[PhoenixRising09]

I would like to add my thoughts on this and I do not want you to think that I am trying to disuade you from your decision. I am only speaking from the truth of MY situation and mine only. From what I have read, most of the opinions here are from mothers who have walked in your shoes and serve as a warning, if nothing else that once you have your child, you are going to feel different than you do now. Giving your child up is a PERMANENT solution to a TEMPORARY problem.

As a mother who lost her son to an "open adoption", I know full well the repercussions of thinking that an "open adoption" is going to be in the best interest of all involved. Alot of the time, mothers such as myself get lured into believing they will be recieving ongoing correspondence and pictures of our children, only to be cut off when the adopters see it does not suit them or their needs any longer, for whatever reasons.

Once you give your child up there is no turning back. You are in for a lifetime of greif and regret, especially if the people that you entrust to raise your child cut you out of the picture and begin to treat you like an unwelcome intruder. That was devastaing for me and it still is.

I found my son several months ago, but his adopters have convinced him that "god put him where he needed to be". He looked me right in the face and said this to me, after I told him I regretted my decision to give him up.

Finding your child after they are of age does not gurarentee that they will be open to having you in their lives, or care for your reasons for placing them for adoption, as I always hoped for my child. Like a poster before me said, you will need to prepare yourself for the reality that they will quite possibly want nothing to do with you, beyond satisfying their curiosity about who you are and what you look like. These are all things that I DID not take into consideration and I will regret that until my dying day.

IslandGirl: How wonderful that you honor your childs mother and include her in your lives. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out that way for alot of us. We get cast aside and forgotten by the very people we trusted. To live with that every day is almost too much to bear...