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.

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?’