Hypothetical Future Baby: An Unsentimental Adoption Memoir

By Claudia Chapman

Claudia Chapman has some big questions.

Questions like: were all my friends this obnoxious before they had kids? Will the social worker notice if I only vacuum the middle of the rooms? Does God really hate me, or does it just feel that way? And, most importantly, will anybody find out that sometimes, I pretend my cat is a baby?

Claudia doesn’t want to have these questions. Claudia and her husband Jay want children, but they find out fast that it isn’t going to happen the fun way. Confronted with the choices of a medically risky pregnancy, remaining childless or adopting, they decide to adopt internationally. After all, thinks Claudia, how hard can it be?

Ha.

From England to Ethiopia and back again, this memoir is the story of what happens next. It’s a story about doing something different from what everybody else is doing. It’s a story about getting the house really, really clean. It’s a story about paperwork, pregnancy announcements, wrestling with God, falling down, getting up, coming to terms, and - eventually - it’s a story about becoming a mother.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Claudia Chapman
• Release date: Aug 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301883912

Claudia Chapman

Claudia Chapman spends a lot of time writing, eating nachos and wishing she was thinner. She lives in England with her husband (Jay), cat (Sigmund) and.... well, why don't you read the book and find out?

Book preview

Contents

Preface

BEFORE

Hands

The Idea of a Child

I Seem To Have Chosen Bitter

This Is What We Want To Do

A Collision

Cheaper Than Therapy

Just Hand Over the Baby

An Army of Temptations

Like a Knife

The Giraffe Goes On the Butt

Well Fed White Children

This Baby Is Already Family

I am Left Oscillating

Photocopied and Stamped

You Win This Year, Mothers’ Day

Queuing For a Starfish

Diversity Curtains

Liminal State

Three Sentences in an Email

So Beautiful, So Unfamiliar

DURING

A Burrito With a Face

The Same Thing as Love

More Transcendental Than This

I Don’t Think There Is a Bright Side

A Strange Kind of Homecoming

Plump and Shiny With Abundance

Forever and Ever, Amen

EthioCultureWorld™

Where Are Their Parents?

AFTER

Everything Else Fades

Cinnamon

Mother’s Milk

One Hour

My Children Are Not Educational Toys

It Was All My Own Sperm

I Don’t Really Have an Ending to the Sentence

The Spiral of Crazy

One Piece of Advice

A One Time Only Deal

Fundamental Error

Family

EPILOGUE: THREE ESSAYS

The One With All The Privacy

Adoption: On Earth As It Is In Heaven?

A white mama’s thirty three short thoughts on being conspicuous

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

Footnotes

But Wait, There's More!

Here’s how I wanted to become a mother:

I would be pregnant, and I would glow. Then I would give birth to a tiny, person-shaped miracle, and nothing would ever be the same again. I would cry during sad commercials and blame it on hormones. I would talk earnestly about how being a mother had changed me. All those years at work are as dust and ashes to me now, I would say. Finally, I’m doing something that matters. My eyes would be shining, and maybe a single tear would sparkle on my cheek. I would have baby vomit on my shirt, but I wouldn’t care, because I would be beautiful on the inside, where it matters. I would be like Gaia, the mother earth goddess, somehow without all of that inconvenient paganism.

But that’s not quite how it worked out. Here’s what happened instead:

two-and-a-half years in england, france and on an italian train

I LOOK AT THE nurse taking blood from my arm and wonder if she realises what she’s doing, what this means to me. She is making small talk and filling vials from a vein in my right elbow. Snap, click, plunge, gurgle - they fill up one by one. I make inconsequential replies to her questions while my other hand crushes my husband’s and I wonder if we’ll never have a baby. I wish I could get up and fly away. I wish I was anywhere but here.

I shut my eyes and remember the first time I held this man’s hand. In my mind, we are on holiday in France with a group of people we both know, although we don’t know each other, and we are on our way to go hiking on a glacier. I’m not quite sure why I’m doing this, except that someone suggested it as a group outing and I said, Okay, I’ll come! because I’m a people-pleaser. We’ve been to the special mountain shop and hired the special glacier-walking crampons and the special plastic boots for strapping the crampons to. There are about fifteen of us, and we’re all clomping down a mountain path in our giant shoes as if we are off to explore the moon.

