I have cramps right now. And my period. Maybe that is why I was so sad watching 16 & Pregnant last night. It was also a very sad episode because the mother wanted to rear her child but her parents made her put her son up for adoption. It is gut-wrenching to watch a mother tear herself from her newborn when she doesn't really want to tear herself. Lori wanted to stay whole and staying whole for her meant keeping her child, no matter how hard it would have been.

Like an elephant, I would charge and demolish a person who tried to tear my baby from me.

I want so badly to be pregnant and to raise a child so that I can be whole, so that I can be inseparable for another being (literally). Of course, the act of child birth is already an act of tearing baby from mother. Which, I think will be traumatic for me personally. I will have a hard time ripping my child away from my body. But with that, there are a million joys that come from holding and cuddling and teaching and feeding and growing with child.

The act of adoption is a second act of tearing. This is the right choice for some mothers and some childs, of course. But I cannot begin to imagine the trauma of first physically tearing child from mother and second sending mother to one home and child to another. Birth mothers often hold their babies once out of the uterus and a get a chance to hold, cuddle, feed, breathe child. But then they must be torn again. Not just the mother is torn, the child is also torn.

Adoption is a the best option for some mothers and some fathers and some childs and I do not fault mothers, fathers or childs who come to this conclusion after careful consideration. In fact, I empathize greatly with them and appreciate their strength to overstep all intuitive and physiological signals that urge mothers (and fathers) to keep childs. But it is violent. Adoption is the ultimate act of cleavage.