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This essay was originally printed in Loving Mama: Essays on Natural Parenting and Mothering, Edited by Tiffany Palisi (Hats Off Books)

Not Born of My Body, But Nurtured At My Breasts
Janet Tilden

My husband Tom and I have two sons. The older one, Jonathan, emerged from my body on September 24, 1987. Our younger son, Philip, was born on November 21, 1998 to a loving mother who was already raising three little boys by herself. She decided to place her fourth child for adoption, and we were blessed to become his parents when he was 22 days old.

Our path to adoption had been long and difficult. After Jonathan was weaned at three years and nine months, we began “trying” to have a second baby. I became pregnant in 1992 and miscarried near the end of the first trimester. The loss was difficult for all three of us, including four year old Jon, who had proclaimed proudly to everyone he met, including the clerk at the supermarket, “I’m going to be a big brother!” Two years later, I became pregnant again and miscarried once more. My husband and I underwent some preliminary testing for infertility in 1996, and we were disheartened by the expense and regimentation of infertility treatment, as well as the uncertainty of the outcome. We began to consider adoption as an alternative route to expanding our family.

At first, I felt that it would be best to adopt a child of three or four. Having had a wonderful nursing experience with my first son, I could not imagine bottle-feeding a baby. Nursing was such an integral part of my mothering that I could not picture myself comforting a fussy baby with a plastic nipple. We considered adopting from Russia, and we were discouraged by the costs and paperwork involved. Next, we looked into Guatemalan adoption. We paid the application fee to a Guatemalan orphanage, then were notified that the rates would be double what we’d originally been told. Back to square one, but still eager to adopt, we found an agency in our area that would help us find a child.

Our agency, Adoption Links Worldwide, held one and a half day workshops for prospective parents. On the second day of our workshop during the spring of 1998, several adoptive families brought their children and spoke to the group about their experiences. The children included a little boy from Romania, a little girl from China, another boy from Vietnam, and a little boy who had been born in Florida to black parents and adopted by a single white woman. All of the children were beautiful, but my eyes kept returning to the little toddler who was black – he was adorable, bright, and full of personality. I wanted to pick him up and hug him. On the way home from the workshop, my husband and I began to talk about adopting a child who was black. It was an intriguing idea, and we decided to look into the possibility.

A little while later, during one of our home study interviews, my husband told the social worker that he preferred to adopt a baby, rather than a toddler or preschool-aged child. He felt that attachment would be much easier with a child who was adopted at birth. Lisa, our social worker, asked if we were open to the possibility of adopting a child who was black or biracial. We had been under the impression that transracial adoptive placements were rare and difficult, but our social worker told us that many black birth mothers were open to the possibility of placing their children with white adoptive parents. They wanted their children to have permanent, loving homes instead of growing up in foster care. We were told that many black families were adopting children, but there were not enough black families for all the children who needed homes. We told Lisa that we were open to adopting a baby of any race. By this time, I had done some research on the Internet and discovered that it was possible to nurse an adopted baby. We wrote our “Dear Birthparent” letter and waited to hear from the adoption agency about a possible placement.

The summer months passed, and we began to get discouraged. How long would it take to get a referral? In September 1998, we decided to wait another year, then pursue international adoption. At the time, we were both 40 years old and our older son had just turned 11.

Two months later, right before Thanksgiving, I received a phone call from Lisa. She told me that a healthy baby boy had been born three days earlier in Mississippi to black parents, and the birth mother had signed the papers to place him for adoption. Were we interested in being considered by the birth mother? “Yes!” I told her eagerly. Two days later, we received another call, this time from Debbie, the director of the adoption agency in Mississippi. Debbie left a message on our answering machine, and I retrieved the message while we were visiting relatives in Illinois. Debbie’s friendly voice announced that papers were being processed for our adoption, and she needed to know the adoptive mother’s maiden name, the county in which we lived, and the name we had chosen for the baby. Suddenly, everything seemed very real to us. We were truly going to have another baby, and it would happen very soon!

