I will never open mail right after mowing the lawn again! (An etiquette question)

In My Humble Opinion
1

My sister-in-law, 18, had a baby about a week-and-a-half ago, a baby that she gave up for adoption. My husband had already heard from his mother about the rough delivery his sister had. His sister asked us to send her a cribbage board so that she could have something to do while she recovered–his other sister had been teaching her how to play, but apparently cribbage boards are hard to come by in Wisconsin.

So, late last week (a week after the delivery), I was mowing the lawn, and I was hot, tired, and sweaty. After I put the mower away, I walked to the mailbox to bring in the mail. I saw a small envelope from SIL–about the size of a thank-you note. I know that MIL is quite the stickler for getting stuff like that sent out, but I thought “Damn, that’s fast” for a thank-you about the cribbage board. Since I so rarely receive personal mail these days, I decided to open it right away on the front lawn as I was walking into the house.

Well, I was wrong. It wasn’t a thank-you note–it was a birth announcement. There was a card, some photos, and a computer-printed note. Now, I’ve never seen a birth announcement from the birth mother of an adopted baby, but that is not what bothered me. The card was fine–it listed the baby’s name, height, weight, etc. and the first names of SIL and the adoptive parents. The photos were cute. My question is about the appropriateness of the enclosed note.

I started to read the note out there in the sun and high humidity. The note was written by my mother-in-law. It began, “[SIL] had a very difficult delivery and lost a significant amount of blood” and then went on to even more gory details, including the fact that the baby had had the cord wrapped around his neck and suffered fetal distress. About that point, there was enough graphic detail that I actually started to swoon a bit. I knew that I had to get myself inside before my husband came home to find me passed out on the front lawn.

Is it necessary to include such graphic details, or, indeed, any sort of details, about the delivery in a birth announcement? As I said earlier, my husband had heard all about this on the telephone, so it wasn’t like we didn’t know. The note went on to detail all that was “wrong” with the baby (a heart murmur, and an infection in one lung that delayed the time that SIL first got to hold the baby because the baby had to stay in the isolette.) This isn’t normal birth-announcement stuff, is it? The note concluded with thanks for your support, love, prayers, etc. IMO, if the note had to exist at all, that’s all it had to say in the first place.

I want to know if I’m out of line in feeling, well, disgusted. I have had a child, a fairly normal delivery, and I would have been mortified if my mother or MIL had gone around sending a pre-packaged announcement of my gory details to all friends and relatives! (Of course, how do I know MIL didn’t do that? Well, she seems a heck of a lot more interested in this baby, whom she only knew for a few days, than she ever was in mine until my daughter turned about three years old, so I’ll guess she didn’t.)

My own mother thinks its odd for the birth mother to send birth announcements in an adoption, since that certainly wasn’t done in her day (yet another “gory detail” of life that you might not want everyone to know.) Is that common these days? SIL doesn’t seem to care who knows about her baby or the adoption, but I don’t know if she minds who knows the delivery details. All I know is that it was an uncomfortable read, especially pre-printed, for both my husband and myself. TMI! TMI!

2

That is odd. I never heard of people sending out announcements of a child put up for adoption.

Well, at least she didn’t send pictures and details of the conception.

That would be TMI, start to finish.

3

Brings to mind David Sedaris’ spoof of the family holiday newsletter in Barrel Fever, the one with the illegitimate daughter and “wash the baby.”

Other than that, I haven’t much to add, except that in my limited experience birth announcements are limited to the basic baby birth statistics (length, weight, gender) and a pic of the new human.

4

I understood a birth announcement to be a way of telling people that there was a new addition to the family, and giving out the basic details. This seems pointless when the baby isn’t really a new addition to the family. I would hazard a guess that a birth annoucement about a baby given up for adoption is a rare and odd thing. I could be wrong, but it seems very strange.

5

Sending a birth announcement for a baby you are giving up for adoption is a little strage, yes – unless it’s going to be an open adoption. Then I can sort of see it, since the child will be interacting with the family.

However, including all the gory medical details is way out of line. Can I have some of what your mother-in-law is smoking?

6

Sending out a birth announcement when the baby will be adopted is odd, but so long as the birth mother herself is OK with this, no problem.

Giving medical details is highly inappropriate, whether or not the birth mother herself approved of the passing on of information. One must bear one’s audience in mind - it simply isn’t polite to ick people out.

7

These are just some wild ass guesses:

  1. It may be that your MIL wants to make sure that everyone understands that even though her daughter isn’t keeping the baby, she did go through a “real” delivery and had a “real” child and that this shouldn’t be treated as something that everyone just ignores because they don’t know how to react: normally, when you go through a long and painful delivery you get to spend the next few weeks swapping war stories with every woman you meet, and you get heaped with tea and sympathy. People are proud of you, they say things like “Good job!” and “I don’t think I could have done it.” and “You were so brave!”. In the aftermath of an adoption, many people will just pretend that the whole thing never happened, and that can make everything even harder. This young woman went through a long and painful delivbery and then went on to do one of the most painful emotional things a person can do, both for the sake of a person that many people will pretend dosen’t exisit. I can see wanting to take dramatic steps to ensure that dosen’t happen, though perhaps not the same steps your MIL took.

  2. Your MIL may just be an emotional wreck and not thinking clearly at all. Adoption is hard, and is surrounded by ambiguity: even as you know you are doing the right thing, your heart just breaks, and this is true for grandparents and aunts and uncles as well as birthparents. People put pretty werid things in funeral announcements sometimes, and I would put this in sort of the same catagory: tacky, sure, but inapproprite to bitch about too much.

If I may make a suggestion: if the adoption is open, ask the mother about the child when you see her over the next 20 years. She isn’t the child’s mother any more, but she is the child’s something, and it will mean the world to her not to have that connection treated as something shameful. She did a brave, difficult thing, and a casual “How’s Suzie doing?” over the breakfast table at Xmas will tell her that you acknoowledge and approve of that thing.
2) MIL may be really fizated

8

Whoa- personal medical details in a birth announcement? Very odd indeed. Then again, some people will sit there at a meal and talk about hemmeroid surgery or particularly gory births. There are people who honestly do not know the meaning of TMI.