Is Your Unmarried Daughter Pregnant?

To the person who searched google for "what to do when you find out that your unmarried daughter is pregnant":

Support her.  Love her. 

My daughter became pregnant at 17.  Yes, I was crushed.  Yes, I was angry.  I had talked to her openly about using protection when she became sexually active.  I believed that she would come to me and tell me it was time.  Yes, I had to learn to have new dreams for her future.  The future was pretty much the same, just harder as she was going to be a mother while finishing school, going to college.  

One thing I was certain of?  That my daughter, who I loved more than life itself, would NEVER know the pain of losing a child to adoption.

My parents played a huge role in my "choice" to give my child up for adoption.  They didn't tell me that I had to, they also didn't tell me that I didn't have to.  My parents fought all the time.  My parents had never (that I could remember) told me they loved me.   I lived in an ugly, hateful home.  I refused to raise my child in that house of hate.  I wanted him to be raised in a loving home with a mother AND a father to love him.   After losing my son to adoption, I was never able to have a true loving relationship with either my mother or my father.  Yes, I love them because they are my parents.  But the loss of my son is there between us.  My mother passed away before I came to terms with my loss.  I have come to love my father, the death of my mother changed him.  He now tells me he loves me, I can tell him I love him.  But I can't reconcile the father of my childhood with the father of my adulthood.  Meaning that I keep the dad of now completely separate from the father of years past.  I don't know if that makes any sense...  I can love the father he has become, I can't love the father he was....

Here is a heartbreaking letter from another mother of adoption loss.  Her mother DID tell her that she had to give her child up for adoption.  If you want to see what may become of your relationship with your daughter if you push her towards adoption, go read this post.  It's heart wrenching.  It's honest.  It tells so well the pain caused from losing a child to adoption. 

To My Mother

Now go read another post by Danielle.  This should speak to you as the grandmother to the child your daughter is carrying. 

Grandparents

"Letter From An Adoptee"

If you are a mother considering adoption,

please watch this video. 

 

"finding a young mother who is considering adoption"

If you are the person who found my blog by google-ing "finding a young mother who is considering adoption", I hope you stayed/will stay to read a little.  Look over on the right side of this blog, go down a little bit.  You will find my blog list.  When you are done here, go do some reading on those blogs also.  Learn about adoption from the other sides.  The ones who live with the loss of adoption ~ the mothers (and fathers) and the ones adopted. 


I don't know why you are looking for a young mom who is considering adoption.  Do you think that young mom = bad mom?  Do you think that you will be "saving" a baby?  Do you simply want to be a mom?  Infant adoption isn't all you think it is.  It isn't at all what it's supposed to be.

Adoption should be about providing a home for a baby/child who doesn't have a family to go home to.  The infants that are taken for adoption usually have mothers and fathers who actually do want to raise their children.  However, for one reason or five these parents have been made to feel that they aren't good enough.  They have been convinced that if they truly love this infant, they will want to offer a better life than they have. 


The parents-to-be may have gone to simply seek advice after they unexpectedly found themselves to be pregnant.  They didn't go in with the thought or expectation of giving the child up for adoption.  They were simply looking for advice, wanting to have someone to talk to about this life-changing event in their lives.  They were in need of help finding resources and services to help them with medical care, maybe for some parenting lessons and advice.


Unfortunately, most crisis pregnancy center and adoption agency employees, social workers, high school/college nurses and counselors, as well as many doctors and nurses are not trained to give parenting help or advice.  Most of them have instead gone through a program called "Infant Adoption Awareness Training".

This "training" was created with one goal ~ to increase the number of parents who will "choose" to give their newborn infants up for adoption.  This "training" is coercion at it's best.  If you do not believe that coercion still exists today, you are wrong.  Millions of dollars have been spent in research to "convince" mothers that adoption is the "right choice".   You can learn about this training yourself.  You can make your own decision as to if coercion is still used today.  Here is a great article on this training.  Don't skip the comments to this post, you can see more proof of the coercion that abounds.


If you think that by adopting an infant, you are saving one from abortion ~ you are wrong.  Most mothers who choose adoption never even considered abortion.  Abortion is the choice to not be pregnant.  Adoption is the choice to not be a parent.  The two have nothing to do with each other.


If you think that young moms are unable to be great mothers, you are wrong. 


If you believe that raising an adopted child is the same as raising one who was born to you, you are wrong.


If you think that I am a "bitter birthmom" who regrets her past, you are wrong.


