I’ve been the Creative Director of Adopted.com for over 8 years and during that time I have read and felt close to hundreds of reunions stories. I’ve seen the magic of reunion happen over and over again, and felt lucky to be a part of this.

As with anyone, a lot has happened in my personal life in the last 8 years, I’ve had my heart broken a few times, I’ve moved a lot, travelled, fell back in love and now I’m a mom to the most amazing little boy that’s taken my world, smashed it and put it back together in a completely new and wonderful way. This has been a revolution on its own, and it’s changed who I am and how I see the world, and for the purpose of this story, how I see adoption and particularly birth mothers.

Becoming a mom has given me more empathy than I remember having, I’m much more sensitive now, and feel things much more deeply. I feel like I’ve opened up to welcome my boy and receive everything that came with him with open arms, allowing change through every aspect of my life. I tried resisting at first, it was very overwhelming, but then surrendered to this new love.

I had an easy pregnancy at first, but for the last 10 weeks we had to monitor the baby carefully because he wasn’t growing enough. I had to stop everything I was doing to focus on our wellbeing, on resting and giving him more than I thought I could give. Every fiber of my being was focused on his growth. Physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, I went all in. It was a tough time, always wondering if he was OK, trying to get a sense of him every single minute. Just a little preview of what life was going to be like from that point on.

With a lot of work I was able to keep him in my womb for 38 weeks, and then needed a C section because natural birth would have been too much effort for such a small baby to handle. My plans of a water birth went away very quickly, along with having our dreamt golden hour, the first hour of bonding right after birth. When he was born, he was immediately taken to Intensive Care, and my heart broke completely at the exact time he was taken from my arms.

Having your newborn taken away, even for his own good, is unbelievably hard. I didn’t get to be with him for the first 10 hours of his life, while I was recovering from surgery and was gaining strength so doctors would allow me to go see him, all plugged in inside his incubator. And I didn’t get to take him home for 10 long and exhausting days. A year and a half later, I still cry when I remember this.

That time of separation felt quite literally like someone opened me up, got my baby from me and took him far away. It destroyed me exactly at the time I needed more strength than ever.

Luckily Felipe was ok, he just needed to gain some weight and had no other complications. So we were able to go home with a healthy and amazing little boy at the end.

After this experience, when I came back to work and found myself immersed in reunion stories all over again, I couldn’t help but feel different. This experience had fully changed me, along with how I perceive birth mothers giving their child for adoption.

If I had experienced such pain from being away from my baby for hours, I could only try to imagine what the sacrifice of giving your baby up for adoption would feel like. No matter what the situation is for a birth mother, I can assure you it’s not easy. Growing a human being inside you for 9 months, feeling their every movement, kicks, hiccups, hearing their heart beat in sonograms, being so deeply connected and suddenly be on your own again. Silence.

Situations may differ a lot, but one thing is certain, it’s not an easy call, or an easy thing to do. Deciding you can’t keep your child must be incredibly difficult. It requires immense strength and I admire that. I admire birth moms, and I feel as a new mom I can see just a little bit of their pain with more clarity now.

I see a deep and usually silent struggle between the life they have now and the constant wondering about how their decision has affected their children. I see hesitation as well as excitement when (or if) they decide to start searching for them, could they disrupt their hopefully amazing lives? Could they be rejected? Could they connect again?

Whatever the answers may be, I’m sending all my love and admiration to all women affected by adoption, I feel now a little bit closer to you and I’m eager to continue to read new reunions every day.

Please sign in to post a comment.