Hi all of you 80's birthmom's
My daughter was born in 1988. I have definitly noticed a difference from that time period. First, open adoption (or what we now know of as semi-open adoption) was just becoming more acceptable, but not much was known about it. We (the a parents and myself) would have been very willing to have a more open adoption to help my daughter if we only would have known that it would have made a difference in her life. We are doing that now that she is 15, but there was a lot of lost time. My daughter's mother told me a month or so ago how sorry she was that we didn't open up our adoption years ago.
The other thing that is hard is that when I placed my daughter, no one EVER talked about the harder aspects of adoption. It seemed like it was still always portrayed in glowing terms. It was the NOBLE thing to do. It seemed like it was common belief that the birthmom was the only one who would suffer. I had NO IDEA when I gave my daughter up that she would suffer consequences of my choice. It has been VERY hard for me to learn now, 15 years later, that adoption does have an affect on an adoptee. I guess what I am trying to say is that many birthmom's from our era chose to place their babies (as opposed to feeling forced) out of loving motives...we wanted the BEST for our children. Then, a decade later, we begin to discover that what we had done may have hurt our children. It has been a hard pill to swallow. I have had tochoose not to think about all of the what if's and choose to trust God with my life and with my daughter's life. I know that he is faithful. God bless, Tracie.