Ron Reigns:
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 didn’t take care of yourself, you’re definitely not going to be able to take care of that kid and that’s not fair.

Speaker 3:
I know that my daughter will 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 R-Scarry:
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.

Kelly R-Scarry:
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 Reigns:
And I’m Ron Reigns. I’ve worked in radio since 1999. I was the cohost 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.

Kelly R-Scarry:
Disruptions do happen in adoptions. That is a common question I get asked by adoptive parents over and over and over again. Do they really happen? Do you see them a lot and my answer is yes, they absolutely happen. They do. Do they happen a lot? No.

Ron Reigns:
Fortunately.

Kelly R-Scarry:
If they did, people wouldn’t do adoption.

Ron Reigns:
Right. Too much risk.

Kelly R-Scarry:
There’s too much risk. One thing that is really important to understand about adoptions is the definition of a disruption. Different agencies, different attorneys will have different definitions of when an adoption occurs. Does it occur after the match with the adoptive family? Does it occur at the hospital? When do you count it as a disruption? That’s why data on disruptions can be very misleading because it just depends on how it’s defined.

Kelly R-Scarry:
So when you’re looking at a disruption, for instance, in our agency, we consider a disruption anytime after a family has been matched with a birth mom and she changes her mind, whether it is a month after they’ve been matched, two months, at the hospital or before she signs consents. That is when we as an agency, because I feel-

Ron Reigns:
Any time in that timeframe is considered-

Kelly R-Scarry:
I feel that that is basically covers the whole gamut. We’re not singling it out and saying, “Well, a disruption isn’t until the baby’s born and the baby had to be removed because consents weren’t signed.” That is, I feel, a skewed version of it and we’ll give an agency much better statistics. That is really important to understand. Make sure whatever agency or attorney that you’re talking to, that you really understand what the rating is and how they’re defining it, what they’re considering a disruption.

Kelly R-Scarry:
Disruptions happen for all different reasons. It can be anywhere from family or friends stepping in saying, “Hey, we’ll help you with the baby. We will support you. We’ll support the baby.”

Ron Reigns:
“We’ll be there.”

Kelly R-Scarry:
“We’ll be there mentally, physically, financially-

Ron Reigns:
And we’ve talked about this before. If they’re not helping during the pregnancy, there’s a pretty good chance they’re not going to be helping after.

Kelly R-Scarry:
Correct. Other times, a birth mother may have emotional feeling she wasn’t expecting to feel, and she changes her mind. Sometimes this can be due to you have a huge hormone influx after the birth of a baby and that’s just nature’s way of helping you bond with your baby is this rush of hormones, this mother instinct. And when you’re doing an adoption, you’re fighting that instinct and it is a battle. It’s an internal battle. She may be positive for drug use and planned on Child Protective Services taking the baby and is choosing adoption as a way to not have her child placed in the system. And when the state Child Protective Service case worker comes out, she explains the process and the birth mother thinks that that is a plan she’d be able to work through and get reunited with her baby. Unfortunately, oftentimes that’s not the case.

Ron Reigns:
Yeah, by and large.

Kelly R-Scarry:
Correct. Another reason may be the birth father shows up and promises her the world and this is what she’s wanted to hear the entire pregnancy. She wants the perfect family. She wants the birth father. She wants her new family united. And up until this very moment, that wasn’t the case. Another one could be her circumstances have changed and she’s able to parent. Maybe she had a relative that passed away and she received an inheritance and can now financially support her child. There are lots of reasons that a birth mother may change her mind.

Kelly R-Scarry:
Another one could be that she has scammed and successfully done so.

Ron Reigns:
And never intended on the adoption in the first place, but thought, “Okay, I can get living expenses and help from this agency while I’m pregnant.”

Kelly R-Scarry:
Correct and that’s unfortunate. That’s something that as an agency I can say that we really try to screen out-

Ron Reigns:
Certainly.

