Tuesday, November 07, 2006

What would I do?

Over at Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters, The Town Criers have been talking about instant motherhood, and how we'd react. I've been thinking about this alot, since really I am terrified of another pregnancy, and boy if I could skip ahead to the baby part that would be great. Don't get me wrong, I love being pregnant, and if I could have a low-risk easy pregnancy & birth I'd do my nine months without a word of complaint. But that's not my lot in life---so instead I complain bitterly, while I vomit, inject myself with HCG every day, take suppositories and pills and pray for a live baby, instead of a dead one.

We've had a few opportunities to skip the pregnancy too, like when I discovered that my husband's 2nd cousin, a teenager, was pregnant, & unmarried. The first thing I thought about was that we could take the baby. In the case, never mind the unmarried teenager part, she was going to a lousy mother, and Children's Aid was going to be monitoring her anyway, so why not ask if she wanted to give up her child to us?

I know, I know, if she just had support and a place to live, etc. etc. she could be a good mom, but that doesn't apply in this case. Her Mom and her family have loads of money. They would never throw her out of the house, but money can't make up for the fact that she is a goof. A high school dropout whose parents are willing to PAY her to go back to school, she would rather sit around her house at night and be a mallrat by day.

Anyway, it turned out that she wanted to keep the baby, and Children's Aid will only allow her to keep custody as long as she lives in her mom's house. They have come close to seizing the little girl on more than one occasion, on the grounds of emotional neglect. Basically, the kid is an accessory for her, like a new cellphone. Yep, great life....

Then a few years ago in Toronto, a baby was found late at night outside City Hall, in the freezing cold. The woman who found him was going home after work, but instead of calling 911 right away, she picked him up and warmed him inside of her coat and shirt. She said later she was so shocked, and it was almost instinctual to nestle the baby into her chest. She wasn't infertile, just a normal woman. Very shortly after someone found her sitting there with the baby and helped her call the police on her cell. The baby turned out to be fine, and it turned out the bio mom was a schizophrenic street person who did not remember she was pregnant. She had gone off her drugs when she found out she was pregnant, and lost connection with reality at that point. She had no idea she was even giving birth since she was psychotic at the time, and had wandered away leaving the baby behind.

Anyway, something like 30 couples called desperate to adopt the baby. Eventually someone did adopt the kid after child services took on the case, because even with meds the bio mom was incapable of taking care of her child, terribly sad. Interestingly I feel more sympathetic to her than I do towards the teenage mom who never left her baby outside. And why? Because the homeless schizophrenic mom was trying to take care of her baby when she went off her drugs, which tells me she cares more about the long-term future of her child than the idiot second cousin-in-law.

And the woman who found the baby first? Apparently this sometimes happens when an abandoned baby has been found, to grab it and hold it---anyway, EMS decided she was a hero for saving the child.

As for me, all I could think about was how much I wanted to be the one who found the baby, and yes, I would've gone to the hospital with it, but would I have had the guts to give the baby back to the cops? To child services and foster care? Oh crap, I don't know...knowing how many mistakes CAS makes, I might wonder for a moment which was the ethical choice.

3 comments:

  1. This post just adds to what I wonder all the time. Why is it that the shit people get to have babies with no problems. Then women like us have such a hard time. I wish I could understand that.

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  2. What the previous poster said! I don't even have personal experience with it, but I see some of those abused or abandoned kids on TV and think, just bring them over here!

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  3. I remember that story too.
    Everytime I hear something like that I think 'oh, I'd like to go for a walk and find a baby too'. I'd probably take it straight home.

    Glad I came across your blog...I'm always looking for other Canadian bloggers.

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