I have the crampons slung across my back and I’m clomping like a professional and I look for all the world like I know what I’m doing. I’m not really sure how this is going to work, though, since we’re pretty high up and the glacier looks like it’s a long way below. I’m not good with things that are a long way below – I have the kind of vertigo that makes stepladders difficult. When I see a drop I fear falling, of course, but it’s more than that – I almost want to throw myself off so that I won’t have to feel dizzy and frightened any more. In the grip of vertigo, most of me wants to scream but one per cent is saying jump, jump, jump. I hate that one per cent.

There will be a cable car, I tell myself. Definitely. It will be fine, but I can’t see any cables or cars and I’m trying not to get worried when I hear someone say the word ladders. I sidle up to Ben, the guy who is organising this outing. "Did you just say ladders? I ask. You know about my heights thing, right?"

Yes, Claudia, I know about your heights thing, he answers. Everybody knows about your heights thing. People in solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay know about your heights thing.

Big surprise: Ben is not the one I end up marrying.

I try another tack. "Do you know anything about these ladders?" I say to the person next to me – a guy called Jay – and he shakes his head and we start talking about something else. It occurs to me that he has been hanging back and talking to me a lot on this trip. He seems pretty nice, and I rather like him, in a friendly sort of way. Does he want more from this? I wonder. Would we work together as more? He’s funny, and I like funny, but I don’t know that we really have very much in common. It seems to me that he is an outside person at heart. I am definitely an inside person. He is English; I’m planning to move back to Australia once I’ve finished studying. And is he maybe a bit nondescript? I mean seriously, he’s an accountant. I don’t think this blossoming friendship has much chance of ending with long, romantic walks on the beach. I don’t think it would work. He is very tall, though, which is nice, but…. no. Not really my type.

Not my type. But then, my type hasn’t worked out too great so far. I tend to fall for emotionally stunted technical sorts – engineers, physicists, that sort of thing – which probably explains why I am still single. Hmmmmm. Maybe I’m being unreasonable. I think. Maybe I should give this whole Jay thing some consideration.

I mentally slap myself. Why are you thinking like this, Claudia? I ask myself. Get over yourself. He’s just a nice guy. He’s not trying to make a move on you. He’s probably got his eye on one of the pretty, cheerful girls, like everyone else does. He doesn’t want a cranky girl with a bad case of Triangle Hair. He’s being nice to you because he is nice, that’s all. Imagine if he knew what you were thinking. I cringe.

Suddenly, the path ends. We have come to the edge of a cliff. Three hundred feet below, at the bottom of the cliff, is the glacier, and on the side of the cliff is a ladder that goes about thirty feet. Everyone else is climbing down the ladder like so many happy little lemmings. I turn away.

"This is not a good idea, I say to Ben and he says, You’ll be fine," and the people-pleasing thing kicks in again and I take a tentative step towards the ladder. Maybe if I shut my eyes I tell myself but that probably isn’t smart. I start climbing down.

You can do it, Claudia, says Jay but the world starts to spin a little. A lot. I was right the first time – this really wasn’t a good idea.

Somehow – Ben yelling at me, I guess – I get to the bottom of the ladder. I sit down on a rock, shaking, while Jay and Ben look on, one a little anxious and the other very impatient. A narrow path cuts into the rock face and leads around a corner. Are we there? I don’t think so – the glacier is still a long way below. I ask Ben and he says, There are four more ladders, Claudia, in the kind of voice that leaves you idiot unspoken but clear. You’d better keep going. I decide that I am never speaking to Ben again; he’s mean, and a big fat liar. He said he knew about my heights thing! He strides off down the path, leaving Jay and me alone at the tail end of the group. I wish I could just go home but hey, says the people-pleaser in me, do you want these people to like you or not? Fake it ’til you make it, girl!

Let’s do this! I say to Jay and take three steps along the path. The path is far too narrow and the drop is far too deep and suddenly The Fear comes on me properly, in a dizzy irrational way. Right now I am facing a sheer rock face on my right and a three-hundred foot drop on my left and the one per cent telling me to jump is getting louder and louder. Falling or jumping, I don’t know how this is going to end, but all at once I do know that I’m going to die, right here, today.

It turns out that sheer physical terror entirely trumps the people-pleasing. Suddenly I am hyperventilating and screeching at Jay, saying, I’m going to fall, I’m going to fall! and he is saying, No, you won’t, you won’t, but I am entirely stuck, rooted to the spot with fear. I can’t go up, I can’t go down and I can’t even move along this path; it’s too narrow and if I think about walking I can only see myself pitching forward, going over this edge, my body arcing into empty space and falling, falling, falling, my purple plastic boots and I smashing to pieces on the glacier below. I want to sit down again but there is no space, just this rock ledge, ten inches or so wide, and even that seems to move and sway as I look at it. I’m going to die. There is only one solution.

