Help me please.

As a bmom, Im probably not the right person to give any advice to you, but the big question is....why do you think that adoption is best for you and your baby? Can you give 5 reasons why you cannot raise your daughter? And please dont say money, to be honest with you, those of us that were married and had children never did have the money either lol. Somehow the money issues just took care of itself. Cindy

My little boy who I placed is turning one next month. As I go through the changing of the seasons and remember so clearly where I was a year ago, I remember the pain (believe me I remember the physical pain very acutely) the emotional stress, the frustrations of my pregnancy and just wanting someone to help me get to the other side where my life would return to normal. What I didn't realize then is there isn't another side. I'm not trying to scare you, but I can honestly say that although I am still as sure about the decision I made for my son as I did when I placed, I am still mourning the life I don't have with him. I'm not the same person anymore, and it's a really hard burden to bear that doesn't go away. Do I regret it, not for a minute, but being a birth mom carries with it pain and loss, and it never fully goes away. I know the feeling of isolation, and I'm glad you found this site, if nothing else it will give you a place to find others to talk to. The online community on here and through blogging have really been my consistent support. Adoption is a hard thing, your child loses a biological connection, you lose a parenting relationship with your first child, it is a loss you'll feel for the rest of your life. But I chose to go down this path because it was the best decision I could make for my child. If you believe the same than please know you're not alone in this and you can always reach out on the boards (or message me if you'd like) Good Luck, and if there's once piece of advice I'd give you, appreciate every kick, every hiccup, every minute you spend with your daughter. You may feel like an imposter but you're not, right now and until you sign TPR you are her one and only Mother and she is lucky to have you. :love:

Hi, I am so sorry that you are having a tough time. I'm a hopeful adoptive parent but have connected with several birthparents who have been there, because we're hoping for an open adoption. You might want to search for Kelsey Stewart - she's online and on FB and will understand and be able to talk with you about how you're feeling. I personally think the truth lies somewhere in between the "anti" adoption folks and those who have such happy birthparent experiences. Wishing you all the best and hope you are ok. Susan

I don't even know where to start! I understand how much of a roller coaster of emotions pregnancy can be! I miscarried in 2007. I was 17 and an emotional wreck, finding out that I cannot have children was horrific! Either way, I am adopted. I was given up by, my hero. Such a strong woman. Everyday I thank her for giving me such a wonderful family and a life full of opportunities. After I miscarried I googled my siblings names (which I knew since I was 6) found my sister's myspace. I was devastated to know that my mom passed away in 1993. I always wanted to meet her just to thank her. This beautiful baby girl will know what you did for her was in her best interest! I understand you are worried about your belly and what people think, but those people do not have A CLUE how strong of a woman you are to even consider giving you baby a better life. I went through it- I was in a catholic private high school uniform with a 6 month pregnant belly. You are beautiful and what you are doing for that baby girl is a beautiful thing as well, please do not beat yourself up over it. I know my biological mom is watching down on you giving you the strength to do what she did. If you need anything feel free to contact me!

Hi Even- I've lived life as a fmom for 21 years now. As I type this I'm alone in a strange town hiding from everyone and everything for a couple of hours trying to figure out how to keep going. I live a secret in most ways, no one alive on this planet knows me really. They don't see. They can't. If you do this, do it knowing there's no going back. The life you knew will be gone. The self you were will be gone. I liken it to chopping off your right arm and your left leg alone in your kitchen, and you will have to live the rest of your life maimed by your own hand. You may get a prosthetic that almost looks like real limbs to everyone around you. You may learn to trick people into believing the fake limbs are real. But you will always know. Your body will remind you with pains and sensations in those missing limbs and there is no escape, not even in sleep. I don't know your situation. I can't tell you what is best for you to do. But before you allow a cultural psychosis of "the richer the better" and "they're better than you" to convince you to sever yourself from your baby make sure you understand that you will never escape. If you keep it a secret from people who come into your life you will live a lie. If you confess you will live under society's eternal and unrelenting censure. Either way, it is simply a self-imposed life sentence. There is no way out once you sign those papers. Choose carefully.

Your social worker sounds like she understands that choosing adoption is something you will have to deal with for the rest of your life... Whatever choice you make clearly understand that NO ONE can force you to sign the papers until you are GOOD AND READY and that can be weeks to months after birth. You do not need to allow the PAPS to follow you to your doctor appointments, to the hospital, to the delivery room to cut the cord, to naming or any of that which may make you feel like you have no alternative but to surrender your baby. Please only think about YOU and YOUR baby. Research and clearly understand the laws in your state. What your rights are, the MINIMUM time frames and the revocation time period, if any, and have your very own lawyer go over every document line by line with you and do not sign if it does not feel right to you. If it comes down to money etc, then clearly understand that AP's can lose their homes, jobs, file bankrupcty, be bogged down with cc debt, divorce just like any other individual or family in this country. No one is immune. And your child may not feel like it was a blessing - they may or may not, no one can speak for every adoptee. Kind regards,Dickons

