When people say, "How could anyone give up such a beautiful baby?"

I guess the first thing that comes to my mind is- well so if she was ugly would they have kept her??? But that’s just my smart mouth talking. I know they don’t mean it that way but it just sounds awful. I think or I hope that people really mean that as a compliment but what they don’t realize is that what I think about birthparents is that they must be the strongest people on earth. I would like to think that I could be that strong of a person but I don’t know that I would be. How selfless, how amazing must a mom be to carry a child for nine months. To bond with the baby inside you. To feel them kick, hiccup, stick their legs in your ribs, and shove their hands into your bladder. How amazing must a mom be to go through the horrible pains of labor to only find relief by the sudden push and second of release that your pain is over to only instead of receiving the reward of holding your child in your arms to let that child be given to the arms of another. How selfless is that? To recognize that you cannot provide for your child, to recognize that your child needs another and to be able to choose that for them. How amazing is that.

I cannot imagine the strength and will power it must take for a mother to stand by their decision that they can not be a mother to their child. I wonder if everything in nature tells that mother to hold their child. I wonder if at one point they have a moment where they feel strong and think they can do it. Do they have a moment where they feel no mater what somehow they will make it and they will be with their baby? Do they feel like running out of that hospital with their baby wrapped in a blanket. Maybe they do maybe they don’t. But whatever their struggle their ultimate decision leaves them walking away from their baby knowing that they have too, knowing that they can not be the mom their child needs. That decision, that selfless act of love can not come easy and no one should blame them or scold them. They deserve more that that.

Perhaps if people were more understanding of this decision there wouldn’t be the guilt these mothers feel. Maybe there wouldn’t be so many mothers out there trying to provide for their children when they know they can’t. Perhaps if our society was more open to the fact that just because someone is able to birth a child, that doesn’t mean they are able to raise that child, then just perhaps there wouldn’t be as many situations in homes where children are removed or neglected and even abused. Just perhaps…

People need to stop wondering how someone can “give up” a child and realize that they are not giving them up they are giving them life. Statements like those only hurt our children. They only label them in that category of less than a biological child because they were “given up’. I want my daughter to never feel as though she was “given up” because she wasn’t. She was given to her family. There is no “given up” in her life there is only a family who loves her and who will give her every opportunity she deserves and a birthmother who loved her so much that she gave her that opportunity to become a wonderful women. I am so thankful to Araya’s birth mother because without her I would not have Araya. People say all the time what a lucky little girl she is to have us but I say to them, NO, we are the lucky ones. To have been given this daughter. We are the lucky ones. I love Araya’s birth mother and I pray for her all the time and when Araya is older and able to understand her adoption I hope she too will pray for her birthmother. What a gift.

And even though birthmother’s don’t get the gift of walking out the hospital holding their babies the gift they do get is that of peace. The gift of knowing their child is loved, protected, secure, and taken care of. Their child has food, water, clothes, and a bed to sleep in. They get the gift of knowing their child will survive.

The strength I see in this little girl is also proof that she will survive. There is nothing in her that is ready to "give up"!!!