we learn, and continue to learn, is that the script of our daughter’s life is filled with messages of rejection. With messages of being ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’. With beliefs that she must conform, adapt, or play a role. It is our job to learn to show her that she does not have to do this. How we do this I am still unsure. But I believe that it starts with honesty. So, when the statement is posed of “If your baby hadn’t died, I wouldn’t ever have lived with you,” it may be that the best response is something along the lines of “I’m afraid I don’t know. And I don’t understand. But I’m so glad you’re here and it hurts to think of a reality where you might not be. I am so sorry that this is something you must think about”.
Fostering and adopting with phil 