Ron:
Welcome and thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption with Kelly Rourke-Scarry and me, Ron Reigns, where we delve into the issues of adoption from every angle of the adoption triad.

Speaker 2:
Do what’s best for your kid and for yourself, because if you can’t take care of yourself, you’re definitely not going to be able to take care of that kid, and that’s not fair.

Lindsey:
And I know that my daughter would be well taken care of with them.

Speaker 4:
Don’t have an abortion. Give this child a chance.

Speaker 5:
All I could think about was needing to save my son.

Kelly:
My name is Kelly Rourke-Scarry. I am the executive director, president and co-founder of Building Arizona Families Adoption Agency, the Donna Kay Evans Foundation, and creator of the You Before Me campaign. I have a bachelor’s degree in family studies and human development and a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in school counseling. I was adopted at the age of three days, born to a teen birth mother, raised in a closed adoption and reunited with my birth mother in 2007. I have worked in the adoption field for over 15 years.

Ron:
And I’m Ron Reigns. I’ve worked in radio since 1999. I was the co-host of two successful morning shows in Prescott, Arizona. Now I work for my wife, who’s an adoption attorney, and I’m able to combine these two great passions and share them on this podcast.

Ron:
“When there’s an elephant in the room, introduce him.” That’s a quote from Randy Pausch.

Kelly:
And that is applicable when you’re talking about adoption, because in adoption there are a lot of elephants in the room. There’s a herd.

Ron:
We have a herd of elephants right here in the room. Let’s introduce them, then.

Kelly:
So elephant number one, why adoptive parents are adopting.

Ron:
Why do they adopt?

Kelly:
Oftentimes, adoptive parents or prospective adoptive parents are asked by other members of their family or friends, coworkers, “Why are you adopting?” This is a really personal question. I don’t know that it’s appropriate to ask somebody why they’re choosing to adopt unless you have that type of a relationship with that person. The answers are usually one of the following: fertility issues, maybe their age or genetic risk factors for the baby, or maybe they just have a desire to adopt. Maybe they have religious reasons or organic reasons and it’s just on their heart. I don’t think asking somebody why they’re choosing to adopt is any different than asking somebody why they have the number of children that they have.

Ron:
It’s their business. Give me another elephant.

Kelly:
A birth father or birth fathers plural.

Ron:
Oh.

Kelly:
There’s the elephant or elephants.

Ron:
This happens.

Kelly:
This happens.

Ron:
Okay.

Kelly:
Sometimes in an adoption situation, a birth mother may name a birth father as the potential father of her unborn child. Sometimes she may name one, two, three, four, five.

Ron:
Wow.

Kelly:
And we don’t judge. As an agency, we don’t judge.

Ron:
Certainly.

Kelly:
There is a rhyme and a reason for everything, and it’s hard for a birth mother to have to be open and forthcoming with where she’s been and who she’s been with and why situations occurred the way that they did. And as a society, I think we really need to respect the fact that this mother has chosen life and she’s chosen adoption. And rather than condemn her or make her feel bad-

Ron:
About her choices, about her lifestyle, and whatever it is, we need to celebrate what she’s doing for the child.

Kelly:
Regardless. Absolutely. She’s come to the finish line in her decision, and she’s reached it. She’s broken through the ribbon and she’s choosing adoption, and that’s what we need to celebrate, not A, B, C, and D, which happened prior.

Ron:
Right.

Kelly:
We need to focus on where she is today and meet her where she is today, rather than question her as to where she was yesterday. So elephant number three. Sometimes there is a birth father that may or may not be the same person as the legal father.

Ron:
Okay.

Kelly:
So if you remember in previous podcasts, we talked about legal fathers. A legal father is the husband of the birth mother. When there is a legal father that is the birth father, he too will sign consents for adoption. He will be part of the adoption process, at least in a minimal case of signing consents as the birth mother will after the baby is born. If the birth mother is married and he’s not the legal father, there are other avenues to pursue as well.

Kelly:
I had one situation … This is kind of a funny story … where the birth mother was sitting in our office and she elected to bring both the legal father and the birth father into the office and have them both sign paperwork at the same time, and she was magnificent at orchestrating the two of them. She told them when to come into the office, when to come out of the office. She came in with each one of them. She made sure that they didn’t have any issues between them, and she handled that situation very well.

Ron:
Quite impressive.

Kelly:
It really was. I would say adoption guarantees would be another elephant. Everybody wants to know the for sures, the for sures in life. Are you for sure? Do you promise? Is this going to happen no matter what? Can you reassure me that this is the case? Unfortunately, in adoptions, there are no guarantees, just like with life. And when you’re riding a roller coaster, there are highs and lows and you like the highs and lows enough that people often will ride more than one. So they don’t ride the rollercoaster for the lows. They ride it for the highs.

Ron:
But boy, those lows sure accentuate the highs.

Kelly:
They do.

Ron:
Yep.

Kelly:
And you would never have the highs if you didn’t have the lows, so that’s what you have to remember.

Ron:
Yeah.

