What is a Birth Mother to Me!

Through the years I have found it to be odd how people view birth mothers. We are looked at as adulterers, sluts with no morals, mentally unstable with no cares about bringing a child into this world, etc. What about the few of us who were raped or abused? Did we deserve it? Did we have it coming to us? Where we asking for it by the way we dressed?

To me a birth mother is any woman who gives birth. A woman who chooses to place a child for adoption is a birth mother and a woman who chooses to parent her child is a birth mother. That’s right, I said it, we are both birth mothers. It really is strange to how people respond to the words “Birth Mother”! All my life I have had to explain to people who and what a birth mother is. This has been strange for me because adoption has been around for centuries! This is not a new concept or new idea. What I found is that people dismiss that adoption wouldn’t happen without a birth mother. How did the babies get here? Sometimes I think people think adoption is like going to a store, picking up the baby and paying for it at the counter.

For years’ women who have become pregnant out of wedlock or been abused or raped and had to accept the fate of getting married or being sent away to a maternity home or distant relative to have the baby. When you came back you didn’t talk about it, like it never happened, and go on with life. The adoption was closed and the guilt and shame the birth mother felt were kept inside and never let out. I remember growing up thinking couples who adopted were like heroes! I remember looking at them like they saved that child from bad parents or from unloving family.

Let me just say this, I am a birth mother and proud to say it! I was date raped and did what I know was best for my child by PLACING her with a couple who was able to give her what I know I couldn’t at that time in my life. I did NOT GIVE HER UP! Ask yourself, how would you feel if you were given up on. No one likes that! Please use the word PLACED. “I was placed for adoption.” The psychological effect of saying you were PLACED instead of given up has a MAJOR effect on the child and about adoption as a whole.

As a birth mother of 25 years and having been reunited the past 12 years I can say “I NEVER GAVE UP!” I PLACED HER for adoption because I love her and always will. A mother’s love is never ending. My goal as a birth mother is to help our community see birth mothers in a different way. With open adoption and adoptees' looking for their birth parents, I hope you can see that it’s really all about love, from the moment of conception. Life After placement is just that! Moving forward without so much guilt or shame but acceptance of choices made with nothing but selfless love.

~Lynea~