I want to start off by saying I'm so sorry that your in so much pain. I'm not a bmom, and could never understand the extent to which that pain goes, but as a human being I can feel your pain through your words. I hope you get some great first hand advice, as it seems you have, but I also hope you keep in mind that every bmom, adoptee and aparent's experiences are different and will vary from one extreme to another. I hope and pray that over the next few weeks you come to a place of peace in what ever decision you choose. I also wanted to say that I think this is a great point. As an Amom, I would have loved to have seen my DD take her first breath, have my DH cut her cord and be there for those first hours, but now when I look back I'm so grateful that we weren't. I'm so grateful that our DDs bmom was able to have all those firsts with her daughter uninterrupted, not having to worry about anyone but the two of them. I would hate to have been there and have taken away anything from what they shared in those two days. I'm not saying that if a bmom wants the aparents to be there it's a bad thing, but don't feel pressured to make someone elses "hospital experience" great. If you decide to place, they will get to enjoy all the rest of the firsts, give yourself time with your baby. I can't imagine you'll regret it.

I think you will find that everyone you speak to has an agenda or at least a flavor. We can't help it, we're human. I think you just have to seek out many different resources for facts (because different sources will select different facts to share) and many different points of view and figure out which facts are important to you and which perspectives resonate with your ideals and feelings. That said, here are some facts, admittedly selectively chosen. Please understand that no parent chooses adoption. You can't. Only a prospective parent chooses adoption. A parent chooses termination. There is a huge difference between choosing termination and adoption. A parent chooses termination of their legal responsibilities and rights with regard to the child they created and brought into the world. It is an act that frees the parent of responsibility for the child and therefore also denies them the rights needed to fulfill that responsibility. For the child, termination is an act that takes the life the child was born to away from the child. It cuts the child off from his or her identity. It denies the child his or her natural and legal right to be protected and parented by his or her parents, denies the child rights to other family and heritage, and thoroughly disposes of the child's primary permanency. Further, there is no open adoption agreement in the country, "binding" or not, that has any effect whatsoever on the finality and absolute nature of the termination of parental rights. Legally, you will be considered and treated forever and always as a complete stranger. Legally, your child will be a complete a stranger to you. As for "binding" agreements, they are always subject to family court interpretation, amendment, and outright voiding in whatever the court finds to be the child's best interest. In determining best interest, the legal parents' right to decision making would be considered and weighed by the court. If open adoption agreements weren't subject to this kind of oversight and parental responsibilities were not given weight, we would be treating children as property, and that is illegal. Termination and adoption are two legally separate events. Your role ends at termination. Termination occurs BEFORE adoption can legally occur. Once your responsibilities and rights are terminated, ANYTHING can happen to the child you gave birth to and you will have NOTHING to say about it. Your "adoption plan" is just that: a plan, not a legal instrument, and there is no guarantee that it will be followed. It's your hopes on paper, nothing more. The prospective parents you choose may or may not end up adopting your birthchild and there will be nothing you can do about it. You may not even be told. If they do, as others have pointed out, they can as easily divorce, move, change religions, change lifestyles, succumb to mental illness, drugs or alcohol, abuse or neglect the child, etc., etc.,--even place the child for re-adoption themselves, which does happen--as anyone else. Those are life events and if they happen, it is not because the parents lied to you and it is because they are living a human life. Those are facts. The following are thoughts with, admittedly, an agenda that I feel is child-centered. I feel strongly that the default course of action is to raise the children we bring into the world. I feel strongly that there has to be a very, very strong child-based reason not to before a decision to terminate parental rights. Children do not need to be traded up to a better life. They really, really don't. What they need and have a right to is their own life. If trading up were a reason to terminate and place, then no child in America would be raised by the parents who brought them into the world--we'd all be trading our kids up to someone better because there always is someone better. I do not believe that "giving a child a better life" is a legitimate reason to terminate the parent-child relationship. Safety, broadly interpreted, is pretty much the only reason I've ever seen and heard over the years that I personally feel justifies terminating your child's identity and claim on your protection and nurturance. That is not a popular sentiment on these forums. People will disagree. Vehemently. Some because they don't see the "broadly interpreted" and some who disagree regardless of it. That's fine. These are just my thoughts and feelings that may or may not resonate with you. I feel that the promise and bond of creating and bringing a child into the world is and should be treated as far, far, far more binding and sacrosanct than any other human bond on earth, including marriage. I do not understand the relative ease with which people are allowed to terminate their parental responsibilities and rights. I understand that it is difficult emotionally, but I think it is far too easy legally. I look at the lengths to which we go to preserve families in the foster care system and I do not understand why the same kind of efforts are not made on behalf of infants at risk of having a voluntary termination of their parents' responsibilities, of their identity, done to them. I feel strongly that children have a right to be raised by their parents whenever it is safe for them to be. Failing the parents, then their family. Failing that, then others. Again, safety is paramount and in my view that is followed by permanency. Children are born with permanency, it is we who take it away from them. Secondary permanency is never the same as primary permanency. The child may thrive, be happy and highly functional, but there will always be a difference, a slightly lesser level of confidence, a slightly lesser level of personal security, a slightly lesser hold on identity. There are situations in which that is preferable to the alternative, I understand that. But it is there and it is something to be thought about. Personally, I feel strongly that termination is not a good option unless you really feel that pretty much anything is better for your child than being raised by you. That raising your child would be an unacceptable and life-long burden on both of you and not simply something that poses some short-term difficulties. The risk of staying with you should outweigh the gamble of the harm that could be done in losing her identity and your protection and nurturance. If you're 22, you must be close to graduation. If the birth and keeping a baby conflicts with finals, I am sure your professors would work something out. Heck, I got measles one year and was allowed to take my finals a week later, even stayed in my dorm past time. That was a few decades ago, too, when things were stricter. So, I think they'd work something out for a baby. As for potential employers, if you have something lined up, they, too, may be willing to defer your start date a couple of months or more. If you have no job lined up, that is one of those "short-term difficulties" I spoke of. There will be a job to go to sooner or later. In the meantime, there are ways to provide for yourself and your child if you look for them. You'd be providing for yourself, anyway, and you'll get more help, not less, if you have a baby. Again, this is my point of view. It is not offered to make you feel badly or push you into something you don't think you can do, especially if the safety of the child--broadly interpreted--is at risk in some way. You need to look at yourself, what you can do today and what you could do over the years of your child's childhood and the lifelong consequences of this decision on both you and your child from as many different angles as possible, that's all. This is just one of many angles. I hope you find many helpful, loving, and supportive people along the way no matter what you decide. Peace, H

