It’s interesting because we were just talking about this earlier on, how far I’ve come in my emotions as a birth mother, because I was a wreck about it a lot, off and on. Like, every few years, it would just really hit me for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. I think that now I’m at a point where I can actually talk objectively about it and be a little bit healthier about it. We haven’t seen him in five years or talked to him. It’s part of the journey, that’s part of the story. And honestly, it’s about him. It’s not about me.
All of it can just be pegged to: it was trauma. I was young, I was stupid. I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know to ask questions. I didn’t know to make waves. And if anyone gets anything from this, especially if a mother picks up on this and they end up dealing with the same thing with their child, encourage them to ask questions. Adoption agencies are not [the] end all, be all. People think they are like, “oh, they’re great, they’re in the placement of children.” They also leave a lot of birth mothers in their wake.
That really contributed to my struggle. Baby’s dad, for some weird reason after we broke up, he cheated on his girlfriends the next couple of years with me. So it was when he was cheating on one of his girlfriends with me that I got pregnant. So it was like, “oh, not even dating this guy.” I was on the dance team at that time, so I was dancing like four to six, sometimes 8 hours a day. I went through all these dancing seasons and I gained weight.
People were talking, but it was very specific weight because I was dancing. I was staying really lean, but it was kind of like, there’s a baby bump there. And so I just denied, denied, denied, because honestly, I felt like if I denied it enough, it would one day go away.
Like the teenage dumb mind that I had. I remember going to Las Vegas. I remember faking a period while we were there. It was wild just keeping that to myself. Spring show had wrapped up and there’s so many costume changes and stuff that [made it] even more obvious. But then we were doing tryouts for the specific teams, like the kick company and the jazz company for the next year. And so I was practicing for those trials, and I just broke down because I was seeing myself in the mirror and it was just like, “I can’t do this.”
I was seven months pregnant at that point, called my mom and I had actually done some weight loss plans through all this and my mom was really supportive with it. And I was like, “the weight is not going to come off.” And she was like, “yes, it is, baby. Yes, it is.” I was like, “no, it’s not.” And that was when I told her.
Dad came home from work, and it was just a big thing, and I didn’t want to tell him initially because of course they’re like,” who’s the dad?” And I fought them on that. Then when he found out, he fought on telling his parents. He’s like, “oh, no, we can’t go through all of this. They don’t have to know.” And my dad got on Instant Messenger one night, was like, “oh, are you talking to him? Move.” And so he’s like, “you have 24 hours to tell your parents or we will.” And it’s like, that’s dramatic!
That was all close to the end of the school year. My parents immediately pulled me out of school. I finished junior year remotely, and I ended up going in after school to take my finals so it could stay on track because it was very good in school.
We’ve talked about it extensively since then, so there’s not necessarily any hostile feelings towards it. My birthday was June 7, so of course I’m having my birthday in the middle of all this. And they gave me a ring to wear on my ring finger. So when we did go out, it looked like a legitimate pregnancy. I was just really young. We couldn’t go to my favorite restaurant for my birthday. We had to go somewhere like an hour away. Was kind of frustrating. I was incredibly pale. And the only reason why I know that is because right after I went through the whole process of giving birth, two weeks after that, I had senior portraits.
So I go through this whole period of being sequestered. My parents limited me from my friends. They took all my stickers off my car, and these are things that kind of created shame around it. In reality, they were trying to protect me from the ridicule. I was already kind of struggling with some people at school. And I understand that there’s not a rulebook for this, especially at that time. This was 2003. All this is kind of like exactly 20 years ago.
I was very much into my own Christian faith at that point. My mom found a Christian adoption agency that all they do is adopt to two-parent Christian homes. And of course- it was never specified, but I know now to be true- only heterosexual couples. It was run by a church, was very small. They matched us with a doctor who actually was a really amazing OBGYN. So she really helped that whole process for me.
We picked out families and went through that whole song and dance. Of course they pitch an open adoption, and that’s where you think like, “oh, it sounds good. Okay.” And my parents may have guided that choice, but they never made it. My mom did tell me, even up until I was in the hospital with him, “if you want to take this baby home, we will figure it out.” So it was never something that was forced upon me, but I knew I wasn’t ready.
