Mary Beth Fries Buchner - Bio - "The Baby is Yours"

While in my new job as the Patient Teaching Coordinator at Wilson Memorial Hospital , I not only prayed to the Holy Spirit to guide me in this new and foreign territory, I  took immediate practical steps to learn everything I  could about “death and dying”.  Elizabeth Kubler- Ross had recently challenged the status quo in the way we cared for people in the end stages of life and I read every word she put on paper.  I joined a support group at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in nearby Binghamton, NY to help me handle my own heartbreak.   Surprisingly the Facilitator of the Group was a Neurosurgeon.  I say surprisingly because at this time in the course of history, most MD’s were still denying that any of their patients were dying.  Since this remarkable physician had experienced a rather dramatic life changing event in his own practice, he decided to start a bi-monthly group for medical personnel who might need a little extra support themselves.  I wanted all the help I could get therefore I never missed a session.   

My position at Wilson Memorial was newly created and the Director of Nursing gave me “free reign”.  I decided to share some of the audio tapes I had purchased for my own learning and development with other staff members throughout the hospital.   Therefore, I started a Discussion/Support group that met once every other week, and quickly discovered that a lot of people at our Institution were looking for some sort of sustenance.   Eventually, I developed a relationship with a young woman, a recent graduate who had come upstate from Long Island to complete her undergraduate degree in Health Education.  She was recently hired and started attending the Support Group on a regular basis.   Eventually she shared that she was attending the support group for personal rather than professional reasons.  While she was away at college, her 15 year old brother, Donald, had died of leukemia and she was having difficulty dealing with his passing.   Intellectually, she knew he had died, but on her first trip back home after college, the reality of his absence broke through her emotional denial.   She was experiencing intense feelings of sadness and loss.  One day, several months after I met Diane, we went out to dinner together after our work day was over.   During dinner she said, “On top of losing my brother, my parents are now dealing with the fact that my 17 year old sister, Laurie, is pregnant.”   She had broken up with the father of the baby and was hoping to eventually become a physician.  Diane explained that Laurie was adamant that she wasn’t going to have an abortion and, as difficult as it was for her, she was seriously considering surrendering the baby for adoption.    Since their “old-school” Italian grandparents would not be too accepting of an “out of wedlock” pregnancy the plan was to send Laurie upstate from Long Island to Johnson City to live with Diane as soon as she began to show.   “Gee, Diane,” I said, “Bob and I are in the midst of an Adoption Home Study with Broome County Social Studies.  Do you think your sister would entertain the idea of allowing us to adopt her baby?”   Diane mentioned that her sister, Laurie, had an up-coming appointment with Catholic Charities in Broome County and she would let me know how this visit went.  

Laurie, barely 17 at the time, was brilliant and mature beyond her years.  She told the Catholic Charities Staff that she wanted to speak personally with the adoptive couples who were being considered as parents for her baby.   She added that she was aware of confidentiality issues; therefore the potential candidates could be “hidden” behind a screen and no identifying information needed to be exchanged.  This was in the summer of 1976, before “Open Adoption” came into vogue, thus Laurie received a resounding, unequivocal NO!  

A few days later, Bob and I had dinner with Diane and Laurie.  Things went very well and the next day, on my desk at work, I found a note that said, “The baby is yours”.   I jumped up into the air as I clutched the note to my heart and yelled out loud, “Oh, my God, thank you”!