About Laurie Frisch

A personal adoption story

I am a mother who lost two children to adoption (yes, unfortunately two). I only recently discovered what it was like to be adopted from a chance conversation with a friend who was adopted. It wasn't easy to listen to, but I'm glad I found out. I have been doing research since then to try to be prepared when and if I meet my kids.

My boyfriend actually committed suicide after I told him I had to give our baby away. I was four months pregnant at the time. He had been wanting to marry me and was excited about the baby, but I didn't think we would work out. Still, I did love him very much and his suicide was a horrible shock.

No one offered to help me with my baby in any way should I keep her. That was their way of letting me make my own decision. At the time, my mom had some very poor ways of handling things. Although she wanted to do the right thing, she didn't understand how to and she trusted the "experts" at Catholic Charities. Still, my mother asked the social worker if it wasn't a traumatic thing for a mother to lose her child. The social worker told her it is a loving thing to do and that the girls who give their babies away give them away because they come from loving homes and they want their child to be loved also.

I was trying to put myself through college at the time and had a serious depression problem that I did not know could be treated with medication and exercise. I think now that if the counselors had taken the time to figure out what my problems were and explained to me that they were temporary and no basis for such an important decision, they could have helped me to resolve them. (My mom later did find a great counselor and in the last 6 or 8 years of her life turned herself around and with the new techniques she'd learned became the most loving helpful person there ever was.)

At the time, I did not know much about motherhood. I was led to believe that giving away a child would be more like giving away a puppy than actually losing your closest family member. And, I was told I would "get over it". Still, I hoped desperately that someone would break down and rescue me and just say "You should keep your child." But they did not. I had in my mind a picture of my baby and me on the street with not even a diaper to change her.

I held my daughter after she was born. She was the most beautiful and sweet tempered baby there ever was, with dark wisps of hair and a wrinkly forehead. I though, my God! The people who adopt her will think they really hit the jackpot! I was the world's proudest parent and wanted to show my baby off to everyone. But I only had pictures and no one wanted to see my baby's pictures or talk about her. Even though they had told me it was the right thing, they couldn't stand to think about it.

After losing my daughter I did everything possible to keep from becoming pregnant again. I made it through college and even managed to get a job at a time when jobs were very hard to come by. Things were looking up. I became pregnant again as the result of a "coworker rape" situation. That was an incredibly stupid thing to do to someone you will be seeing every day! I threatened to kill him and would have liked to but that would only have made my life worse. I was horribly upset when I discovered I was pregnant. I actually wanted a baby at the time, but I was very concerned that I would not be able to love my child the way I wanted to and no one told me otherwise.

The people at Catholic Charities this time did not even recommend I go to a rape counselor. They never told me that it's about a billion times harder to lose a second child - although if they are the experts they claim to be they should have known. They never told me that lots of women keep babies conceived in rape and that they love them very much.

The thought of losing another child was so hard. I cried every day from the moment I woke up in the morning until I fell asleep at night, except when people were around. I was very, very sick the entire pregnancy and had bad headaches. Unbelievably, some people treated me even worse than they did when I was pregnant with my daughter!

I didn't feel I could trust the adoption agency any more (I went back to explain this and got charged a lot of money for my effort), but found and interviewed the people who adopted my son myself. I carefully made a list of criteria I thought were important. When I went to meet them, they told me everything I could ever want to know and managed to cover every item on my list without me even asking!

When my son was born, he cried hard. I was afraid to touch him, because I thought it would be easier that way. My mom, who generally has a way with babies, held him for a long time and he cried the whole time. Then the nurse took him and held him and he cried - he was really squalling. Finally the nurse brought him over near me and I touched him lightly on the forehead and he calmed right down and looked very interested.

All of the mixture of feelings that I'd had about him previously (after working every day with his father, being so sick and knowing I would lose him, those feelings were not always good ones) changed into the most incredible love! It was intense and wonderful. I kept him with me in my hospital room for a day.

Unfortunately, I felt I had an agreement with the people who were hoping to adopt him and did not want to let them down. I should have. They would have gotten over it - I never will.

My mother kept telling me she would have helped me with my daughter- but she didn't tell me so until after my kids were already gone. She never did say she would have helped with my son, mainly because she wasn't sure whether I would have been able to love him and I didn't tell her otherwise. She felt extremely bad about it all, anyway, and I didn't want to add to her pain.

My mother has been deceased two years now and my father has been deceased since 1991. With my parents out of the picture, I have been able to be honest with myself about things. Thus, I am able to admit that I did not do the "loving thing" as much as I did the "uninformed thing" by giving away my kids.

I hope that things have gone really well for my kids. But, it's very hard for me. I want to know them. I want to know how things have gone. But even to contemplate contacting my kids, I have to face what I have lost. I can never get back all those years I could have had with my kids.

Today, I am a 41 year old Avionics Systems Engineer. I am trying to get across to people what forces may contribute to people losing their kids and the life long effects that separation can have on the mother and the child. The fact is that separation is nearly always preventable.

- Last updated in 2003 -

Read Open Adoption - The Truth about Open Adoption.

Read about Raising "Parenting" Your Child.