by Paulina

Created on: December 17, 2006   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

I have to say, I'm very surprised at all of the negative "articles" on adoption. As a birth-mother, I'd like to share my experience, which has been overwhelmingly positive. That I gave a child up for adoption isn't a "dark secret" or something I have felt guilty about for the last ten years. I am very proud of my decision on my son's behalf.

I was 18 when I found out I was pregnant. At 18, I think many teenagers feel invincible, that bad things happen to other people - but never themselves. I was a smart girl with low, low self-esteem, which led me into risky behavior (as I think por self-esteem does for so many girls) in the search for acceptance. Once it was confirmed that I was pregnant, I spent at least a month in denial, positive that something would save me - an ectopic pregnancy, a medical mistake, a freak accident perhaps. When I finally told my parents, they were devastated. After they went through a reasonable period of not speaking to me, we weighed out my/our options.

The birthfather wanted me to keep the baby. He wanted to be supportive, but he couldn't answer any of the questions that kept me awake at night: what will we do? what is going to happen? how do you take care of a baby? what happens when it gets sick? He was only 19 himself, and under tremendous pressure from his family to work things out with me. At this point, I had morning sickness every day (and continued to do so for the remaining 7 1/2 months!), and was a young, frightened ball of skyrocketing hormones. I decided to research adoption.

The first few agencies I contacted were more interested in my SAT scores and the condition of my teeth than they were in helping me make such a difficult decision. I also found out that these agencies were closed, or "semi-open" adoption agencies that let the adoptive parents choose the birthmother, not the other way around. Eventually, I found a wonderful agency in California that dealt only in open adoptions. Instead of sending me lengthy questionnaires akin to CIA background checks, the first information the agency sent me was a book on loss and grieving. After I read the book, I knew that this was the agency I wanted to work with, if I was really going to go through with adoption.

My parents didn't want to sway me either way. They wanted to make sure that I made the decision on my own, without any sense of pressure from them. The birthfather's family was a different story: they did everything they could to try and persuade me to let them raise the

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