Forming a family: When a single woman adopts a baby

A single woman and an adopted daughter make a family unit through trial and error

“Love is in the air…” my daughter sang and pranced around me every time I would get dressed to go out on a date. She was an only child and I was her only parent. She was five years old and yearned to be like everyone else—like all her classmates who had ideal, complete families, with brothers and sisters, aside from a complete set of parents.

Dreaded were the days when she had to bring pictures of her family for show-and-tell in her school. Nudge, nudge—her classmates would look and wonder and whisper. But as an adopted child of an unmarried mother, she could not produce a photo of a father, as could other single-parented children.

I did not know how to help her confront that awkwardness but soon learned that she solved it herself by concocting a story that he died, unphotographed. It was a solution she latched onto after a fellow adoptee told her she would answer cheekily that her father had “nalunod sa sabaw.” I learned later that it’s a convenient story that a lot of adoptive parents fall back on when their children start to wonder about their birth parents. I felt vaguely uncomfortable at the lie she hid behind but how could I interfere when I could not stand on the frontline with her, battling for acceptance by her classmates with whatever means?

And so she gently nudged and hoped, until one day I asked her what she imagined it would be like with me married. Oh, “tito” would move into the house and would reside in her room, which was always empty, anyway, since she usually slept with me. Oh no, no, I said, he would sleep with me and she would be relegated back to her room. Shocked silence. No mention thereafter about my marrying anyone.

Yet her concern for me overcame her convenient solution to the problem when, after a while, I no longer stepped out with her former prospective father. She asked me anxiously if it was because of her—guilt all over her little five-year-old face. I reassured her that she had nothing to do with it, that we just didn’t “click”. She heaved a sigh of relief that she had not come between me and my happiness and skipped gaily away. Love does not seek its own interests, says St. Paul, and my heart was warmed by her unconscious display of love for me.

What on earth prompted me to take on the care of a child at 40. My friends and relatives must have wondered when I suddenly sprang this little bundle on them. I had always wanted children so when a husband was not forthcoming, I took a leap of faith and pursued my passion, as millennials like to say.

Deciding to adopt as a single woman was daunting but the pull of having and loving a child provided the push. The opportunity came quite unexpectedly, so one day I appeared in a friend’s living room carrying an infant. She had to laugh, it was so unexpected. I had to laugh as well, after all, I hadn’t eased into it gradually over nine months of pregnancy, baby showers, hospitalization, etc.

Boom—there I was, an instant mother. All around me they fretted over the difficulties of handling a newborn baby: the difficulties of round-the-clock feeding, changing, cradling, and rocking. But these, I found, were just inconveniences made easier, I must admit, by doting household help. Babette soon became the core around which the household revolved. Those days, as I came to see later, were the easy part. “It takes a village” to raise a child, as Hillary Clinton observed. However, I did not live in a tribal village since I was late in the game of having a baby—none of my cousins, friends, or sister had up-to-date information to give me on the care of an infant.

One aunt counseled me to get a yaya so I could “enjoy life.” This was counsel from an earlier, yaya-dependent generation. But even young mothers seemed to lack the confidence to care for their newborns. And no wonder, if they were bombarded, as I was, with scare stories on the dire consequences of not having a trained, professional carer to manage their infant.

But I was determined to be a hands-on mother, as I felt the need to bond with my daughter. Love increases the more you sacrifice, I had been told. I hadn’t endured the months of carrying a huge belly, the backaches and the heaviness it caused, nor the agony of childbirth; so the lost sleep, fatigue, and sometimes downright boredom that accompanied the care of a newborn were a small price to pay to experience even a little of the hardship that would form the bond, the ties that would bind me to my daughter.

Those days were a hazy, happy remembrance when, as the years progressed, Babette grappled with the rebellious, anxious, confused emotions that washed over her in waves as she reached her teens. We were on our own as we confronted each other: She was torn between loving and resenting me; I was aghast and dumbstruck by her insolence and confused by her changeable moods. That was the only time I felt the need of a partner, to have someone backing me up, reassuring me that I was in the right and reinforcing my hesitant disciplinary actions.

Counseling helped us a lot but the real turning point was when she attended psycho-spiritual retreats and found a wonderful spiritual counselor. Our good Lord helped us through, he took her in hand and guided her through the rocky terrain of teenage and young adult years.

Babette is a grown woman now. She has found fulfillment in her career and in a loving relationship with her fiancé. Yes, she will have her own family soon and will finally belong to a conventional family unit. Ironically, just at a time when the definition of family is being stretched and remolded to accommodate all kinds of combinations. However, her out-of-the-box upbringing, I am sure, has given her the strength and confidence to prance gaily into the future.

Photos from Unsplash+ in collaboration with Getty Images