Making an Adoption Plan

Choosing Adoption separates mothers and children

Adoption Research & Statistics, Relinquishment, The Adoption Industry January 30, 2013

Adoption Relinquishments by the Numbers

Based on a 100% population, then, the USA IF it had similar adoption practices and supported mothers would have 539 Voluntary Domestic Infant relinquishments annually give or takeWant to do it again? Based on the 2006 numbers, we are looking at only 826 infants relinquished in the USA rather than the 14,000.
I don’t even need my calculator to know that it means we are looking at aproximately 13,500 babies relinquished by mothers who, IF given accurate information regarding parenting and had options and support, would most likely NOT have placed their babies for adoption. Now multiply that by the last ten years: that’s over 135,000 families separated for no other reason than the fact that adoption is a huge profit driven business in the USA.

Research into adoption surrender documents

Adoption Research & Statistics January 29, 2013

Biological Mother’s Grief: The Post Adoptive Experience in Open Versus Confidential Adoption

Indications were strong that biological mothers who know more about the later life of the child they relinquished have a harder time making an adjustment than do mothers whose tie to the child is broken off completely by means of death. Relinquishing mothers who know only that their children still live but have no details about their lives appear to experience an intermediate degree of grief. It might seem a paradox that continued knowledge about the relinquished child would intensify a mother’s grief symptoms. The question of whether open adoption inhibits a healthy grieving process needs careful consideration before open adoption becomes a standard method of practice

Tell me to Stop speaking Adoption Truths? HA!

Adoption Koolaide & Birthmother Denial, Relinquishment January 28, 2013

Sorry, I’m Not Going to Be Convinced & I’m Not Changing My Mind

I really have to almost get a chuckle out of it when people try to tell me to shut up. Really? You are going to tell ME to STOP? And you think I will listen to YOU? How’s that working out for you? Yes, it IS FUNNY! You did not bother to find out who you are talking to. I take my rabble rousing VERY seriously. Why are you spending all your energy trying to convince me that you got it so good and adoption is so positive and “not like my experience”. Did I mention that I just do not care?

Birthmother Regrets & Lessons, Relinquishment January 27, 2013

This is Adoption Happily Ever After

No matter how perfect the outcome, it still hurts. The only way to avoid the hurt is to avoid adoption, and it’s too late for that, for me. The adoption of my son was perfect, I did everything the “right” way and still; the adoption of my son caused unnecessary pain and was wrong. This is way I speak out against adoption today. It’s not because I had a “bad experience”, it’s that it was a “good experience”, and yet there are too many tears and the worry never stops.

Birthmother Regrets & Lessons, Relinquishment December 23, 2012

Pain from the Past, Feeling the Presence

What strikes me now is that clearly, from the letters, one of my major concerns is what would I do afterwards, where would I go, how would I survive and that my mother’s home was an unsafe place for me to be. Like really, for my mental health, my mother was damaging to me and returning home after such a loss, I would be even more venerable, but yet.. they sent me back there after I had my baby.
They gladly took my child to protect him, but then left me right back here I was. How is this looking out for my best interests?

Birthmother Regrets & Lessons, Relinquishment December 22, 2012

Letters from Boston, Notes to the Past

” I go to the agency. Talk about depressing! We had to go over all these horrible forms which I’ll have to sign. All official shit. No turning back. ” You understand that you are giving up all rights as a mother and you will never see your child again” I don’t want to sign THAT! It’s so horrid. Until today, it didn’t seem so very real. I feel like it’s a bad dream and I’d like someone to wake me up. There’s no choice. There’s no way out. And I don’t think I like this at all. I’ve always thought about it and felt I could do it fine, but now I can’t image really going through with it forever and I have to. It sucks. I hope I can just stick I tin a box deep deep down like I do with everything and not think about it. As long as I don’t think about it, I’ll do OK, If I can just do it and stuff it in a box.”