I need you to hold my hand, I say to Jay.

Jay is not a toucher or a feeler. I will find out later that people in his extended family don’t even kiss babies; it makes them too uncomfortable. But he takes my hand in both of his and holds it and I should probably say I feel electricity, but I just feel relief. His hands are good hands, strong hands. Kind hands. They are not nondescript at all.

Slowly, carefully, he leads me along the path until we get to a safe place where I can think. It seems like a small thing when I tell people about it later but it is not small at all. I am so dizzy that I cannot see properly or walk straight and if he hadn’t been there, I don’t know what would have happened. Australian Tourist Killed In Freak Glacier Accident; Big Fat Liar Named Ben Arrested, most likely.

We try to go further. I refuse to let go of Jay’s hand and the swaying and twisting won’t stop and I am unable to stop blubbing like a child. Jay offers to skip the day’s outing and take me back. I sob and say okay and he helps me back up the ladder and onto the path. Considering how things are going to turn out between us, it’s probably just as well he sees me at my worst right at the very beginning, but I don’t know this now and I am mortally embarrassed. Did I really beg to hold his hand? I ask myself, wincing. Did I really cry on his shirt?

We go back down the mountain on the tiny train, my heart rate returning to normal, our knees almost touching as we sit beside each other in the cramped seats. I’m surprised to realise that I wouldn’t mind if our knees were touching. I look at his face and think: Huh. He is pretty cute. Why did I not see that before? We get down to the town below and he says Do you want to go and get an ice cream? and even though these moon boots aren’t really first-date shoes, I say okay again and things go from there, I guess.

It seems he does like me.

I hope he isn’t planning on having any babies.

Fast forward a year. We are holding hands again, sitting under a spreading tree on a Saturday in the middle of a Cambridge summer. I am halfway through my PhD, but I have been halfway through my PhD for about a year and a half so who knows what that means? Jay has come to visit me, though, so that means I am happy. He lives two hours away and we seem to spend our whole lives on the road or on trains, going to visit each other.

Things feel serious, by which I mean we have met each other’s parents, we divide our Sundays between each other’s churches, and it’s starting to feel like our names have a permanent ampersand between them. This thing that started on a mountainside a year ago could turn out to be it. I can’t believe it.

That means there is something I have to tell him.

Turns out it’s awkward, talking to a man about your genetic problems when he hasn’t proposed yet. I am pulling grass out of the ground with one hand like I always do when I’m nervous, and stammering I’m not saying we are going to get married – but you know, if we did – I mean, if you wanted to – and I wanted to – and one day we wanted to have babies – I think there’s something I need to tell you. Then I draw a breath.

"I have this .... thing with my genes," I say.

What thing? he asks, and I admit that I don’t really know.

I just know that it means that it might not be a good idea for me to have children, I say. "I’m perfectly healthy, but I have this ...thing with my DNA that means any children I have might not ... get... the right genes. And that would be bad." I’m flailing. I didn’t realise how much I didn’t understand about this until I tried to talk to him.

My parents told me about it when I was really young, I continue. I don’t really understand it, but I know it’s a big deal. There is a pause. I’m telling you because I think you should know. You know. In case… There is another pause. In case we got married, I mumble.

Crickets.

I’m guessing this isn’t the conversation he came here to have today. Five minutes ago we were talking about the relative merits of pretzels and donuts. I wish we still were.

"Do you want kids?" he asks. Good question.

I don’t really know, I answer truthfully. I am still pulling out grass. "In theory, yes, of course I do. I’d like a big family one day, I guess, or at least a medium-sized one. But not now, of course. If you tried to give me a baby now, I’d give it back – I want to finish this degree and get a job and it’s not like I’m one of those women who is really into babies."

We both roll our eyes at those women who are really into babies.

"Do you want babies?" I ask and he says yes, he does. Of course he does. Kind-handed men always want babies.

I don’t know what this will mean. Will this be a deal breaker for him? I could understand if it was. Getting into some unknown and crazy genetic situation might not be what he wants from his life. Honestly, it’s not what I want from mine. Sick babies? No babies? If I could lose this problem by breaking up with somebody then honestly, I can’t say that I wouldn’t do that. I would understand if he did. I think.

