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Originally Posted By Kateri

I'm *so* glad to hear that you didn't go to a bmom support board to make a contact. People do it all the time and I think it's heinous and gross.

I'm also glad to hear that you don't feel like you're "above" a young woman who got pregnant by accident. Again, I wouldn't have expressed this concern if it weren't very, very common. In this day and age it's hard to believe, but by some people I am still treated like a "fallen woman", like someone who has got something to be ashamed of, because I am a birthmother. People tend to think that if you got pregnant by mistake that's one thing, but then to be *so* desperate, in this age of public assistance and daycare, to actually do the *one thing* a mother should never do and give away your own flesh and blood. Then something must really be wrong with you. And so on.

I understand that infertility carries with it much grieving. When I said, "if you've ever grieved..." I meant for anything, any time, not just about babies. I was using it to illustrate that grieving is messy and not always politically correct. And you have grieved, obviously, over the children you unfortunately cannot bear. I have a dim understanding of how crazy infertility can make someone feel, what lengths even good and decent people can be driven to, through my own experience as a potential birthmother. (It's really weird when all sorts of people come around you who never cared about you before, handing you their profiles and start thinking of you as their uterus, carrying their baby. nice people too, not morons. people lose their heads to baby hunger, I guess).

I want to apologize for the hostile tone I took in my previous post. Obviously, you didn't deserve it. I've been lurking on adoption related boards for about a year and I've seen so much ignorance regarding adoption and birthparents that I'm compelled to dispel it whenever I can. In the future, though, I will try not to be so presumptive.

The other BB's I referred to are on iVillage. One the ParentsPlace.com channel, there is an adoption debate board (and boy do they debate!), as well as aparents, bparents, and a variety of other boards. On the ParentSoup.com channel, there are some boards for adoption as well. The birthparents board has a community leader who is an excellent source for book recommendations and resources, as she is also an adoption educator.

If you have any questions or concerns, you can email me privately. As I said before, I am always happy to help someone to understand more what it looks liek from the other side. I hope to hear from you.

Kateri
tkateri@hotmail.com