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May 19, 2006
A long route to motherhood
By adopting, Naomi Taussig has put together a loving family.
KELLEY KORBIN
More than anything in the world, Naomi Taussig wanted to be a mother
– more than her successful sales career; more than her fulfilling
work as a lay cantor, Hebrew school teacher and Israeli dance instructor.
All her life, since she was a small child herself, a day never went
by that she didn't think about becoming a mom.
But the journey hasn't been easy for Taussig, 43, who only recently
fulfilled her chosen destiny by adopting a beautiful little girl
named Alexandra.
Taussig was married very briefly in her early 30s, but didn't get
pregnant. She said she lamented that fact more than the actual marriage
breakdown and then considered having a baby on her own. But, she
said, at the time, "I didn't know if single-motherhood was
such a good idea because it really deprives a child of the best
potential – being raised in a two-parent family. You couldn't
ask for better [than that] and that's what a child deserves."
At 35, Taussig married again, and became a step-parent to her husband's
two children.
"I knew that it was not an issue for me to love someone else's
kids, that was great, but it didn't alleviate for me the need to
become a mom."
Her husband had previously undergone a vasectomy, but was willing
to try to have a child with Taussig. So, together they attempted
a very invasive, expensive and ultimately unsuccessful series of
fertility treatments. Taussig said going through this process, as
well as dealing with other personal issues at the time, "took
a real toll on our marriage."
But Taussig was not willing to give up her dream of becoming a mother,
so the couple looked to adoption. They considered international
adoption but ultimately felt the costs were prohibitive. They had
already spent about $20,000 on fertility treatments and, Taussig
said, "To spend another 20 to 40 thousand dollars where I didn't
know what the emotional toll would be, I was afraid. I felt emotionally
really washed out. So we decided to go the ministry adoption route."
The British Columbia Ministry of Children and Family's Adopt-a-Waiting-Child
program has about 1,000 children hoping to find what these kids
refer to as "forever families." Most of these children
are in foster care and will not be reunited with their birth families.
Taussig explained that ministry adoptions are unique because you
rarely get a perfectly healthy baby, "to even get an infant
you'd be lucky. For the most part, these are children who have been
taken away from their parents because there was some sort of a problem."
The most common issue is drug and alcohol exposure during pregnancy,
which often leads to fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). Abuse and abandonment
are other issues these children have often already had to face in
their short lives.
After completing the ministry adoption course, Taussig and her husband
were assigned a social worker who helped them throughout the rest
of the process. At the time, there was a little girl in the system
whose mother had died and whose father was looking for a Jewish
family to adopt her. It seemed like a perfect match, but it was
never to be. Taussig's social worker worked hard to help them adopt
this child but, in Taussig's words, "throughout this long,
painful process, things kept falling through the cracks."
It was a roller-coaster ride for Taussig and her husband. On numerous
occasions, they were offered this particular Jewish girl and other
children as well, only to be told a few days later that someone
had changed their mind or that someone else had been chosen. The
strain of the situation was almost too much for Taussig to bear
and she said she realized that her marriage was not going to survive,
although she still felt strongly that she was meant to be a mother
to this Jewish girl.
"It was one of the hardest phone calls of my life. I phoned
my social worker and said, 'You know what, my marriage is over and
I'm afraid to tell you this because you're going to take her away
from me.' And she said, 'Yeah, I'm so sorry but I'm going to have
to close your file because you're not the couple applying as you
were on paper.' I cried my eyes out, but I had no choice.... I said,
'You know, if I ever knew that I could be a good mother, I know
it in this moment because I'm sacrificing and not willing to lie
and be dishonest and bring her [the child] into a dishonest world.'
"
With her marriage behind her, Taussig decided to pursue the adoption
as a single person. She explained that she had reconciled her earlier
ideas about single-parenthood.
