Why are they in a hospital bed? (Adoption related)

tinyletter.com/Glosswitch/letters/the-ok-karen-37-the-mumsnet-case-for-abortion

This may also be relevant.

This seems relevant here

www.facebook.com/695937376/posts/10158515501312377/?d=n

@KimikosNightmare for some reason you're conflating babies being relinquished voluntarily for adoption and children being removed due to abuse or neglect. Not sure why that is?

Adoption should only be considered if the child is at risk.

It is extremely damaging for children to be removed from their birth mother, even if it is done for “kindness” .

And perhaps, rightly or wrongly, if there was an option here to select the family your child would go to I imagine there would be cases where a pregnant teen girl would choose that over abortion/keeping the baby compared to the idea of handing your unwanted newborn over to Social Services and having no control on what happened to them and where they end up.

How could a teen girl determine the best family for the baby? It puts more pressure and potent guilt onto someone who is little more than a child themselves.

Pregnant girls or women just don't give their babies up in the U.K. where there is the option to keep them.

And this is why the systems won't change in the US. Generally, only the poor or young will suffer and the wealthy benefit.

Contrived photos like this sugarcoat the reality for the benefit of those who are benefiting.

And is that always in the best interests of the mother and child? How often does that lead to several miserable years on benefits with a damaged older child ending up in the care system with little, if any chance, of a permanent secure home?

I don't understand your point. Girls and women don't tend to relinquish their babies in the U.K. because they don't want to
So how would it be better for them to hand their babies over for adoption when they don't want to? Are you suggesting that babies would be better off with wealthy adopters than lower income mothers? What makes you think that babies will end up in the care system rather than being cared for largely happily by their own parents or families? It's a weird, social engineering, classist false equivalence.

I have been a social worker for many years and only come across one, tangentially. I had one on my caseload once but the parents changed their minds. Pregnant girls or women just don't give their babies up in the U.K. where there is the option to keep them

And is that always in the best interests of the mother and child? How often does that lead to several miserable years on benefits with a damaged older child ending up in the care system with little, if any chance, of a permanent secure home?

I'm not comfortable with the idea which seems to be coming from some posters that an unwanted pregnancy should end in abortion or a woman keeping a baby she didn't really want and may not be capable of or interested in, caring for because, heaven forfend, adoption be considered.

It is such a different system that newborn adoptions are a thing in the way they aren’t in the U.K. And perhaps, rightly or wrongly, if there was an option here to select the family your child would go to I imagine there would be cases where a pregnant teen girl would choose that over abortion/keeping the baby compared to the idea of handing your unwanted newborn over to Social Services and having no control on what happened to them and where they end up.

However I should admit that my first thought on seeing the boy/girl twins was it screamed IVF/surrogacy so I’m pleased to be wrong.

With the rolling back of abortion rights going on I am sure there will be more newborn adoptions not less, not through positive choice but because of lack of other options.

It's a ridiculous photo because it's contrived. A mothers first photo with her baby is often with her in a hospital bed, because it's likely that she has to remain in bed for sometime after the birth. There's no reason for them to be in the bed in the first place.

And I'm not going to get misty-eyed over men benefitting from systems that encourage women to go through with pregnancies they don't want and for children to be removed from their mothers.

These abusive systems are never going to be changed when people are praised when they benefit from them.

I find the US system barbaric and you are right not everyone wants to be a mother. Contraception and abortion are the answer to that, as is the apparently unattainable ideal of women being free from rape and sexual coercion of all kinds.

If a woman doesn’t want to be a mother why should she (and why would she) go through pregnancy and birth and all the risks that that entails?

BertieBotts has it right it is purely about controlling and punishing women.

Those adopted suffer too and there are consequences for all of society. When society is so fixated on controlling and punishing women the harms impact on everyone.

I think the photo is rather sweet, they look happy and I’m sure the babies will have a lovely life.

I think in terms of US adoption the cultural landscape is so different that it's hard to grasp.

If you're unexpectedly pregnant in the UK, you can access abortion fairly easily, and for free. Or, if you decide to go ahead with the pregnancy, there's a welfare safely net which, while not at all generous, leaves you not completely without means. And, the NHS picks up the cost of your antenatal care, whether it's straightforward or complex. You get to make that decision based largely on your feelings and personal situation - it may be hard, but neither path is impossible.

Then head across the pond There are many parts of the US where abortions are hard (if not impossible) to get. If you can get one, you'll need to do it quickly and there will likely be a cost to you - for the procedure, and perhaps for travel to where you can get it, and perhaps for a stay there in order to meet mandatory waiting times - and you may not have that money or that time. The religious sigma is also much more substantial and so you just may not feel able to go ahead with it anyway. It, you didn't even know you were pregnant until past the time your state allowed abortions anyway.

So, you're having a baby - but there are medical bills mounting up and the insurance system isn't your friend, and then maybe you live somewhere where the welfare assistance available to single parents is deliberately awful to 'send a message' and deter you from making the choices you didn't really have in the first place... It's all too easy to end up in a situation where both paths are impossible.

Which leaves adoption. Where you can get help to meet those expenses, and you can know that the baby is going to a family where they can give it all the things you can't; you can actually choose who and you can specify whether or not you want to remain in contact... It's a way out. I can completely see why people take it.

It's that highly problematic? Yep. But it's not really the adoption system that's the problem; it's all the other systems around it. I know people on here are very anti-surrogacy (I don't entirely agree with all the arguments against, but I recognise them) but it is a situation where there's a choice about whether to become involved. In terms of adoption in the US, on the other hand, that choice is somewhat illusory since it looks very much as though it may be the only viable option for many who find themselves pregnant unexpectedly.