But oh, I don’t want to lose this man. I’m so glad he wasn’t my type, because compared with him, my type really stank. He’s kind and funny and calm and stable and I just like being in the same place as him. (Also, he’s so tall). My grandmother always told me that every beetle finds a beetle! and I am beginning to wonder if maybe Jay is my beetle. I don’t want to lose my beetle just because I come from the shallow end of the gene pool.

I’m glad that you told me, Claudia, he says. Thank you. We are quiet for a while. I pull out some more grass, and then we talk about donuts again. He is still holding my other hand.

Fast forward another year and we are holding hands again as we walk out the church door together, man and wife. I am grinning from ear to ear, and so is he. Babies are the furthest thing from our minds.

Fast forward another year, and another. We are sitting on our cheap blue sofa in our tiny house, holding hands and talking about children. I’m not sure I want to go there yet, I say. I’ve barely finished my degree and I’ve only just got a job and I’m not really ready for babies.

Should we maybe use this time find out more about your gene thing? Jay asks, and I quickly say,

No, and he says,

Are you sure? and I say,

I’m not ready to walk through that door, and he says,

Let’s think about it later, when we’re properly grown up, and I say,

Okay, and he flicks the remote control with his free hand and we watch The Office instead.

Fast forward two more years. I’ve got a proper job and we are not getting any younger and suddenly a baby begins to seem like a really compelling idea. I start to dawdle on my way home from work and peer into the windows of shops selling strollers and tiny clothes. Sometimes, surreptitiously, I sniff other people’s babies’ heads. Now we are at the supermarket, in the healthcare aisle. As we walk past, one of us tosses a pack of prenatal vitamins into the trolley, almost as a joke, but neither of us takes them out again. I hide them at the back of the pantry where no guest will accidentally stumble across them, and I start to think about baby names.

Oh, and then we book an appointment to go and see a geneticist. And here we are now.

1. Really weird waiting room vibe

We’re all checking each other out, doing the ‘I wonder what’s wrong with you’ sidelong glance. There are a lot of little kids here. It’s heart-breaking.

2. Equally weird posters

The waiting room is lined with posters advertising support groups for genetic disorders. Seeing all of this lined up in the same room is strangely horrifying. It’s like being in the world’s least successful travel agent. Want to take a trip to cystic fibrosis? How about Turner’s Syndrome? I hear Tay Sachs is beautiful at this time of year.

3. Complicated science

My mother was right – I really should have listened during biology. Getting bad news is hard enough; getting bad news that I don’t really understand is a hundred times worse.

4. Needles

Because this day wasn’t annoying enough.

5. There’s never a cure.

All they can do is diagnose. They can give me statistics, they can look at my DNA, but they can’t splice it back together again. (Well, not legally). All they can really say is: it looks like you have disorder X. What a shame. Okay, well, good luck with that. NEXT!

The geneticist is very kind, which makes it worse, of course. She draws my family tree and marks aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, siblings. Red for women, blue for men. We talk for a while, then, armed with my blood test results, she tells me what is wrong with me.

Each of a woman’s eggs contains half of her genetic material, she explains. The problem with your chromosomes is that they don’t split down the middle in the usual way, so most of your eggs don’t contain the right amount of genetic information. Some will have too much; others will have too little, here, look: and she draws some pictures of my broken genes that look a little bit like stick insects.

She keeps talking. She’s drawing helices and chromosomes that don’t make any sense to me and my head starts buzzing and buzzing. Here’s the part I do understand: I have a one in six chance of a healthy child with ordinary DNA. I have a one in six chance of a healthy child with slightly-broken DNA like me. I have a one in ten chance of a child with significant disabilities. All the rest of my chances are babies who die, probably at some point during pregnancy but possibly shortly after birth. I add it up and that’s more than half my possible babies: condemned to be dead, before they even exist.

So make that six reasons why I’m not having fun at the geneticist, I suppose.

Despite knowing we wouldn’t get good news, I think there had been a small part of me that had hoped the results would come back and the geneticist would say, "Well, I don’t know why you’re here, you’re perfectly fine! Go home and make a baby, you two!" Nudge nudge. Wink wink. Instead, she is talking about our ‘options.’ She is talking about prenatal testing, talking about specialised ultrasounds, and I am trying to make it clear that a termination is not an option