{"id":508,"date":"2018-11-21T07:41:28","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T12:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milestonesandtransitions.com\/?p=508"},"modified":"2018-11-20T16:52:33","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T21:52:33","slug":"birth-family-perspective-adoption-part-1-unplanned-pregnancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milestonesandtransitions.com\/birth-family-perspective-adoption-part-1-unplanned-pregnancy\/","title":{"rendered":"A Birth Family Perspective on Adoption – Part 1: Unplanned Pregnancy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 —\u00a0By Grandma Elaine<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMom\u2026\u2026.I\u2019m\u2026\u2026..pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still in her late teens, and in school, my daughter knew she wasn\u2018t ready to be a mom.\u00a0 And her on-again, off-again boyfriend had no plan to take on a parenting role.\u00a0 For our daughter, terminating a pregnancy was not an option.\u00a0 So, where do we go from here\u2026.?<\/p>\n

As we got over the initial shock of the news, we began to think further about how we as prospective grandparents could best help our daughter and this, our first grandchild.\u00a0 First was to get prenatal care lined up.\u00a0 Our family doctor was a great help in getting us connected to a wonderful obstetrician and arranging for an ultrasound to determine the likely due date.\u00a0 Our daughter invited me to attend the ultrasound appointment with her.\u00a0 The moment we saw the screen showing the developing baby, we both were in tears.\u00a0 My heart swelled and almost burst, thinking about this burgeoning miracle of life.\u00a0 I thought to myself, this little one deserves the best.\u00a0 \u201cPossibly a boy\u201d, the technician said, \u201cbut we can\u2019t always be sure\u201d. We soon learned that the pregnancy was already four months on\u2026.so five more months until this baby will be born.<\/p>\n

Our daughter welcomed our involvement in discussing the plans for her baby.\u00a0 I was pleased that she was open to these discussions.\u00a0 My husband and I felt that our age (already in our 60s) and life circumstances were such that we were not in a position to raise another child.\u00a0 However, we were willing to help with caring for him or her.\u00a0 We wanted her to know what she could expect from us.<\/p>\n

It was our daughter who first started talking about adoption. Through her own channels, she had learned about open adoption and, with parenting seeming an overwhelming thought, she felt being able to choose a couple who really wanted to be parents, to continue to have a relationship with her child and the new parents as he or she grew up, and to know how things were going were very important to her. \u00a0\u00a0I felt that adoption would only be an option if there was a way to keep in touch, have a relationship with this child, and know how our grandchild was doing.\u00a0 We wanted our grandchild to know that we love him or her.\u00a0 There was no way that a traditional, closed adoption would be acceptable because that represented such an enormous loss.\u00a0 And there was no way we wanted to lose our grandchild or have him or her feel abandoned by us.\u00a0 What kept coming to my mind was one of my neighbours, adopted as an infant, who had told me about how she worried, wondered, and longed to know about their birth parents as she was growing up.\u00a0 So, I was thinking that a closed adoption would mean a great loss and that was not what we wanted to inflict on our grandchild.<\/p>\n

To learn more about the adoption option, especially open adoption, we sought the services of an experienced adoption Licensee who could tell us more about open adoption and how it works.\u00a0 We \u2013 our daughter included — wanted a professional willing to arrange an adoption where we as grandparents could be included in any openness arrangement.\u00a0 We were told this was not the usual practice, but the Licensee fully supported what we were asking for and would check with waiting couples to find ones who were open to this type of open adoption.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as the pregnancy progressed, my daughter and I attended prenatal classes together.\u00a0 We went on the hospital tour together.\u00a0 I wanted to make sure that we did all we could for our daughter to have a healthy pregnancy, to be prepared for the birth and to make sure that she got all the information she needed to help her with the decision of parenting or adoption.\u00a0 She kept saying that she thought that she wanted to proceed with adoption.\u00a0 As part of the counselling for adoption, her counsellor explored both options, parenting and adoption.\u00a0 I was glad that she had someone she could talk to about this important decision.\u00a0 It was ultimately\u00a0her<\/u>\u00a0decision and I wanted to make sure that she did not feel pressure from us.\u00a0 We outlined the specifics of what we would do to support her as a parent.\u00a0 And we also indicated that we would support an adoption plan that included us in the openness.\u00a0 When she was seven months pregnant, she insisted that she wanted to choose an adoptive family for her baby and she wanted us to be involved.\u00a0 The Licensee indicated that she had found some couples who wanted to be presented for our consideration.\u00a0 The next task was choosing a family.<\/p>\n

Watch for\u00a0Part 2:\u00a0 Choosing and Meeting the Family<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 —\u00a0By Grandma Elaine \u201cMom\u2026\u2026.I\u2019m\u2026\u2026..pregnant.\u201d Still in her late teens, and in school, my daughter knew she wasn\u2018t ready to be a mom.\u00a0 And her on-again, off-again boyfriend had no plan to take on a parenting role.\u00a0 For our daughter, terminating a pregnancy was not an option.\u00a0 So, where do we go from here\u2026.? As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Birth Family Perspective on Adoption - Part 1: Unplanned Pregnancy - Milestones and Transitions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/milestonesandtransitions.com\/birth-family-perspective-adoption-part-1-unplanned-pregnancy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Birth Family Perspective on Adoption - Part 1: Unplanned Pregnancy - Milestones and Transitions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 —\u00a0By Grandma Elaine \u201cMom\u2026\u2026.I\u2019m\u2026\u2026..pregnant.\u201d Still in her late teens, and in school, my daughter knew she wasn\u2018t ready to be a mom.\u00a0 And her on-again, off-again boyfriend had no plan to take on a parenting role.\u00a0 For our daughter, terminating a pregnancy was not an option.\u00a0 So, where do we go from here\u2026.? 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