Kelly R-Scarry:
Women that are scamming. We-

Ron Reigns:
Not to get too far into the legal weeds but are there repercussions for somebody scamming the system and trying to-

Kelly R-Scarry:
Yes.

Ron Reigns:
Okay.

Kelly R-Scarry:
Yes, there are. The question that I get from adoptive families when a disruption occurs is what happens? What happens? What happens to the baby? What happens to the mother? What happens? So, there’s lots of things that can happen. The baby can go into state custody. The birth mother can work on a plan to try to reunite with the baby. If the birth mother decides to keep the baby and she is able to, then she parents. The baby can go to a relative or family member that has stepped up that maybe had not stepped up in the past and she and the baby may go live with a family member.

Kelly R-Scarry:
When a birth mother genuinely has worked an adoption plan, plans on placing the baby for adoption, this can absolutely impact her life in a way that she didn’t see coming. When she has an adoption plan and she’s been focusing all of her thoughts and her energy and her future plans on placing this baby for adoption, she’s not going to be prepared. She doesn’t have baby items, car seats, formula, diapers. She’s not prepared for a life change and she’s also not going to have the agency or attorney helping her with living expenses. Her financial resources have just been cut off. Emotionally, her world just got turned upside down and she will probably experience very mixed emotions, happy that she is going to parent her child. The hormones have come into play. That’s what the focus is. They’re overtaking all of the other thoughts in her head of why she was going to originally place in the first place and the hormones are overtaking her emotions.

Kelly R-Scarry:
That being said, she may be spinning in her head. It may be something that she is wrestling with and she’s going back and forth in her head and really trying to process it. When those family members and friends that have not assisted her during her pregnancy show up, they promise the world. And as quickly as they come in, I have seen them exit back out. At that point, birth mothers will often reach back out to us and, they, from what I’ve seen, often don’t place at that time. I have heard stories where they do. Personally, in our agency, I haven’t seen that because they have bonded with the baby at that point. They don’t know what they would tell their family and friends as to what happened with the baby, so they feel shame and embarrassment if they were to have taken the baby home and then say, “Well I now I failed and so now I don’t feel like I can place a baby,” even though that wouldn’t be the case.

Ron Reigns:
But emotionally, it’s hard for them to go back.

Kelly R-Scarry:
It is very hard. It is very hard and the dreams and plans that she’s made are all gone and she’s now going to face a life of having a newborn. When women are struggling with homelessness and drug use and mental illness and they’re unemployed, they’re having relationship issues, bringing a newborn into that is going to complicate all of those issues even more so. There is the honeymoon high of having a baby and bringing the baby home, but when the baby’s not sleeping at night, and newborns don’t sleep at night, they’re very expensive, they are very draining. You have to make them immediately a priority over your own wants and needs. And when it switches on a dime, that can really throw somebody.

Kelly R-Scarry:
Again, a birth mother that’s struggling with all of these issues goes from having an adoption plan to having her world turned upside down and she is having to really look at what this is going to do and impact, how it’s going to impact her life. When a birth mother does change her mind and does not follow through and proceed with her adoption plan, oftentimes she is as devastated as the adoptive family, for some of the same and some different reasons.

Kelly R-Scarry:
She may have felt forced to parent. She may have succumbed to the pressure that was being put on her. She also may feel very guilty towards the adoptive family. She may have really wanted them to raise her child and feels a horrible sense of guilt. I’ve had birth mothers write letters to adoptive families. Oftentimes, they don’t want to be the ones to tell the adoptive family and the law doesn’t preclude that it has to be them that tells the adoptive family. She may very well be resentful towards the fact that now she’s being forced to parent and that is something that she may struggle with.

Kelly R-Scarry:
Another situation that is not often spoken about in the adoption world is the birth mothers that allow Child Protective Services to take the baby rather than proceed with their adoption. One of the reasons that a birth mother may choose Child Protective Services over adoption is because of guilt. If they allow Child Protective Services to take the baby, then they feel it was out of their control. Whereas if they choose adoption, they feel that they are then placing their child, they’re giving their child away. If somebody takes their child, then it’s not their fault.