If you think that adoption is only about the sunshine and rainbows, you are wrong.


I hope you are still reading.

Please go on to read some more here.

Please go read the post I talked about above: Adoption Truth: Coercion Not Choice, if you haven't already.

Please go to my blog list over there to the right and learn some more from other mothers of adoption loss, some adoptive mothers, and some adult adoptees.

You owe it not only to yourself ~ if you do go on to adopt you also owe it to your child and their other mother and father. 

Is your unmarried/young daughter pregnant?

Then I have some reading for you!  Danielle at "Another Version of Mother" writes a fabulous post for the Open Adoption Roundtable #35 regarding Grandparents.  Do yourself, your daughter, and your grandchild a favor and go read this blog post.  Then read it again. 

Open Adoption Roundtable #35: Grandparents

 

Honesty In Reunion. Yet Not Completely Honest...

Is it ever going to be possible to truly live an authentic life?  From the very first moment of my reunion with Christopher, I vowed to only be honest with him.  No matter what he may want or need to know.

But I'm NOT being completely honest.  By omission.  It's in the unsaid and unwritten that the lies come in. 

I was looking at my own facebook page and saw a couple of things on there from some of my "adoption related" friends and groups.  Is he a fb "stalker" like I am with him?  Does he check out the new friends I make there?   Does he go look at the movies/groups/links that I "like" there?  If he does, what does he think about my emerging voice in things adoption related?  Going beyond facebook, has he found this blog?  Does he think that I've become a "bitter birthmother"?  Is this a part of why he has been so silent?

I wish that I didn't worry about what he would think if he found my on-line presence in the adoption world.  It is not because I am saying anything untruthful that makes me worry.  It's because I am speaking out about how adoption has effected my life.  I'm speaking with complete honesty here on my blog, in my comments out and about in blog-land.  I don't want him to really know that truth.  I don't want him to know how deep the hurt goes for me.  I don't ever want him to think that he, himself, has hurt me so deeply.  Because is wasn't "him" that hurt me, it was the loss of him.  It was my own "choosing" of adoption that has hurt me.  I don't want him taking my pain and loss onto himself.

So I continue to lie to him.  About my thoughts & feelings on adoption loss anyways.  By omission.  While he does know the summary of  how adoption has effected me, I hope to never let him know the true depth of it. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the re-reading of this, I'm really uncomfortable with it.  I started this post days ago.  I have come back to it at least 5 times.  Hoping to see why it has been bothering me so...

It wouldn't even help to have someone to talk to, because I can't even put what I'm feeling\thinking into words!

                            Am I again making a choice about his life leaving him without a say in it? 

                                 Deciding what he can and cannot handle knowing?

              Am I using that as an excuse for something else? 

                            As a way to continue to hide my feelings?? 

Or is it simply to avoid confrontation? 

Is it because I don't want to be the one to kick Christopher out of the adoption fog?  Because it was so much easier in there, while I was in there. 

*sigh* 

I guess this is just something I'm going to have to ponder on for a while.  I hope I can figure out why this has brought back the tornadoes of thoughts that won't settle... 

Yet another thing they don't tell you when you are considering adoption.  The self-doubts.  The questions.  The confusion about it all ~ even 33 years later. 

I wish that it was possible for expectant mothers considering adoption to live inside my brain for just one day...

Living In The Sacred Moment

I was reading about a reunion recently.  The mother was hesitant to tell her raised kids about their oldest brother,  given up for adoption.

 The first thoughts to enter were judgmental ones.  Then I remembered.

I went back to those days in mid-January three years ago.  I also was hesitant for a while.  But not because I didn't want to tell them, not because I was afraid (although I was).  I was hesitant to share him.  I finally had Christopher in my life, after almost 30 years.  It is hard to put in words those feelings that overwhelmed my life so suddenly. 

The only thing that comes near to describing it is that it was sacred.  I wanted, no ~ I needed ~ to live in the sacredness of us.  Just us.  For a little while.  Not out of avoidance of anything.  Simply out of love and amazement and needing to savor it all.

Beyond Words Designs

Mother and son, found. 

Sacred. 

That which should not have been torn asunder to begin with. 

Just thinking about those first days brings the feeling right back to me.  I needed those days to revel in the amazing turn my life was taking.  To adjust to this new life that included my firstborn son. 







I think sacred is just the right word.

This beautiful painting (and more) is available here on Etsy, from Beyond Words Designs.