I also kind of already knew at that time that I really intended to be child free. Like, kids were never for me. The power of denial, it is a real thing because, honestly, I knew nothing. This isn’t going to just go away.
I’m not proud of any of this, but were there… I don’t know about full miscarriage attempts- but I think that they were really shit attempts. Riding In Cars With Boys is the best because it really touches on it because there’s like that part where she’s trying to throw herself down the stairs and she keeps catching herself and just, like, rolling down. It’s like the desire to protect oneself and probably even my body. You got to protect the fetus at that time, I don’t know. But it was very like, can’t do it. I don’t know what I thought.
I mean, I had moments of clarity, of course. I had moments where I would cry myself to sleep, and there were moments of really facing it head on. But later my parents said that my dad knew. My dad could tell because with the spring show, I was telling you all the costume changes and everything. Well, my dad was one of the ‘Prop Pops’, so he was in the back moving sets and stuff like that. He was back there with me; that was a big confirming moment for him. And my mom would be like, “well, we need to talk to her. We need to talk to her.” My dad, ever in his wisdom, said “she’ll tell us when she’s ready.” And of course they’re like, “it’s been a while. She’s got to tell us soon.” And I think the topic coming up, regardless of if it was me or if it was them, there was a sense of relief that at least it’s out in the open. Just that weight off my shoulders that I was carrying around as a 16 year old.
I had friends and was active in dance, and I did a lot of sports. I had my horses. This can’t be happening to me. But then also there’s the denial of: I wasn’t really trying not to. Don’t ever think it can’t happen to you, because it probably will. So that would be my advice.
I think it was like, damn, I’m smarter than this. This can’t be real. Keeping him was really never an option. His father, his family… terrible, dysfunctional. He can’t be with that family. There’s no way. Dodged a bullet in many ways, and not so much because it would have tied me to him, but because that would have been me subjecting my child to that.
Typical pregnancy, I only gained about 30 pounds, again from the dancing. But I also craved pop tarts like a mother, literally like a mother. And so when I tell my parents, and they’re like, “okay, we’ve had the tough conversation for today.” And they were like, “what do you want? Do you want anything? You probably need to eat.” And I was like, “pop tarts.” And they were like, “no, you have to eat something of nutritional value.” And I’m like, I was mad about that pop tart conversation for a while.
In retrospect, that would be my advice to another pregnant woman considering adoption is you have choices. It’s like buying a car. Try them all out, shop around, think about what’s really important to you, and not just what’s important to you right now, but what might be important to you later. I was trying not to wake waves because I felt like I had just flipped my whole family dynamic on its head. I also felt my parents would have honored if I wanted to see another agency. They were gentle about it, and I think had I asked, they would have let me. But I didn’t think to.
At that point in my life, I was very secure in my faith and as a Christian. And the values of this adoption agency were also very important to me. So we went through the whole picking process, and they give you a few different families and packets to look at, and you take a look at it. And there were two. There was a couple that didn’t have any other children that were unsure if they wanted anymore, and they had dogs and everything. I remember them being very pleasant people. Then there was another family of missionaries, [and] they ended up also having a 14 month old son already through another open adoption. And I wanted him to have a brother. And of course, the missionary part sounded great to me at the time. End up deciding on them.
That’s another thing, we never had an attorney look at it, which in retrospect, it’s the contract. They sell an open adoption, and I’m going to be bold and use the word sell. They sell an open adoption off of the appeal that it’s the best interest of the child. You’re doing the right thing for this child. They are raised knowing this fact about themselves. They never have to have that bomb dropped or overhear it. And so they sell it like it’s this beautiful moment for the child. There’s very little encouragement of that on the part of the adoptive family.
They paired me with a mentor through that time. She had a six year old birth daughter that was adopted. And their open adoption was so open that she saw her, like, once a month or something like that. It was regularly. I even think she had alone privileges, like would stay with her if they needed somebody to [babysit]. What you think of an open adoption, you’re like, “oh, yeah, that sounds great.”
