We, at Unplanned Good, believe that women who face unplanned pregnancy should get ALL the available information about ALL their options. IF/when they consider adoption, they should NEVER be coerced or tricked into making an adoption plan. We hope they go into it with eyes wide open, and we are working toward that goal.
When the 46-year-old was 20 and single, she got pregnant. She says she wasn't ready to be a mom, so she made the decision to place her baby for adoption. It wasn't easy.
I was actually adopted so I grew up with a lot of exposure to adoption and my family was very open about it. It was never something that we didn’t talk about. My brother was adopted too. I found out I was pregnant in 2019 when I was 17. I freaked out and set a timer on my phone for 2 hours. I was like I will give myself 2 hours to cry and then I’ll figure out what to do.
I met this guy through a friend of a friend at work. We hadn’t been dating a long time, and I got pregnant. I knew it wasn’t the right time for me to be a mom again – I already had a four-year-old daughter. I made a spur-of-the-moment decision, and I had an abortion. I was only thinking of myself and how I could get out of the situation. I just wanted to make it all go away as fast as possible. I never thought about how I was hurting the baby.
Two months later, I got pregnant again. Same guy, but this time, I felt differently about it. I never knew I could get pregnant again so fast. Right away, I knew that I wanted to have the baby and put it up for adoption.
I was 20 when I went to the hospital for a severe hemorrhage. I knew I was having a miscarriage and my doctor confirmed. I coped in the worst ways possible, leaning on addiction to grieve my lost child.
Eight months later. I was admitted for severe cramps. It turns out my miscarriage did not take and no pregnancy test could tell. I was in labor with a baby boy with $5 in my bank account and liquor still on my breath.
Embracing open adoption was a very hard concept for me, at first. As a birth mother, I want to share my experience with open adoption and hopefully encourage future expectant/birth mothers to consider this route.
The decision to place a child for adoption is one of the most profound and emotional choices a mother can make. It’s a unique kind of grief that often lives quietly in the background, misunderstood by many. It is not the absence of love that drives this decision, but the overwhelming presence of it—a love so deep, it’s willing to let go.
I eventually told my parents everything that had been going on. I told them about going to the pregnancy center to get tested, that I’d been talking to some attorneys and had made plans for the abortion…
They looked at me and said ‘Hannah, you’re adopted, your 4 siblings are adopted, why not at least look at adoption?’
I did know that I already loved my baby more than anything else in the world, so every decision made from that point on was made completely out of love. I was twenty-one years old with nothing or no one to support me. So, I chose to place my child for adoption.
I was that girl, you know, the one with the teenage pregnancy. But I was carrying more than just an unexpected life; I was carrying the weight of the shame of my sin. Even amid my circumstances, the Lord met me where I was, and my life since November 19th, 2022 has never been the same.
Here's a lovely story about a woman who chose adoption for her baby. It's not an easy path, but we are stronger than we may think!