"At some point, I felt that this was my destiny, to have this
little child, and that she was in the world anyway and, therefore,
I could offer her more than she had at this moment. I knew I could
be a loving parent. I knew I could give her a lot that not everyone
could give a child they didn't give birth to and that even if she
had health problems and drug exposure, a past that was pretty frightening
to some people, it didn't scare me.... I could love her enough."
Ministry requirements state that, after a traumatic event, like
a divorce, prospective adoptive parents have to wait a year before
applying again. But, in Taussig's case, her social worker called
her back only four months later and invited her to apply, yet again,
for the same little girl. Taussig said, "I was beyond excited,
this little girl was meant to be mine."
Five months later, in August of last year, after another series
of backs and forths that ended in, once again, the child being placed
with someone else, Taussig finally realized she couldn't take any
more and asked her social worker never to call her again about that
particular child.
But rather than suppressing her maternal desires, this setback had
the opposite effect on Taussig.
"I realized at that moment that I needed to become a mother....
I realized I could not live a fulfilled life without being a mom
and it was excrutiating for me.... I knew that I would have to battle
to my last breath to exhaust every possibility."
She explained that this feeling was absolutely all-consuming.
"People would say that I'm a really bubbly, effervesecent person
and I have good energy, but underneath it was like living,"
she paused, "it was like not living.
"I was over 40, single and thinking I could not have the one
thing I had always wanted."
She once again considered fertility treatments and even looked into
finding an egg donor, but it was a very slow process. Two months
later, at the end of October, her social worker called and said
there was a one-year-old girl available and asked if Taussig was
interested. The problem was, the ministry would not allow her to
pursue the adoption and the fertility treatments at the same time.
After being burned before in her experience with the ministry, Taussig
chose the fertility treatments.
"I said, 'I'm not going to give up fertility treatments when
you're not going to give me a secure child,' " she explained.
Nevertheless, a few days later the social worker called back and
said she had been selected. All Taussig knew about Alexandra was
that she was "pretty healthy, as good as you can get in the
ministry."
Taussig did have to go through a gruelling meeting with her social
worker and Alexandra's, but she was eventually selected to adopt
this active little girl.
Taussig said that Alexandra's birth mother loved her baby and wanted
to raise her, "but had a drug problem in the past ... and had
poor parenting skills due to bad choices she had made." She
added, "I'm very grateful to this mother; she loved her and
brought her into the world and wanted to do right by her, but she
just couldn't do it. And I can do it. And she did for me what I
couldn't do."
On Dec. 15, 2005, Alexandra came home with her new mom.
"From that moment, she was fully my daughter," said Taussig.
"She slept through the night, she woke up to me with open arms."
The next day, mother and daughter went to services at Congregation
Har El, where Taussig is the lay cantor.
"She is being raised in a faith community that has embraced
her," said Taussig. "I could never imagine how incredibly
people would embrace her. I thought there might be some resistance
to an adopted child, especially a ministry child; people don't know
her details.... I have found no negativity whatsoever, no one's
judging her, everyone's loving her."
And as if that wasn't enough, Taussig is also now in a serious relationship
with a man who has a 12-year-old daughter and they both love Alexandra,
too. Taussig said, "It's like the stars aligned and my fortunes
really changed."
Once the legal work of the adoption is finalized this summer, Taussig
plans to have Alexandra converted by submerging her in the mikvah.
She will then give Alexandra a middle name, Liora, which means "a
light unto me" in Hebrew, "because she was the light at
the end of my tunnel," said Taussig. Alexandra will keep her
first name, which was given to her by her birth mother.
As for Alexandra's health, although she was exposed to drugs as
a fetus, she has no signs so far of FAS and is developmentally on
track. She is a very affectionate and feisty little girl.
Taussig said that she agreed to share Alexandra's story to try to
help the other children waiting for "forever families."
"I would love to reach out to other potential adoptive parents
because it is a hard process to go through.... If this could encourage
a Jewish family to provide a home for one of those thousand children,
I think, who better than the Jews. We have a lot to offer.... I'd
love to see the faith communities, and particularly the Jewish community,
open their hearts to more of these kids, our own local kids."
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