There is a platform- a small one, but it’s growing- of birth mothers that… I don’t want to say disgruntled, but that’s what my adoption agency called me once.
I think certain stages of this were also relief for me. We have a plan now. The childbirth [is] terrifying at that age. What are we going to do there? Making plans of: it’s not recommended to bring the baby home at all. It’s recommended to take them straight from the hospital to the handoff. I mean, I hate to call it that, but that’s kind of what it is.
There was picking the hospital and coming up with a birth plan, and I was always a big fan of The Golden Girls, and I remember Blanche Devereaux saying, “I believe that women should have babies the way God intended, strapped to a table, numb from the neck down.” So I opted for that piece of advice.
{What else should we know about the adoption contract?}
It’s a piece of paper. I mean, it’s just like anything else. It’s not enforced. And not that I think that that’s an appropriate word when we’re talking about adoption. And it was also kind of built in a way to allow for some taper off, too. So what it was supposed to be, was we didn’t communicate at all for six months. Gave them time with the baby. They would send pictures. I think once a month or something like that, or send them to the agency, and they would give them to me all at once. But at six months, we had a big kind of reunion and got to see him for the first time since giving birth. After that, we did maybe once or twice a year for a few years. I want to say the adoption agreement required once a year contact, whether that be a phone call or in person. And it was pictures once or twice a year. I mean, it ran for the extent of 18 years, so it did, in retrospect, kind of cater a bit to the adoptive family.
My brother told me not to go into labor on his birthday, and I did. But I got to the hospital late in the evening, and they were like, you’re looking at 09:00 tomorrow morning. We’re going to do your epidural, but we’re also going to give you IV sleeping medication because you’re going to need your rest. And they said, if you don’t mind, since you’ve got the epidural, can we come in and check you periodically? And I’m waking up at, like, two or three in the morning to: “wake up baby’s coming!” from my dad.
Of course, I have this IV sleeping med, so I’m just, like, drooling all over myself, so I don’t remember much of it, and they let me go back to sleep. He was born relatively quickly, but I did have one spot where I could feel muscle pressure, so that did help with pushing. I bled a lot, so I was in the hospital for three days. So he was in the hospital for three days with me.
My brother actually lost his job because when I went into labor. He told his boss, “I got to go be with my sister. This is not like a married sister that’s having a baby. This is like my baby sister.” And his boss wouldn’t let him, and he said, “if you don’t come in, you’re fired.” And he said, “well, I guess I’m fired then” and left.
So, yeah, Steve was my rock through a lot of that. It’s very much influenced how he raises his girls. He thinks back on that a lot. It’s made him really focus on how his daughter’s happiness and their true mental well being is most important. That comes first. They can come to him and say, “I want to be an astronaut that goes on American Idol.” And he will [say] “Okay, well, then we got you get you in your sciences for your astronaut. We got to get you in vocal classes.” That’s the kind of response he would have.
I wanted as much time with [my son] as I could because I knew I wasn’t going to have much. I had a second guess in the hospital. I did. My mom reminded me, again, we can bring him home if that’s what you want to do. And I just remember bawling and having a breakdown. I think they had just taken him back, and it was starting to sink in that every time they were taking him to the nursery to give me a break, that was less time. And I think I was just like, having a moment around that.
Mom was just hugging me and [saying] “you got to be sure. You got to sign that dotted line. That’s not us.” She was just very supportive about it, and that’s why I tell everyone, while they made some mistakes, it was all with the best of intentions. There was some trauma from it, but that trauma is worth it, I’ll take it.
I ended up going back to senior year stronger than I’d ever been and just didn’t give [a] crap about any of it, didn’t care about bullying, didn’t care about any of that. It just ended up changing me because it’s like, you guys don’t know what a tough decision is. It was really hard.
We drove up to Tomball from the hospital, and Steve was a huge rock for me through that. Of course, the birth father and his family was there, his mom and his sister. We were given a private moment with the baby before, that was intended to be our private moment, but his mom and his sister just busted in like, “we can’t be away from the baby.” They ruined the whole day. I don’t remember much about that day other than they really crapped on it.
