“However motherhood comes to you, it’s a miracle,” the saying goes.
And it’s also worth defending, regardless of whether the title comes to you through adoption or another means.
Just ask Vietnamazinggg, an adoptive mother.
When a woman on Facebook told her she wasn’t a “real mom” because she didn’t give birth to her son, she didn’t turn away in shame or embarrassment.
In a stinging response on Reddit, she put the woman in her place by explaining what being an adoptive parent means to her.
“I did not give birth to my child. I did not get to feel him growing within me, or hold him against my skin when he was born.” she writes.
“I didn’t labour for hours for this child, I laboured for YEARS. I didn’t feel labour pains. I felt the incredible pain of emptiness in my heart and home, as my wife and I yearned to begin our family through adoption.”
No, she went on, she didn’t experience all of the things that mothers of newborns do such as nursing. But she still had many sleepless nights, wondering whether she and her wife would ever get chosen as adoptive parents, “asking myself why we hadn’t been chosen yet. Poring over adoption profiles and sending endless e-mail inquiries on children available for adoption and being told no, no, no over and over again.”
After being told that she couldn’t understand the feeling of being a mother, Vietnamazinggg threw it back at the woman, telling her that “I feel certain you have absolutely no idea” about what it means to be a mother through adoption.
“A child lives to depend on me – you’re right. My child has been let down by everyone else in his life. You think I am not losing sleep? He may not wake me up to feed him every couple hours, but he screams out in his sleep – no doubt reliving past traumas from the life he led before being adopted.”
As she explains, “Not every experience is your experience. Not every mother is a mother because she gave birth. Not every child is yours or a ‘part of you’ because you grew it inside of you.”
Vietnamazinggg concludes by writing that “my child will always be a part of me, because we’re fighting for this life together.”
And just in case the woman doesn’t get the message, Vietnamazinggg makes one last, final point.
“Fuck you. I’m a mom.”
Her post has been a hit online, picked up by mainstream news and specialty sites, and has already racked up nearly 200 supportive comments, many of them from adoptees, stepmothers and women who feel shame after delivering their babies through a C-section.
“I have a mom who loves me, I don’t think about it too often,” writes one adoptee. “My life has been pretty great because of my parents. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I grew up knowing I was wanted and loved, that’s not something everyone can say. I’m very fortunate.”
Another poster writes, “A woman once told my wife she hadn’t actually given birth because she had a C-Section (you know, for the 2 kids who were breach and transversed who most likely wouldn’t have survived a regular birth). Some people just try to make themselves feel better by making others feel worse, and there’s nothing you can do other than feel sorry for them that they live such a horrible and sad life.”
But now those people know better than to mess with Vietnamazinggg and others whose families have been created differently.
Do you have an adoption story? Share it with us today.