Oh Hadley, I wish someone, anyone had said those things to me all those years ago. Thank you.

Me too. What wise words. Had I read or been given a statement like this it might have given me the courage to stand up and question the garbage everyone else was feeding me 28 years ago. Terminating my rights to parent my son was a cowardly act, not brave, not heroic; it just took me 27 years or so to figure it out! Thanks Hadley.

I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time and consideration to contribute to this thread, I asked for more information and that is deffinately what i've been given, from both sides of the fence. Thank you I mean that sincerely. I wish though that I had pointed out that I am located in the UK and that the way adoption is processed over here is very drastically different from the US. Not that it changes things fundamentally but it is important, I feel. Open adoptions here are far more limited in nature than in the US, yearly contact by letter is about the extent of it, if I meet the PAPs at all it would most likely be once only there would not be any intimate contact. It would also be around 9 months after I give birth before I even see the adoption papers (though my baby would be with the PAPS), this is seen as the grace period for mothers to consider their decision, to decide if it is a mistake or not. Which obviously is not perfectly ideal but its still something. I also need to point out I am not considering this lightly and have not been coerced in anyway by anyone, no one has sugar coated what I can expect....the emphasis from everyone I have spoken to has always been on me attempting to parent (my social worker reminds me constantly that it is my decision, that I must never feel afraid to say so if at any point my mind changes), adoption has been in my mind from the beginning for various reasons. I'm sorry if it sounds like i'm making excuses its honestly not my intention, I just wanted to mention these things. I honestly meant it when I said I was thankful for the responses, I lack the words to express myself sufficiently but I am reading them all, over and over.

I don't completely understand the adoption laws in the UK (heck I can barely understand the laws here!) but if I'm understanding you correctly, you have nine months to reconsider after the baby goes home with the PAPs? If that's the case, I encourage you to not think of that time as part of your cushion to make sure you are sure about an adoption plan. In other words, if you are unsure at all about making an adoption plan, I encourage you to take your baby home and try to parent vs letting the PAPs take the baby home. I say this because if it were me, I know the longer my baby was with the PAPs, the more guilty I'd feel about changing my mind, and the less likely I'd be able to actually reverse the decision. Plus the fact that the more attached your baby became to the PAPs during that period (which is a long time really when you talk about the developmental stages of an infant), the harder it is on the baby to change homes. Just my two cents.

I guess what I wonder Even is why you think you should relinquish your baby? You don't need to tell us, of course! But I think it's something you should ask yourself at least. :-) One difference I've seen from the UK and the US is that it seems more acceptable to be a single mum, and there are more services readily available in the UK. As in free health care, child benefit etc. But ultimately, the decision and reasons are YOURS. Please hold on to that! I know that relinquishment affected me in ways that I'm STILL trying to understand, 26 years later. It's even tough being in reunion and being faced with the fact that I'll never have the relationship with my son that I am nurturing with my daughters that I'm raising. Please talk though! TAlk, ask questions. Don't be afraid to change your mind and change it back a million times. :-)

Well the way I am feeling right now...31yrs a bmum (NZ) is....keep ur baby girl. Give her the best gift in life...her mum. Susie

...and peace as you make your decision. As a hopeful adoptive parent, I can tell you that most of us DO appreciate the struggle and pain that you're feeling over your adoption plans. Even though we can never truly understand the pain of placing a child, most of us have experienced pain in our lives that gives us some small perspective into it. Wishing you all the best and hope that you feel better soon, whatever you decide. I appreciate your sacrifice and learn alot from women like you sharing your feelings about adoption. Thank you...