It was a very traumatic day. I remember a lot of tears. I remember getting there, my brother taking me off in a moment of breakdown because I didn’t want to do it around the baby. And I remember crying, the mom and the sister coming in and taking over. And I remember going home, and everybody went to bed at my house. And I went downstairs and I went down to my mom’s office. She had a chair. I became very aware of the gap in the space, and I just sat there and cried. And I don’t remember going to bed.
Dad took me to bed because I woke up in bed, but my brother took me to the gun range the next day, and I had a rough day, but it got me out, and every day got a little better from there. I just kind of started living again.
So I had my healing of downstairs which was also not how they pitch it in health class. They make it a lot better sounding. So I went back to church after and I’d been on the praise team and everything, and we had heard about the cabbage trick, and so I pretty much wore sports bras just pretty exclusively also because I’m getting back into dance. I’d already made the team for the next year. I had something to kind of start working towards because I also had dance camp literally two weeks later. I had some healing to do. I got to do jump splits. I just pushed a baby out two weeks ago. I’m still sporting witch hazel. I still have the net panties.
The month following was interesting. We’d be at like, a church event or whatever, and we had switched to a new church, and that was the Cult Church. That was where my faith was really tested. And so I come back and of course, like, it’s a small church and me and my family, like, that’s kind of my unit. You know, there’s maybe like 20 to 30 families at a time. Very little. So we’d usually kind of huddle together even more after that. We’d been through this big thing. We all grew closer together. We got to talk about things now. And one of them would be like, “god, I’m starving.” [And I’d] be like, “cabbage salad?”
I started healing pretty quickly. I can’t be in this moment forever because life did keep moving on. If I wanted to also keep the secret, I had to keep pressing on. So I did. We opted to keep it. My mom’s family is very gossipy, so we decided to keep it from them as long as we could. There were people in my life that knew. I don’t know, I think it just kind of became I felt comfortable telling people.
The first several years with the adoptive parents were great. I had a really good relationship with both parents. They actually ended up even confiding in me a little bit because they later adopted two girls that were sisters. They had issues with the older one, major behavioral ones, and it wasn’t a good fit. But they did end up continuing to raise the younger sister. Struggled with that a little bit. Like, you separated two sisters, you sent the older one away. That bothered me a little bit, and things were pretty regular contact.
Then at some point, the adoptive mother stopped showing up or responding to communication. And there were a lot of things I did wrong. I kind of retreated. I felt like I had screwed up on communication and I’d done it over and over and over again because I also was trying to have respect for them and I wanted them to initiate some of that contact. And I think I kind of let it sit too long. And then also like, it’s been so long, how do I start this conversation again? How many times can we go through the whole getting to know this child again? All over. Do you still love cars? Oh, wait, no, you’re 13. I felt crappy about it. And so that kind of became a new source of guilt.
I wasn’t initiating now. They weren’t either. It was acknowledged, but the reason for that is they had multiple birth families. And also they had a lot of birth families that didn’t talk to each other. It was overwhelming. But the way I looked at that is if you’re going to enter into an open adoption for the betterment of the child, should that not be a priority?
I think both myself and his adoptive parents are responsible for him not really knowing me. They promise me he knows me, and I’m sure that he does. I’m sure that they talk about me all the time, but I don’t know if he knows my heart.
I’ve looked at that guilt in a new light that like, I didn’t know any better. There’s not a manual for this. I don’t want him to ever feel like I abandoned him or like I didn’t care. To be honest, I probably felt like I was going to fuck it up.
I’ve not made the best decisions in my life. Been married two times before Ben. That was another thing that I struggled with, is, oh, these people are very strong Christians. And here I am introducing their child that they were raising. How much can we subject this child to changes in my life when I’m still growing up? My 20s was not a great I was still coming into who I was. And I also feel like there was some judgment, perhaps because keep in mind, they were missionaries.
