Birthmother. Birthmother, birthmother, birthmother.
There. Is it so damned hard to say?!
No.
It’s not.
Jen, over at MimiBoo, mentions, towards the end of her post on anxious attachment, a discussion on a list she’s on about “what do you call your child’s birthmother?” Much to my dismay (and Jen’s), the “tummy lady” term is still being used, as in “you grew in her tummy, so she’s your tummy lady”.
Oy!
(Aside from the objectification of the birthmother that the phrase embodies, I can’t stand the concept of teaching that pregnancy means “coming from someone’s tummy”. It’s my own hang-up, and poor OmegaDotter will probably complain to her therapist when she’s 30 that her mother kept telling her how babies grow in uteruses whenever she tried the “I grew in her tummy” statement.)
In this house, we call our child’s birthmother ”your mommy in China”. Or “your Chinese mommy”. Or, “your birthmother”. And it’s “your daddy in China”, and “your other grandparents, who you have never met”.
I made damned sure those words would come easy to me by the time the dotter really needed to talk about such concepts. I practiced telling her them from the day we brought her home. Maybe the first time or two it was difficult. But as a result, these days we have a dotter who feels quite safe in asking questions about her birthmother while we’re eating dinner, and let me tell you, that’s mighty damned important to me.
A helluva lot more important than reserving the Sacred Word “mommy” or “mother” for my use alone.
The “Tummy lady” term has repulsed me since the day I heard that Rosie O’Donnell was using that as her term for birthmother to her adopted children. It wasn’t because it was being used by Rosie (har!), it was because it seemed to be–and still does seem to be–a way of deliberately distancing yourself and your child from her family of birth, a way of giving lipservice to the idea of discussing birthfamily without having to actually deal with the emotional reality. OmegaDad, when I discussed it with him in bed last night, wrinkled his nose at the phrase and called it “incredibly impersonal”.
Of course, I have to hold my scorn towards people who use that term in check right now–because I have no idea what I’ll be like if OmegaDotter actually finds her birthmother. Here and now, the main reaction I have to terms like “tummy lady” is: Being comfortable with the term, the idea, of “birthmother” is not about me. It’s about my dotter. It’s not my life that was yanked about without my consent–it’s hers. And if feeling comfortable enough to talk about her birth family while her mouth is full of cheesy pasta helps her, then that’s what counts.
posted in Adoption, Family, Issues, OmegaDotter, Parenting | 16 Comments
