Botox for my Babymama

I got Botox before meeting my Babymama. Andrew shaved his gray beard off and came perilously close to using Grecian Formula on his chest hair. I just went right ahead and dyed my hair and Juvedermed the hell of out my mug.  We live in LA, and basically it's harder to live here and scrupulously avoid plastic surgery then it is to give into it.  Letting yourself just age naturally and letting your hair go gray is like choosing to live in LA and eat toast.  No one does that. 

All my other potential Babymamas broke up with me before I could even make or mail them a "Give Us Your Baby" Book.  And I could hear the exact moment in their voices when they emotionally hung up on me, even though we kept chatting uncomfortably for a few more minutes.  And the more I could tell they were over me, I became the ex-girlfriend or that AOL customer service person from purgatory (which is worse than hell because it's limbo forever)- I simply and cheerfully wouldn't let them break up with me.

They all would be super-friendly or wary but trying to be nice until they asked me how old I was.  And I could hear in their silence they were just waiting for me to finish ranting about what a "young 49" I am. I knew that in their young, pregnant minds, I went from sounding fun and energetic and exotic because I lived in LA to having a wattle, a tight perm and wearing taupe pantyhose with my Easy Spirit pumps. Basically, I became their moms. Or older. Because in every other place in the world, I'm far too old to be a first time mom.  
 

After each birth mother passed on me, my lawyer would explain why they didn’t want to pursue a relationship with me.  Three of them went with gay couples.  Heather went with Christians, Cresta changed her mind and wanted to keep the baby.  After seven birth mothers dumped me, I ranted to our adoption lawyer that I was going to lie about my age. I was going to shave off eight years. 41 sounds reasonable, kinda cool and on the hind end of still being young-adjacent.  Our adoption attorney strenuously encouraged me to not do that.  And he is the boss, or more like the coach, (not unlike Burgess Meredith in "Rocky") in this awful, painful process.

Let me paint the full picture here. The adoption lawyer puts ads in Pennysavers, Thrifty Nickels, Classifieds and free local papers in the states that allow him to. “Loving Professional Couple looking for child to adopt.”  If a scared and knocked up girl happens to see that ad, she calls our lawyer, who interviews her, then if she sounds straight and determined, puts her through a rigorous (hopefully) screening process to make sure she really is pregnant and not just trying to get a new roof from some desperate people with a little money saved up. 

Once the birth mother produces medical records, sonograms, photographs, and completes an exhaustive eleven page personal history, the lawyer calls his clients and says, “I have a potential match for you.” It is much more like matchmaking than like babymaking, but it’s how families are made when sperm and egg just aren’t up to the task.   

Then I’d have to screw up my courage and call a complete stranger and politely try to get them to give me their kid.  It’s pretty much as awkward and awful as it sounds.  Top that off with knowing you are competing with around five other couples, as the lawyer calls all his clients to tell them that he has a potential match for them as well.  So, not only are you trying to win over a most likely traumatized and terrified young girl, but you also have to beat out adorable gay couples who actually like Disneyland. See you on the ice, Tonya.

But this Babymama didn't get distant on the phone when I told her my age.  Maybe it was because when I said I was 49, I paused, stuttered and coughed out the truth in such a way that she might have thought I said 41.  But she didn't ask me to repeat myself and I didn't volunteer to, so we moved on. 

She had a feathery, quiet voice that sounded like it was used to not being listened to. She sounded much younger than 21, and had a slight lisp.  And her two children were screaming and playing in the background.  I was even annoyed by the kids screaming and playing and laughing and begging for her attention while I was trying to impress her with what an awesome mother I'd be.  

Now that I think about it, her kids probably helped her think I said I was 41, because they were making such an unholy racket.  I suggested she call me back at a better time but she said there was no better time. Her kids were always with her. And she didn’t have a job. In hindsight, her noisy kids probably helped her think I said I was 41.

I had been given a great hot tip from a friend who had successfully and happily adopted with our same lawyer. She told me to wait to call the babymama, because the other adoptive hopefuls probably all called as soon as the lawyer gave them the phone number, which was first thing in the morning.  Imagine these girls being inundated with phone calls from six or seven hopeful adoptive mothers. The lawyer told me I’d have to be the one making the phone calls, because the birth mothers didn’t want to talk to men at all. Unless they were gay men. 

Being far too used to not getting what I want, I didn't see each new bio-mom as an opportunity to become a parent. I saw each new young woman as the hurdle I would famously shatter my pelvis on, and live on in infamy as representing the tragedy of defeat in the title sequence of "The Wide World Of Sports". 

I wish I could say I waited to call Bio-mom because I was listening to my friend’s advice. But mostly, I dreaded calling another woman just to be rejected for my age. So I waited.  And then I ran into my ex-husband who was expecting his second child. Not that I’m competitive, but seeing this man who dumped me now with almost two children inspired me to give less of a shit about being rejected.  

I called her in the car on the way home from work.  She and I awkwardly, but calmly chatted for my entire commute home, through me unpacking my car, getting in my house, kicking off my shoes and socks and sitting outside on the back porch with a glass of wine. We spoke for well over an hour. 

She asked if I wanted a girl because that’s what she was having.  My arm hairs stood up as I told her a girl would be delightful.  She asked if my husband was okay with the baby being black.  I told her he was more than okay with that and resisted adding how sad my husband is that he never got to bang a black chick.  So this would be almost as good- that was the joke I was swallowing with my wine.  