Kelly:
And when we’re looking at guarantees, ultrasounds can never be guaranteed. They’re never 100%.

Ron:
Right.

Kelly:
Mistakes happen with ultrasound techs, with doctors reading the reports. Sometimes-

Ron:
Well, my brother’s first child, he thought he was having a boy, and lo and behold, I have a niece instead of a nephew.

Kelly:
And I’m sure everybody celebrated that it was a healthy baby.

Ron:
A beautiful, healthy baby. Yeah. The fact that we had the wrong colors for some stuff, you can get over that.

Kelly:
It’s returnable.

Ron:
Right?

Kelly:
Absolutely. I had a funny story about that as well. We had an adoptive family that was so excited. The ultrasound showed that the baby was a girl, and this was a very girly type adoptive mom and she had everything ready and she had headbands and Pepto Bismol pink everything.

Ron:
She was set.

Kelly:
She was ready to go. Those of you that watched the movie Steel Magnolias, the two colors, pink, was it blush and bashful, I think that they were?

Ron:
I never saw the movie.

Kelly:
Okay, so that was this mother, and when the baby was born, as you said, lo and behold, it was a boy. The pink headbands and the dresses and the pink car seat-

Ron:
Little out of place at this point, but they were thrilled.

Kelly:
But you know what? I can promise you the baby didn’t know the difference.

Ron:
Right.

Kelly:
Another funny story about that. When I was first in the social service field, my very first job out of my bachelor’s degree, I worked with a woman, and her name was Kevin. And when I asked her about her name and how it came to fruition, she said that her parents thought they were having a boy and they loved the name Kevin. They had purchased multiple items with the name Kevin. They had told everybody they were naming the baby Kevin, and when Kevin turned out to be a girl rather than a boy, they decided they weren’t parting with the name.

Ron:
They didn’t weren’t going to go with Kevina or anything like that. They just stuck with it.

Kelly:
They stuck with it, and she didn’t go by her middle name. She went by Kevin. Clients would show up to talk with her the first time. She would come out and they would say, “Oh no, no, no, we’re here to see Kevin,” and they would look at her funny. So I always found that humorous.

Ron:
That’s great.

Kelly:
Another aspect of the adoption process that there are no guarantees are when it comes to labor and delivery.

Ron:
Okay.

Kelly:
Prior to labor and delivery, we develop a hospital plan with a birth mother, and in that hospital plan, it outlines her preferences, who she would like in labor and delivery, what she would like to happen after the baby is born, where she would like the baby to go after the baby is born, whether it be her room, the adoptive parents’ nesting room or the nursery. Everything regarding her hospital plan is formalized, sent to the hospital-

Ron:
Prior to, right.

Kelly:
Just so everybody knows where to stand, what to do.

Ron:
Right.

Kelly:
But there’ll be situations where the birth mother will go into the hospital and have a change of mind in terms of, “I do want the adoptive family in the room when I deliver.”

Ron:
When this happens, right.

Kelly:
Sometimes adoptive dads are not as excited about going into the labor delivery room as the adoptive moms.

Ron:
Right.

Kelly:
The adoptive moms, most of them, you couldn’t stop them if you were an NFL quarterback. On the other hand, I think the adoptive dads would prefer, the majority of them … I don’t want to speak for everybody.

Ron:
Right. certainly.

Kelly:
.. rather than playing it in the labor and delivery room.

Ron:
It is very intimate and it’s an odd thing for guys, so I understand that.

Kelly:
It can be. So we prepare the adoptive dads that if you’re invited into the room, it’s really a good idea to go ahead and respect the birth mother’s wishes. She wants you to watch the birth of the baby.

Ron:
This is your child, too.

Kelly:
Absolutely. And she wants you to be a part of that connection and that process and she wants your support in there. We tell them normally, “Stand behind her shoulder and just be a voice of encouragement.” And I will say that most of the time, the adoptive dads do pretty well. We haven’t had any fainters lately.

Ron:
Lately, so it has happened, though. Okay.

Kelly:
I will also say that there was a situation that I found very funny, that the adoptive mother was on one side of the birth mother and the nurse was on the other side of the birth mother, and the adoptive father was standing behind the adoptive mother, and so he was not behind her shoulder, but right at her shoulder. And the adoptive mother was very modest, and so she kept trying to cover up the birth mother as she’s delivering the baby and kept pulling the sheet down, trying to keep her as covered as much as possible.

Ron:
Right. For the sake of modesty, that makes sense.

Kelly:
Absolutely, to the point that the nurse finally put an end to that said, “You’re fighting a losing battle. This is never going to happen. You got to let this go.”

Ron:
Just let it go.

Kelly:
Just….

Ron:
This is not the hill you want to die on.

Kelly:
Absolutely. We all kind of found that funny and sweet and endearing and yeah, we all laughed.

Kelly:
The last elephant that we’ll discuss today is what happens when a birth mom changes her mind.

Ron:
Okay. This is a tough one.

Kelly:
This is a really tough one. This is a pretty big elephant.

Ron:
Yeah, because it does happen.