The next three weeks seemed to drag on forever. Because we were adopting from another state, Interstate Compact paperwork had to be completed in both states before we could bring our baby home. Our baby would be in “cradle care” until the paperwork was finished. The birthfather had to sign relinquishment papers in front of a notary public, and government workers in both states had to process the adoption papers. In the meantime, I cried when I thought of the birth mother’s loss, which reminded me of my own miscarriages. What was it like for her to leave the hospital with empty arms? What was it like for “my” baby to be separated from his birth mother? She had chosen not to hold him after he was born, and I suspected she made this decision because she was afraid that if she held him even for a few moments, she would never be able to let him go. She felt that adoption would give him the best chance for a happy future, and she did not want to jeopardize her decision.

During a long-distance telephone call, I spoke with the “cradle care” mother, Gwen, who told me that Philip was an adorable, “good” baby who loved to be held and would snuggle his little head under her chin when she picked him up. She said he had been spitting up a lot in the hospital, and he was put on a soy formula but was still spitting up quite a bit. I wanted to rush down to Mississippi, grab my baby, and bring him home immediately, but I had to wait. Meanwhile, I purchased baby supplies and rented a breast pump to get my nipples in shape for nursing. I worried that Philip might prefer bottles to my breasts. After doing an Internet search, I found a couple of web sites devoted to adoptive nursing, and I learned a great deal from other mothers who had been there. I ordered a Lact-Aid nursing supplementer because it was recommended by many of the adoptive mothers who had been successful in nursing their babies.

Finally we learned that the paperwork was nearly complete, and we would be able to bring our baby home within a few days. Jonathan was worried about missing four days of school, but I told him that someday his brother would want to know what it had been like when we brought him home, and Jon would be able to tell him what he remembered. Jon decided to go with us. We drove from Nebraska to Mississippi in two days, staying overnight in St. Louis.

After we checked into the Super 8 in Tupelo, I paged Debbie, who called us immediately. She told us that she would call the cradle care family, and they would bring the baby to our motel room. A few minutes later, Debbie and her husband arrived, followed by the cradle care parents and their youngest son (age 13), who was adopted. The cradle care mother, Gwen, carried Philip to me and placed him in my arms. I was in total shock – time stood still! We talked for a few minutes, and Gwen and her husband told us that Philip had been “projectile vomiting” and that he would only accept one kind of pacifier. Soon, everyone prepared to leave. Gwen said goodbye to Philip with tears in her eyes. After the others left, we were alone with our new baby. For the first time, we were a family of four instead of a family of three!

Tom held his new son and talked to him softly, and then Jonathan held his little brother and looked down at him. Suddenly Jon’s face contorted and he began to cry. He had been an only child for 11 years, and suddenly he was an older brother. Life would never be the same again. It was a lot to absorb all at once. I changed Philip’s diaper and was delighted to see that his little penis was still intact, not circumcised. In this way, he was just like his older brother. After a little while, Philip began to cry, and we thought he might be hungry. Tentatively, I filled the nursing supplementer bag with formula and held the tiny tube against my nipple, then brought Philip close to my breast. He looked puzzled for a split second, then latched on almost immediately and began to nurse as if he had been doing so since birth. I wondered if he was thinking, “What took you so long, Mom?” At that moment, I truly felt that Philip had accepted me as his mother. I felt a deep sense of joy and fulfillment. Here, at last, was the baby I had awaited for such a long time.

Philip slept between my husband and me that night in the motel, and Jon slept in the other double bed. Jon was not thrilled to have his sleep interrupted by the crying of his new brother. Philip snuggled next to me all night. At one point, when I got out of bed to warm another bag of formula, I felt a surge of panic. At 40, was I still up to the challenge of mothering a newborn baby? The panic subsided, and Philip and I went back to sleep.