Birthmother Regrets & Lessons, Relinquishment December 21, 2012

Letters From My Pregnant Self – Pre Adoption

What Really Happened When I was Away On the surface, everything here is OK.  Inside I’m feeling pretty lost – but nothing can be done about that. I’ll hold out. From my first letter written August 24th, 1987 I think it was back in ’06 when I first asked Laura if she still had my letters from Boston saved. I used to inquire about them periodically. I was writing out…

Adoption Koolaide & Birthmother Denial November 29, 2012

Go Be Happy About Adoption, But Don’t Call Me a Bitter Birthmother

“Encouraging Discontent”? Look lady, I’m not the one going over to other people’s blogs and telling them what they should do and how they should feel like royalty and scream about “Birthmama” pride from the rooftops. That whole blog bombing with your “outrage” is not the sign of someone who is content and secure in their decision. See, this wasn’t a blog post about YOU and what YOU wish YOU knew about adoption relinquishment. It was a post about ME so I talked about what I wished and MY experiences. I never said they had to fit YOU. If it doesn’t fit you, it still fits ME and wait, what’s that, a whole lot of other people who bothered to agree in comments, but you didn’t bother reading any of them, did you? You have no right to go dismissing other people’s feelings if you want your own pint of view to be heard.

Cultural Views on Adoption, The Adoption Industry November 25, 2012

Craigslist: You Can’t Sell Your Baby, But You Can Advertise FOR a Baby

Now, it’s considered OK for the potential birthmother to answer an ad, but she cannot place one, because then she is selling her baby. But, in reality she IS selling her child, she’s just not getting a good deal since she is going through the middle man. Yet, as a society we are outraged that a mother might consider getting something monetarily in exchange for her child.

Community, Relinquishment November 17, 2012

The Craigslist Adoption Truth Project

The article points out that the BEST results were from Craigslist. All the other avenues of baby procurement were trickles as far as results. I’m not sure why expectant moms are turning to Craigslist for the adoptive parents of their unborn children rather, but maybe they are looking for used cribs and get sucked in by their sad stories? The fact is the article clearly tells US where WE have to go to reach moms BEFORE they answer the horrid pathetic ads and get sucked into the adoption machine. To that I say thank you very much.

Birthmother Regrets & Lessons, Costs of Adoption, Relinquishment, Reunions & Support November 15, 2012

Thinking About Adoption Affects on the “Kept” Child

When I relinquished Max, it was suppose to be something that affected ME. The pain and loss was to be mine to bear as Max would be “better off”, his father unaware, my brother and extended family equally as clueless and my mother, well she didn’t matter.. at least I was not give pause to consider how nay one else felt. Like so many things in adoption, the professionals were wrong. Like we say, the “gift of adoption” just keep on giving and giving.. the pain has a huge ripple effect that touches every aspect of a woman’s lives including ALL our children

Birthmother Regrets & Lessons, Relinquishment, The Adoption Industry November 14, 2012

What Preplacement Adoption Counseling Should Look Like

Over and over we hear again, “I wouldn’t have done this if I knew it was so hard”. The intensity of grief is really glossed over. Maybe we can never truly begin to understand this until we live it, but “feelings of peace and contentment” do not come close. Maybe if adoption agency counseling warned of blind, toe numbing, soul clutching waves of grief and never ending tears that you eventually sort of get used to “living with” then we could talk. I have yet to see that on ANY agency website or in their literature. How about we just begin to include BOTH sides of the coin with their “Birthmother Testaments” so considering mothers get an idea of what COULD be the outcome.

Research into adoption surrender documents

Adoption Research & Statistics November 9, 2012

The Culture of Poverty and Adoption: Adoptive Parent Views of Birth Families

Kathryn A. Sweeney* Purdue University Calumet Abstract This study used data from 15 in-depth interviews to better understand how perceptions of birth families by White adoptive parents rely on and challenge cultural perspectives of poverty.  Findings show the complexity of their views: even when adoptive parents recognize structural causes of poverty, they tend to rely on the idea that birth parent poverty results from inadequate choices made by individuals.  Findings…

Adoption is not a gift!

Before Making an Adoption Plan, Cultural Views on Adoption, Relinquishment November 7, 2012

Good Mothers Don’t Even Think About Adoption!

We see the messages that mother who keeps the child that she can ill-afford is considered irresponsible. The mother who needs public assistance is considered a freeloader. The mother who gets pregnant again too soon should “know better how babies are made”. The mother who is too young and unwed should have “thought about the consequences before she spread her legs”. The single mother raising her children is “breaking the fabric of the American values”.