This is all just my perception now as an adult that has actually discovered that my Christianity was actually rooted very much in fear. Oh, if I don’t do this, I’m going to go to hell. I don’t want to go to hell. Oh, eternity is important. I’m not worried about where I’m going in the afterlife. I’m worried about the right now, worrying about the karma I’m putting out in the world. I’m worried about the energy, the kind of person that I am, the kind of energy I bring to those around me into everything I do, everything I touch. That’s my religion. Call it witchcraft, call it whatever. And I’m not the kind of person that those types of parents would have their children around.
It just so happens I’m the birth mother, had a lot of moments of I did the right thing because he’s very smart. I remember going with him. We all met at the Kemah boardwalk. And his adoptive dad is a great guy because he just stepped back and basically let us stand in lines together and do where it was the closest I ever got to that beautiful, idealistic example that was paraded in front of me. That was a good day. And he was probably ten, maybe eleven. He was pointing up at the rides and like, you know how that works. And was teaching me about mechanics and engineering, that that kid’s going to send ships to the moon. He’s turned out okay, and that’s the important part.
We haven’t seen him since 2018, so it’s been about five years. It’s entirely up to him. I know that that ball is in his court and I’m at peace with it now. It’s not about me.
My story should be about helping other mothers that have daughters that get pregnant earlier than planned. Don’t check the box just to get it done, just to feel that relief and to have it off your plate. Be picky, ask questions, advocate for yourself. No one else is going to advocate for you. You don’t have to go with the first adoption agency. Make them earn your business. And it sounds bad, but it is a business for them. It is in their best interest. They can only make money. And even as a nonprofit, you can only make money to front your next adoption fees. I think it also preys on the parents a little bit too. You can’t have children and this is the only way you can do it. It’s not cheap.
It’s kind of like you all are going to tell me whatever you can to make this sound really good. I’m not saying that there needs to be a negativity vibe around it. There absolutely should not be. But what there should be is an open conversation, transparency. I don’t think that there should be a mentor birth mother. I think that there should be all ends of the spectrum represented in these conversations that, hey, it doesn’t always work this way. Somebody to remind them that shoulda, coulda, woulda’s don’t matter anymore.
There’s always the… I made the wrong decision. And that can come from any number of places. It can come from: I didn’t pick the right family, I didn’t pick the right agency. It can come from a lot of different ones. And you know what? It’s probably all of them. But you can’t change it now. The only thing you can do is just be prepared for it. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, right? Like anything in life. And work really hard on yourself, on moving past it, on healing.
Make the phone call. Pick up the phone if you feel like they’re interested, even if they’re not. I mean, have a dialogue about it. Say, “would you feel more comfortable if we discussed closed? Not saying that’s something I’d be completely okay with, but that’s the vibe that I’m getting, honestly.” [If] I see them again: “What are your thoughts? Would you do it again?” I would ask them that question because it started to feel as the birth mother on my end and the lack of communication, the constant apologies for why it was so hard to reach them, even just to get in contact, get a call back, get a text, email, whatever.
Unfortunately, also my advice for prospective [adoptive] parents, open adoption is becoming the norm. You really got to be okay with it. And the beauty of what an open adoption was meant to create is an environment that’s healthy and safe for the kid, for their perspectives, for their growing, for them to never wonder if they were wanted. You were wanted by two families. It just wasn’t the right timing. This is how we’re all together.
It felt like maybe they just weren’t really ready for 18 years of that. I think also, adopting so many children through open adoption, somebody’s going to get the short end of the stick. I mean, I have left every meeting with him in the last ten years wondering, is this the last time I’m ever going to see him?
The last time I saw him, he met [my husband] Ben, and that was a moment of peace for me. That had a bumpy road. I made some detours. My life’s changed a bunch, but I have stability now. And I thought that was important for him to see that. If that was the last time, he got to see some stability.
He is on Facebook. They also kept the last name from us. The intent is always that that will come out organically when everyone’s comfortable. They picked the first name, we picked the middle. They picked a name, we picked a name. We were going to figure out how it fit. They said that name would not work as a first name. They were like, that would be the worst name in the world. So they put it as a middle name instead of the first. And they have popped up on my suggested friend’s feed. And actually my son’s Facebook has popped up. I know it’s there. I respect his privacy. It’s less about his parents privacy now. It’s more about his. I want that to be his choice.