 She said she wanted a closed adoption. She didn’t want to see us or meet us. I asked if I could still send her a book about us, so she could see how we looked and lived. I was determined to make this goddamn book for one birth mother, because we had spent the entire fall staging Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas to take photos of ourselves to sell ourselves as perfect, stable, fun, loving and parental, just missing that one pesky ingredient- a child of our own. I had the color photos, the glitter, the glue sticks and the construction paper all at the ready- all I needed was one mildly interested Babymama.

She said she thought I was the one, because it felt so easy to talk to me and because I didn’t sound all judgy and tense and weird.  I instantly pitied the five other women (or gay men) who called her within minutes of each other this morning.  She told me her mom would have to talk to me because as she said, my mom and I are in this together.  I tried not to get my hopes up but stayed up until 2am making a fantastic “Give Us Your Baby” book while drinking a bottle of wine.  I Fedexed it to Akron.

Her mother called me the next day. Her mother is 7 years younger than me.  We chatted, had each other cracking up a few times and she said it. “You’re the one.”  After Babymama saw our “Give Us Your Baby” book, she wanted an open adoption.  She wanted to meet us. And to know us. And to stay in touch. All of this was fine with us.

And when we found out the baby was being born in a month, we had to get 5 months of adoption paperwork completed and processed in Ohio and California in three weeks. Babycare classes were taken, fingerprints, medicals, water safety classes, and income taxes, income statements and a battery of Social Worker visits, compounded by huge, down payment like checks being written. By us. We were stressed, exhausted, and looking for a house to move into at the same time, since two weeks before meeting Babymama and deciding to date, we had been given notice to move out of our house.  Landlady’s daughter had been relocated to LA, and wanted her house back.  So we were dating a babymama, and looking for a house at the same time.

So, right before we left for Akron, we looked at ourselves and found ourselves wanting. We were terrified that we’d fly to Akron, meet babymama two days before the baby was due and have her reject us as being far too old for her baby.  We underwent makeovers not unlike what Dorothy and her Yellow Brick Road compatriots endured before meeting the Almighty Wizard of Oz.  We had our metal buffed, our straw restuffed and I got my face shot so full of Botox and Juvederm that my frozen faced MedSpa technician inevitably hit a blood vessel outside my lower lip and I looked like I had been popped one good by my drunken husband who had warned me not to ‘keep it up, see what happens.’

The bruise was so deep and black and defiantly ringed with a brilliant puce areola that it scoffed at mere make up concealer.  Short of going to an undertaker and begging him for wound filler or bullet hole filler, I tried every cover-up and concealer in existence.    Making matters worse, friends repeatedly threw dinner parties to toast us on our big exciting journey. We might return home to LA with a whole other person.  But I might want to try a little concealer first.  Concealing facts and nasal-labial folds was what had gotten me into this pickle in the first place.

We met Baby-Mama and her mama and her two children in the Red Lobster in Akron.  The saddest, weakest meeting hug ever took place right inside the front door. None of us wanted to be there, doing this.  I’m sure she didn’t want to have or give up this baby. Nor did I want to charm her into doing it.  But the ice had to be broken and the baby raised somewhere and by someone.  To call it awkward and painful and shy is an insult to just how shy and painful and awkward it was. 

Dressing for this first face to face was so difficult that I basically wore everything I had packed.  I was shivering so I pretended I wore too many clothes because I was cold.  They were scoping us out as much as we were scoping them. When I mentioned that I had gone to art school Babymama looked at me for the first time in the eyes. “I wanted to do that” was all she said. Then she texted someone. She did that a lot. Her phone rarely left her hand. I understood. Texting is the umbilical cord of the truly shy.  And the truly young.

Preemptively, I blurted that my dog had accidentally head butted my mouth and that’s why I was black and blue.  They stared at my bruise, which they hadn’t seen until I told my tall tale.  The four year old boy punched the booth cushions and showed us his muscles.  Babymama took many calls during dinner. Her mother was conversational and tried to keep it light and fun.  Then we discovered that Babymama hadn’t told anyone, including her father that she was pregnant. She was hiding under layers of clothes, using winter as a cloak.  

But her four year old son had guessed. Maybe that’s why he was punching the booth cushions. We were baby poachers, coming for his little sister.  Her 2 and a half year old daughter obliviously chattered to herself.  I tried to impress her by drawing a cat on her kiddie menu. She eyed the drawing and then eyed me, not happily. 

I begged for dessert and the check. It was just too hard to keep it light for so long- tiptoeing on the tight rope hundreds of feet above what we all really wanted. Which was not to be here. If only my ovaries had worked and hers had taken the day off- we’d never have to be making the smallest talk ever in a Red Lobster in Akron.

But as luck or someone who some people call God (but who I see as more of a huge 8 year old boy with a magnifying glass and an ant farm, a sense of humor and a bit of a sadistic streak) would have it- her ovaries went into over drive, despite her birth control implant device and despite all my years of spending hard earned money and so much time on birth control and pregnancy tests that I probably never needed, she was having a baby and I wasn’t. So here we were. Sitting across a tiny table crammed with corn bread and crawdaddy pizza bites, eying each other daintily and wanting dinner and labor to be over. 

It was to be the beginning of a beautiful and painful and life long relationship. With a whole other person being the only thing we have in common. My bruise would heal. Would hers?