@BertieBotts

A baby that needs medical care in the US wouldn't necessarily be in a nursery away from its parents (unless it was in the NICU or its parents weren't there for some reason). It would be in a room suitable for a baby rather than an adult patient. That room would have a bassinet or incubator, but not an adult-sized hospital bed. It would have some kind of furniture that could serve as a (rather uncomfortable) adult-sized bed, like a sofa or a recliner, but not a proper hospital bed. One parent would typically stay overnight with the child. Pre-covid, both parents would sometimes be accommodated, but not by wheeling in an extra hospital bed. They're too expensive to be used as cots, and potentially contaminated or damaged, by those who don't need to be in that type of bed specifically.

@DaisiesandButtercups

Why can't you believe that a mother would ever voluntarily give up a child, or that a child might be better off with someone who isn't biologically related even if its biological mother isn't abusive or unfit? Not everyone wants to be a parent, and not everyone is cut out for it. If a woman doesn't pose any kind of danger to her baby and would do an adequate job of raising it, but would just prefer not to, do you think she should be forced even when there are people who would make excellent parents who are happy to take full responsibility for the child? I don't understand what that's meant to accomplish.

In the uk if a baby is to be removed at birth then it gets it’s own room on the postnatal ward and the mother gets a separate own room (baby nurseries being basically non existent in the uk as we stupidly think that the best way to promote breastfeeding is to make women who are in pain do all the baby care). If you are removing baby at birth which is v traumatic you don’t then make the poor women stay in the same room and watch someone else parent her baby! we don’t match adoptive parents pre birth in the uk so a removed baby will have a midwife support worker with them until they are ready to be discharged when usually a social worker and a foster parent come to collect them. However I have also seen foster parents stay with baby on the ward if baby is in for a long time. The room baby is in usually has a bed in because we can’t be bothered to re arrange the furniture. If a baby is in overnight I can’t see why anyone would object to the foster parent sleeping on the bed - in fact as it means that we wouldn’t have to loose an msw overnight for just one baby so we would be all for it. Therefore I really can’t see what anyone is getting so worked up about.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.lifelongadoptions.com/birthmothers-unplanned-pregnancy?GA_network=g&GA_matchtype=p&GA_device=m&GA_campaign=805920203&GA_adgroup=59779200206&GA_adposition=&GA_placement=&GA_creative=306090642846&GA_extension=&GA_keyword=adopt%20a%20baby%20now&GA_loc_physical_ms=9000752&GA_landingpage=www.lifelongadoptions.com/birthmothers-unplanned-pregnancy&gclid=Cj0KCQjwssyJBhDXARIsAK98ITT9tqKajdSw483vqqJA6h9fSSxBZAWbnyYbD1_Ju6jcU-2EhqLgS-QaAlSNEALw_wcB" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lifelong adoptions.com

The shot in the bed is obviously creating a false start to the time line of 'parent hood'

And yes, airbrushing the birth mother out.

I would imagine if I seen a female celebrity in a hospital bed, holding her new adopted/surragate baby I would be a bit too.

Birthmothers can sometimes choose out the adoptive parents during pregnancy, there are agencies with lists of hopeful adoptive parents.

Daisies because it is not about "life" it is about controlling and punishing women.

UK adoption law prohibits adoption before 6 weeks, this is in order that the birth mother can change her mind.

Of course if she doesn't want to see/care for the baby or there are serious concerns of harm the baby may be separated at birth, but technically it will then be in foster care. Babies aren't allocated to adoptive families before birth but a foster to adopt placement or normal foster placement may be earmarked by the baby's social worker if the separation is planned/known in advance.

It seems very cold to me that a newborn needing medical care would be in a nursery. Wouldn't a parent be admitted as well? When I had my second baby in Germany, he had to be moved to a different hospital. At first he was in NICU so I could only visit and not stay, but then he got moved to the normal children's ward (which consisted of rooms with 2 patients each) and I was signed in as his "rooming in" parent. I wasn't the patient but I had a hospital bed while he had a cot. Older children had a larger sized cot between the size of a cotbed and single bed with extra high bars. I technically wasn't breastfeeding when he was moved there so there was no "need" for me to be there.

Is that just how it works in the US?

I wondered this and then saw a comment under the NYT article about that said this is a current trend in adoption photos for some parents.

Simonjt the sex and sexual orientation of the people concerned is irrelevant. It is the buying and selling of babies and the separation of mother and baby that is the problem.

I apply the same to homosexual and heterosexual couples. Adoption in the UK is ethical. Taking babies from their mothers on the maternity ward is not.

The photo would perhaps be even more obviously offensive if it were a heterosexual couple on the hospital bed and the other circumstances were the same.

@DaisiesandButtercups plenty of mother’s give up unwanted babies for adoption when they are denied the right to have an abortion.

FightingTheFoo, getting back to the original post, I have concerns about surrogate mothers being airbrushed out of the birthing process too, and the consequences for women and childbirth generally. It’s very odd, two people posing in a hospital bed they haven’t given birth in. It commoditises children as a bit of an Instagram lifestyle accessory at best, or something psychoanalytically darker at worst, where they are enacting a kind of envy of the birthing mother by literally usurping her. It rather reminds me of the birth of baby Angela in The Handmaid’s Tale, and no, I don’t think the sexuality of this couple is relevant. I found it inappropriate too.