I hope that he has friends and family who love and support him and will always even tell him when he’s wrong. I hope that he finds a job that doesn’t feel like a job. I hope he has a family, whatever that looks like, the family that he desires. Even if it’s cats. He wants to grow up cat guy, that’s fine. He is his own person. He doesn’t like potatoes any form. You are definitely a different person.
You have your own life, and it shouldn’t be about me, but I hope to be part of it one day. I hope that even if it’s just reaching out to me just to say, hey, I’m alive, that would be great. I wish I was better prepared for what this all worked out. I wish that our world was more tolerant, and I’m glad that the world he’s growing up in is likely going to be more tolerant. My heart is what matters.
I think that’s the struggling part is just I hope that the openness of the world does extend a little bit more tolerance to that arena. I hope that the adoption world has changed. In preparing for the adoption, there’s a lot of group therapy sessions. You’re hearing a lot of other people’s stories. Some of them were wild where I was like, I’m normal. They suggest counseling after, but the support really stops. They do a birth mother’s luncheon every year. They have a reunion every year where birth families and adoptive families alike can come together.
They shared something on their Facebook that was talking about being a birth mother, and how rewarding it was. And I’ll be honest, at this stage, I’m kind of tired of hearing how rewarding it is. It’s rewarding getting to watch a child live a happy and healthy life. You don’t have to go through an adoption to see that.
It’s only rewarding if you do right by all involved. And you got to care about these women. They’re young women. They’re scared. They don’t know what they’re doing. If you parade this beautiful “but wait here’s door number three!”, you got to show the good with the bad. There wasn’t a lot of that at the time. I don’t know if that’s changed.
Instead of making it a sales pitch where you can make it sound great and fantastic, you don’t have to sell me on that. Adoption is the right move. This is the right choice for me. I don’t need you to do anything more than to just make sure I don’t lose my ever loving mind during this process and guide me through it. Don’t place my baby and hold my hand up until that moment and then not care.
So they share this thing about the sacrifice and the rewarding piece of [it] and I commented pretty much [saying], “why aren’t we sharing the other side of it, though? Because there’s a flip side to this where it’s not that great being a birth mother.” Because also when I would reach out to the family and they’d stopped responding, I’d go through the agency and they were like, “well, we can’t do anything.” It’s just like, “well, you can call them, reach out to them, and maybe find out why this is such an issue.” And so I realized a few days after I left that comment, nothing ever happened. I never got a notification, nothing. So I went back to Facebook and I looked. They deleted my comment, and I sent them a message and I asked why. And I said, that’s an important part of the story, too. Y’all are missing it. [They said] “if you have grievances, you need to call us. We just didn’t feel that was an appropriate forum. If you’re disgruntled…” basically just like, sorry but not sorry.
They may look back and say there’s absolutely nothing wrong about what they said, but I’ll tell you, as a birth mother, they got to be better. I just think we need to care more about the birth mothers. It sets up a better environment. You’re going to have these healthy young women that can reach out to their kid and be able to have a healthy basis for communication, be able to have a healthy relationship with that birth child.
I filled a really weird void in your life. It’s our special relationship. It’s a good conversation. If you help the birth mothers through it more, you’re going to have more of that. My experience with a church run adoption agency: would not recommend. I think if there’s a little bit more heart for all involved on that end and I think also if there’s more advocating for ourselves and asking those questions and don’t just go with the first one you call.
Be really in depth about the whole thing, really be big picture about it, then I think we’d end up with a lot happier adoptions across the board. I feel like I’m just finally at a place of peace about it. I’m really happy with that. It’s definitely been one of the longest running traumas of my life. That’s for sure I wouldn’t be who I am right now without it, either.
For information related to deciding to place your baby for adoption, Planned Parenthood has resources to help.
If you need to talk to someone to help you go through all of your options without a hidden agenda, All-Options Talkline can help.
To Rent Riding in Cars with Boys, Click Here.
To see the episode of Golden Girls mentioned, see Season 5, Episode 13: Mary Had a Little Lamb.
All content and information on this blog is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult your doctor for advice on your particular medical situation.