Does American Adoptions Require Drug Screening of Birth Mothers?

Is drug screening mandatory?
No, drug screens are typically performed by hospitals and doctors should the doctor or hospital suspect drug usage or exposure. Families are provided all test results provided to American Adoptions. Families can also run additional drug screens with their pediatrician. It is important to read the next question to understand the drawbacks and limitations with drug screens during a birth mother's pregnancy.

How do you know that the birth mother did not use drugs or alcohol during her pregnancy?
There is not a 100 percent guarantee. Some adoption professionals provide clients with a false sense of security when they claim to perform drug screens on all birth mothers. Fifteen years ago, we required drug screening on our birth parents. After a year, we stopped this practice because it caused the following challenges and adverse results:

• Demanding drug tests for all birth mothers proved offensive and intrusive, therefore non-drug using birth mothers often felt insulted by having to complete drug screens. As a result, they preferred to work with organizations who did not require something they considered so intrusive and who placed more interest on their needs. Adoption professionals who require drug screens risk driving away birth mothers who do not use drugs. When American Adoptions required drug screening we saw a 40 percent drop in our birth mothers who were committed to working with our agency.
• Most birth mothers do not contact an adoption professional until the later stages of her pregnancy. As a result, there is no reliable way to determine drug exposure the infant may have experienced during earlier stages. Some health care professionals believe that exposure during the first trimester can have the most adverse affects. Drug screens are only good for a small window of time and therefore provide prospective adoptive families with a false sense of security.
• Requiring drug screens will often put the adoption professional in an uncomfortable role with the birth mother. In our experience, the birth mothers who elected to stay with us viewed our staff more as police officers rather than as counselors. This made it harder to provide effective and necessary adoption counseling, which resulted in more birth mothers changing their mind.
• The police officer role further diminishes an organization's ability to counsel and prepare the birth mother for the difficult emotions she is likely to face. Even though she is choosing a better life for her child, placing her child for adoption is still a loss for her and the loss should be grieved. Unresolved grief can lead to physical effects on the body along with emotional ones. Our agency wants to help her process her emotions and develop an adoption plan she wants, so she can go on to lead a healthy and productive life.
• Numerous scientific studies have shown that drug exposure is difficult to isolate against thousands of other factors making it difficult (if not impossible) to analyze the effects a specific drug may have on the child. In other words, you should perform careful and objective research to dispel myths. We found too many families made rash decisions rather than making an informed one.
• Alcohol has shown to have much more long term effects than almost every drug and yet there is absolutely no way to reliably test for alcohol. Alcohol is reliably out of your system in 24 hours.
• Birth mothers who are going to lie about their drug usage often have the resources to pass pregnancy drug screens. Teas and drug masking agents are inexpensive and can be bought at many online companies. You simply drink the tea or masking agent a few hours before your drug screen urine test. We discovered several birth mothers who passed our pregnancy drug screens, only to see the baby would turn up positive at birth. Today, however we rarely have a baby turn up positive when the birth mother has told us she is not taking drugs/alcohol. Why? We feel it is largely attributed to our policy below:

Current Agency Policy:

In short, beyond the tests required by the doctor and by the hospital, you can run additional tests on the baby, once he or she is born. At some point though, testing will only tell you so much.

Our current agency policy is to ask the birth mother to complete a confidential medical history form regarding drug and alcohol exposure. We also provide our adoptive families with medical records provided by the doctor and hospital.

We inform the birth mother that we would like to know the child's drug or alcohol exposure during their pregnancy. We explain this information is important for their child, in case there are any health complications down the road. We go on to explain that even if they have been using drugs, they aren't going to get arrested. We explain that we have families for every situation no matter what her circumstances are and that families will move forward with the adoption plan but just want to be prepared.

We actually believe this approach is more effective in determining exposure earlier in the process, whereas other professionals who demand tests often come across as police officers. We adopted the method of building trust to foster honesty. It is not foolproof but as you can see above, neither is drug screening during pregnancy.

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Questions & Answers With Laurie

Laurie
Walker

Hello everyone, my name is Laurie Walker and I am an Adoptive Family Specialist with American Adoptions. I have worked with many birth mothers and adoptive families in my time here at American Adoptions and love being able to watch families form through adoption.

Q. We just adopted our beautiful baby girl a month ago and are having a wonderful time being parents. Mothers Day is also approaching and I am excited to celebrate my first Mother's Day with our new daughter. However, I am also wondering about our birthmother's feeling during this holiday. Our adoption agreement specifies to send letters and pictures twice a year and that's all. I do not know what the appropriate thing to do is, if anything, during this particular holiday. Should we send her a card or something? Thank you!

A.

Congratulations again on the adoption of your sweet baby girl. We are all very happy for you! I am so glad you brought up this question. We are approaching Mother's Day and with Mother's Day also comes a less known holiday, Birth Mother's Day. Birth Mother's Day is held on the Saturday before Mother's Day which this year is May 9th. It is a special day set aside to honor your child's birth mother's role and is becoming more celebrated and more known each year. Many birth mothers do not even know that this special day exists to honor them.

Mother's Day can be a wonderful day for you, but can be a difficult one for your child's birth mother as she sees mothers around her honored and celebrated. This is because just like with any grief process, anniversaries and holidays can bring thoughts of the adoption more to the surface for birth mothers. Some birth mothers find that this time of reflection or grief hits them mostly on the child's birthday, others feel it during Christmas or other major holidays and some feel it around Mother's Day. Every woman's experience is different and every woman will handle their grief and loss differently over time.

The important thing is that you, this child's parents, can take time to honor the birthmother's sacrifice and help her remember each and every year what a great thing she did by choosing adoption for her child. Sending pictures and letters throughout the year is definitely one way that many birth mothers feel comfort. If you have ongoing contact and a relationship with your child's birth mother (even if just through pictures and letters), I would encourage you to consider sending her a Birth Mother's Day card and explain that you are thinking of her on this day. Families who do not have contact with their child's birth mother can still take part in this special day and create a special tradition or ceremony within your family to honor your child's birth mother. There are many great ideas such as making a donation to a charity in honor of your child's birth mother. You can google Birth Mother's Day and it will give you more information about the formation of this holiday and special ways that people in the adoption community are celebrating this day. I will post some links that may be helpful should you choose to send something to your birth mother.

Remember, celebrating Birth Mother's Day does not take away from your role as your child's mother. It should not take away from your Mother's Day celebration. I think of Birth Mother's Day as the perfect prelude to Mother's Day. How wonderful for your family to be able to honor this very special woman whose gift allows you to celebrate Mother's Day the very next day! Now, there are some who have different view points and feel that Birth Mother's Day does the exact opposite of what it was created to do. Some feel that the birth mother should be recognized and celebrated on Mother's Day also and there should not be differentiation because an adopted child has two mothers, their roles are just very different. Whatever your specific beliefs are, it is still encouraged take time to reflect in some way during this weekend in a way that honors both of your roles in your child's life. Please let me know if you have any other questions!

Ideas on how to celebrate Birth Mother's Day include…

Birth Mother's Day cards to mail
http://www.heartmarkdesigns.com/bmoms_day.htm

Birth Mother's Day cards to e-mail
http://cards.123greetings.com/cgi-bin/newcards/showthumbs.pl?q1=emay_birthmothersday&log=almanac

A Birth Mother book for those with a more open adoption
http://www.lulu.com/content/377645

Ideas to help you hand make a card with your child's help
http://adoption.about.com/od/celebrationinspiration/ht/handprintlillie.htm

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