Kelly:
It does. It really does. And it is part of the adoption process for many families. It’s something that is difficult for the adoptive family. It’s sometimes difficult for the birth mother. It’s always difficult for the adoption agency and the case workers. When a case worker is working with an adoptive family throughout the pregnancy and walking their adoption journey with them, they are so emotionally vested. This is a mission for our adoption case workers. This is a job that is not nine to five Monday through Friday, holidays off. We always have babies born on the holidays. They’re born in the middle of the night, on the weekends.

Kelly:
This is something that when you are an adoption case worker, you’re dedicating your life to. And when it doesn’t have a happy ending, it’s hard. It’s crushing. Nobody wants to be the bearer of the bad call. Nobody wants to have to call a family and explain that there’s been a change in circumstances and the birth mothers decided to keep her baby. I would say that when a birth mother does change her mind and you have a case worker, the birth mother case worker and the adoptive parent case worker both take it very hard.

Kelly:
There was one situation where we had a birth mother and she was placing her baby for adoption and the baby was about to be discharged, and the adoptive family was in the nesting room and they were waiting for the paperwork to be finished so the baby could go home. They had their car seat and their stroller, and the birth mother at that moment changed her mind, because in the state of Arizona, you cannot sign consent for adoption until 72 hours. She was still within that timeframe and decided at that point she was going to choose to parent. And when we walked back in and told the adoptive family that this wasn’t going to have a happy ending and the birth mother had chosen to parent, they handled it like troopers. And it was heart wrenching to watch them walk out of the hospital room-

Ron:
Knowing.

Kelly:
… with an empty stroller, with an empty car seat in the stroller, and they did have tears.

Ron:
I’m sure.

Kelly:
The case worker was having a very difficult time as well. She had worked diligently with this adoptive family, and when they left the room, she burst into tears and slid down the hospital wall. And I remember helping her dry off her tears and stand back up and giving her a hug and telling her it was going to be okay. At that moment, the adoptive family walked back in and looked at the adoption caseworker and their immediate concern was for her, stating, “Is she okay? What happened? Is something wrong? Did something else happen?” And it was so impressive to me that they had come back because they had left an item that they needed to pick back up, and their concern was not even for themselves. It was for the caseworker that was really struggling. And I thought that that was really endearing and really precious.

Ron:
Absolutely.

Kelly:
So I think that when we listened to the quote that I just love that you introduce an elephant in a room, I think that that can carry over to every aspect of your life. I think rather than worrying about something or wondering about something instead of being present in the moment, it’s better to address the elephant.

Ron:
Those issues.

Kelly:
They’re there.

Ron:
Sometimes tough issues.

Kelly:
Absolutely.

Ron:
Sometimes happy issues, but issues.

Kelly:
Because if you address them, you can find peace, have closure and move on.

Lindsey:
My name is Lindsey. When I found out I was pregnant, I was homeless, on drugs and I was trying to escape a domestic violence situation with my baby’s father. I came to Building Arizona Families as kind of just to explore my options. From the moment I walked in, they were super supportive. They were great. They did an interview and kind of asked me what my plans were, what I was thinking. I let them know that I was interested in adoption and from there, I received a case manager, and I was really terrified. This is my first child. All I could think about was needing to save my son. I couldn’t even get off drugs at the time, and I just had all these horror stories of would I go back to my ex-boyfriend, who he had a son my age and he started doing meth with his son when his son was 13, and I mean, I was totally alone. My family was not in the picture. They told me that I needed to get an abortion.

Lindsey:
So my case manager became like my mom. I would call her crying in the middle of the night, “Oh my gosh, I’m so scared about … I’m having this pain or this feeling.” And she’d walk me through the process of just kind of being there, because I’d never been pregnant before. Everything was brand new to me. She just loved me through everything. I mean, I went to all my doctor’s appointments because of Building Arizona Families, transportation, just everything, anything and everything to make sure that my son received the best care possible. And I don’t know if I would’ve been able to do that for him had it not been for Building Arizona Families.

Lindsey:
It was definitely the hardest decision I’ve ever made. And it still is something that is very hard, but it was the right thing, and still every day, I’m so thankful for Building Arizona Families. I’m so thankful for the couple that adopted him and I’m just so thankful for just this whole situation. I wouldn’t have been able to do it on my own and I know that he has a better life now and he has a chance to be great. And I mean, I know that he would have that chance no matter what, but he’s growing up in a good family and he’s growing up surrounded by love. I couldn’t be happier with all this. The care I received from Building Arizona Families and the whole process was just a dream come true. I wasn’t alone.

Ron:
Thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption, written and produced by Kelly Rourke-Scarry and edited by Ron Reigns. We also want to thank Building Arizona Families, the Donna Kay Evans Foundation and that You Before Me campaign. A special thanks goes out to Grapes for letting us use their song, I Don’t Know, as our theme song. You can check out our blogs on our website at AZPregnancyHelp.com. For Kelly Rourke-Scarry, I’m Ron Reigns. We’ll see you then.