Ron Reigns:
It’s not their fault and it becomes easier to explain it to friends and family-

Kelly R-Scarry:
But it’s really, it’s really a misconception on their part.

Ron Reigns:
Right. Because-

Kelly R-Scarry:
Child Protective Services would be removing the child from them because of the behavior, whether it’s drug use or a previous history of neglect, for some reason they have other children in the system. It’s not as if it was just circumstance, it was a reason to get there.

Ron Reigns:
Right. Certainly. They don’t just take babies Willy nilly.

Kelly R-Scarry:
Correct. And I think what we really need to explain to birth mothers is if Child Protective Services is in a position to take your child, you allowing them to take your child over placing the baby through the adoption plan and creating-

Ron Reigns:
And choosing a family.

Kelly R-Scarry:
And choosing a family, is doing the baby a service rather than putting the baby in the system. That is a big misconception and I have seen birth mothers choose to allow Child Protective Services to take the baby for that reason.

Ron Reigns:
It’s hard to believe.

Kelly R-Scarry:
It’s hard to believe and it’s devastating. It’s devastating on the adoption agencies part, it’s devastating, obviously, on the adoptive families part and in time it will be devastating on the birth mother’s part. Because when she realizes in reality that she’s not going to be able to work the plan, be reunited with her baby and now her baby is in state custody and in foster care and they have only closed adoptions, that now everything that she had originally planned on has changed.

Kelly R-Scarry:
Additionally, if a birth mother’s not working her adoption plan, then she’s no longer financially assisted by the agency and so her child goes into state care and she is where she was prior to coming to the agency, whether that’s homeless or couch surfing or back to living the life that she was living.

Ron Reigns:
Wow.

Kelly R-Scarry:
And it can happen abruptly.

Ron Reigns:
Building Arizona Families is a licensed full-service nonprofit, Arizona adoption agency.

Lacey:
My name is Lacey and I placed my daughter Jayda two months ago. I chose adoption because I didn’t feel it was fair to her to go the route where you terminate a pregnancy because it really had nothing to do with her. I was the responsible party and I needed to make a decision accordingly. So, because the father left when I was three months pregnant and I already have two daughters, I knew that was the only option really for her to have a better life. I knew that there was a lot of beautiful families out there who can’t have kids or for whatever reason, they don’t go through that process, so I felt that it was the best thing for her is to give her everything I could never give her. So that’s why I placed her.

Lacey:
I chose Building Arizona Families because I was kind of in a situation where I was going to be kicked out of my house and I was going to have nowhere to go, be five months pregnant and they got me in. They got me taken care of. They basically saved my life and they saved my baby’s life because I would have been homeless on the street. They were amazing. I got in here and they took care of me and were there with me through the whole journey, so it was a good choice. I didn’t think I was strong enough to do it and I did it and I’m in a really good place now.

Lacey:
Even though it’s only been two months. I’m in a very good place and I have a really good adoptive family who are beautiful to me and so it can turn out good for everyone involved. Building Arizona Families, they were just supportive through the whole process. My case manager, Blaine was beautiful. I love her and she was there no matter what I needed. Like I said, all my needs were taken care of. I’m really glad I chose this place and the people here are wonderful and they support you the whole way.

Ron Reigns:
Thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption, written and produced by Kelly Rourke-Scarry and edited by me, Ron Reigns. We also want to thank Building Arizona Families, the Donna Kay Evans Foundation and the 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 and you can call us 24 hours a day with questions or comments about the podcast or adoption in general at (623) 695-4112, that’s (623) 695-4112. Join us next time on Birth Mother Matters in Adoption. We’ll be talking about life after abortion for Kelly Rourke-Scarry. I’m Ron Reigns. We’ll see you then.