We stayed in Tupelo for a couple of days until the court appearance when we officially became Philip’s legal guardians. (Adoptions cannot be finalized until the baby has been with his new family for six months.) Right after we left the courtroom, we checked out of the motel and started the two-day drive back to Nebraska.
A couple of days after we got home, we took Philip to the pediatrician for a checkup. The doctor was worried about his weight. Philip had weighed 6 pounds, 10 ounces at birth, and Gwen had told me that at his 10-day checkup he had weighed 7 pounds. Now, at four weeks, he weighed only 6 pounds, 13 ounces – he had lost some weight. I recalled the “projectile vomiting” mentioned by Gwen and her husband. Philip also had eczema. His skin was dry and wrinkled easily. The pediatrician asked us to come back daily for a week so she could monitor his weight gain. We found that he was gaining an ounce a day, and his skin gradually began to look smooth and moist.

I did not take any medications to induce nursing, but I did take a couple of fenugreek capsules with each meal. It was not obvious to me exactly when I began producing milk – there was no dramatic “let-down” of milk all at once, as I had experienced after giving birth to Jonathan. However, I soon began to feel a let-down sensation shortly after beginning each nursing session. To be on the safe side, I kept using the Lact-Aid supplementer for several months as Philip gradually took less and less formula and continued to grow at a steady rate. Finally, when he was about eight months old, we had returned from a trip to Chicago. I was exhausted after the long car trip and too tired to prepare a bag of formula. I sat down in my desk chair to nurse Philip, and I noticed that milk was dripping from my other breast. After that revelation, I discontinued the formula altogether. He was eating solids at that point, and clearly I was producing plenty of milk. It was so wonderful to be able to simply reach over and put Philip to my breast when he woke at night, instead of getting out of bed to warm up a bag of formula.

Now it is May 2002, and Philip is three and a half years old, healthy and happy. Like his older brother, he is bright, talkative, and full of energy. He still sleeps between my husband and me in our king-sized bed. He nurses a little in the morning after the alarm goes off, but the rest of the day he gets along fine without “bah-boos” (the code word we invented for nursing when Jonathan was a toddler). Philip has a close and loving relationship with my mother, who helped take care of him when he was younger. For more than two years, he took his daily naps in Grandma’s arms so I could work in my home office. Philip brought sunshine to my father’s life as his health failed during the final years of his life, and he helped distract my mother from the sense of helplessness she felt as my father slowly, inexorably faded away and then left us. (Dad died in February 2001.)

Philip and Jonathan have a loving, tempestuous relationship, like any two brothers. Philip loves to tease Big Brother, and he tries to get attention any way he can, whether it is positive or negative. Jonathan gets annoyed with Philip’s antics but still feels protective and proud of him. One time he told me that if anyone ever made a racist comment around Philip, they’d better watch out for his Big Brother! Yesterday, without being asked to do so, Jon cut his little brother’s fingernails when he noticed that they were getting long. Phil loves his Daddy dearly, even though he gleefully proclaims, “I love Mommy best!” (That is, when he’s not telling me I’m a “poop head” for refusing to give him something he wants). He plays with Daddy and gets “under-ducks” on the swings at the park, and he nestles close to Daddy at night when it’s time to go to sleep. Daddy goes to bed early with Philip so I can get a couple of hours of work done while everyone else is asleep. In the morning, Philip and I get out of bed after Tom and Jon have left for work and school. After we wake up and have breakfast, Phil goes to day care from 9:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. while I work. (We could not survive financially without my income.) Phil began going to day care two months before his third birthday. He plays well with the other children and is the best “eater” in the group. He gets a sticker every day for eating all of his lunch. Phil’s best friend is Justice, who is also black and has two loving white parents who, coincidentally, also have a family bed.

Yes, attachment parenting is possible with an adopted child. I am so closely attached to Philip that one night I had a dream in which I was trying to remember details of my pregnancy with him. I woke up and remembered that I had not carried him in my womb, but “only” in my heart. I feel blessed to be his mother.

Janet Tilden lives in Omaha, Nebraska with her husband and two sons. She is grateful for what she has learned from both of her sons, who taught her how to give them whatever they needed. She is still learning every day!