[belleinblue1978]

I was in denial for SO long. I was going to get my period in a day, the next day, the next day. When I finally admitted to myself that I was pregnant, I wanted to die.

Then I was ashamed, I'm a smart, well educated woman, how the heck could this happen to me?

Then I felt like dirt because what kind of person who knows adoption like I do would consider it for her child?

Lots of anger towards my ex for not being supportive and shutting me out of his life (we were together during and for about two years after kiddo's birth.)

I was also angry that I couoldn't enjoy being pregnant. It hurt like heck and I felt I had no right to enjoy it because he wasn't my baby right?

[Gwen72]

I was terrified when I found out I was pregnant. I was only 17 and still living at home. Both parents were alcoholics and father was also a drug addict. My brother and I were beaten with a leather dog leash for even minor infractions. I didn't tell a soul until I was almost 7 months pregnant and couldn't hide it anymore. I ran away to my grandmother's. She tried to help me but my grandpa is also a very abusive alcoholic. I decided to place my son for adoption. To this day (18 years later) only my parents, grandparents and brother know it ever happened. Because I did not get prenatal care until my 8th month I got a bad infection that caused scarring and I have never been able to get pregnant again. Today I feel cheated, sometimes angry and still sad. I have kept track of my son through the years though and he had wonderful, loving supportive parents and he never had to deal with alcoholism and abuse so that takes the edge off my pain a bit.

[RavenSong]

The day I found out I was pregnant is etched forever in my brain...it's one of those vivid memories like "where were you when you heard that JFK was dead?".

My very first reaction was to faint in the exam room...seriously, I fainted. I was 16 years old, and I had decided to go on the "Pill". So I borrowed my foster mother's van, and I drove to Planned Parenthood. It was an early-evening appointment across town (San Diego). The weather was perfect...there was a mild summer breeze blowing. I felt so "mature" that I was being "responsible".

There was a group of young women waiting to be seen by the doctor. We were all given little plastic cups to pee in, just to be sure we weren't pregnant before being prescribed birth-control pills. Then we were all sent to a conference room, where a nurse gave a presentation about the different forms of birth control, how to use it, side effects, etc. And then they started calling our names out one-by-one to go into the examination room for our pelvic exams.

When I walked into the exam room, I stopped just inside the door. There was a nurse sitting down on this chair, swirling around a vial of some sort. She just kept staring at it, and then she looked up at me with a kind of somber expression. And she simply said, "you're pregnant". I put my hand on the exam table to steady myself...and then I fainted.

I was taken into this really grungy-looking small room, where they kept their lab equipment, medications, and supplies. They sat me down on a chair in front of a coffee pot that was brewing on a hotplate. And I just sat and stared at that darn coffee pot. (I vaguely remember someone offering me a cup of extremely strong black coffee.) I remember someone talking to me about abortions, how they were legal now in California if your parents signed the consent form. (Governor Ronald Reagan had signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act in 1967, five years before Roe v. Wade.) I kept nodding my head while several people talked to me...later that night, I couldn't even remember most of what they said. And then I stood up, thanked them for their help, and left the clinic.

And then I drove down I-5 at about 80 miles per hour. I was in a total state of shock, and there I was at the wheel of a bright purple Ford Econoline van, speeding down the freeway. My mind was somewhere else...I had to keep checking the speedometer so I'd remember to take my foot off the accelerator. It was crazy. The car radio was blaring a new song that had just hit the charts: "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart. To this day, whenever I hear that first line, "Wake up, Maggie, I think I've got something to say to you," my mind goes back to that warm evening so long ago. I drove home, asked my foster mother if her 6-year-old daughter had Rubella (a big scare going around that summer in San Diego), and then asked her if I could drive to the beach.

I took the van down to the boardwalk in Pacific Beach, where all my friends were gathered. (Cruising the boardwalk was a big pasttime in those years.) I found my two best friends, sisters who had been adopted five months apart from each other. And I blurted out that I was pregnant and didn't know when Mike (my boyfriend) was coming back from a camping trip in Yosemite. I remember my friend Terri saying that if I had an abortion, she'd never speak to me again. I told her there was no way I was going to have an abortion. And then the rest of the evening goes blank in my memory...

The panic and total shock went away within a few days. And if I keep writing about all the emotions I went thru during the rest of my pregnancy, I would bore you poor ladies to death! So I'll close off on this missive for now. Maybe I'll go put an old Rod Stewart album on the stereo for old-times sake, lol...

[quantum]

I guess I knew for a while.
I had just started college though, I kept saying to myself 'it's impossible', 'it's stress' and so on.
I remember going home for Christmas and asking my parents if they'd still love me if I was fat.
I think it was February, when I was 6 months along, that some classmates of mine convinced me to go see a doctor.
Her comment (I remember the baby doing somersaults in the waiting room, while I justified it by thinking it was gas) 'You who should be so smart since you go to Carnegie Mellon University, how can you not know?'. And then 'It's too late for an abortion, we can arrange an adoption.'
So panic, relief that I finally 'knew'. Panic.
I called my parents, I was going home that weekend and my dad hung up on me. He did call right back.

Parts of me enjoyed being pregnant. I enjoyed the relationship I had with my unborn baby. Is that weird?

[JustPeachy]

Originally Posted by quantum

Parts of me enjoyed being pregnant. I enjoyed the relationship I had with my unborn baby. Is that weird?

Not at all! For the most part, I enjoyed being pregnant, too. I made my decision early to make an adoption plan, and although I wasn't able to celebrate my pregnancy the way I wished I could (i.e. the way most moms get to), still, I enjoyed it, despite the morning sickness in the first trimester and the terrible fatigue throughout. I figured the time I had with my baby in utero was the only time I was going to get, so may as well enjoy it. I definitely bonded with my baby during my pregnancy, though I think I was in denial at the time as to how strongly attached I was.

[RavenSong]

Originally Posted by quantum

Parts of me enjoyed being pregnant. I enjoyed the relationship I had with my unborn baby. Is that weird?

Quantum, I don't think it's weird at all. Bonding with our children in the womb is only natural. Like you, I enjoyed most of my pregnancy...well, except the morning sickness part and the fact that I kept fainting. But I've never felt as close to another human being in this lifetime as I did with my son. I have to confess, sometimes I even woke him up on purpose by rubbing my abdomen. I loved feeling him move and kick (except for the time he managed to kick some nerve up under my ribcage.)

I had been playing guitar for a few years by the time I became pregnant. I was big into the "folk scene" at the time and was singing at coffeehouses by the time I was 15. I played my guitar and sang to that boy for hours every day...he was my captive audience, lol! And I noticed a really funny thing ~ he had a definite preference for some songs over other's. My son was an active little guy in the womb, and he would often wake up just when I was going to sleep at night. I found that singing to him and playing my guitar would quiet him down, and he'd soon go back to sleep. He seemed to be soothed by "folk-rock" music, but he hated "hard rock". I had to quit going to rock concerts when I was about five months along in my pregnancy because he would just flail around inside me to the point that his kicking would literally take my breath away.

I talked to him all the time...sometimes they were just mental conversations. Nobody else knew I was talking to him. I remember being embarrassed when my aunt discovered me stroking my tummy one day. I had just decided to relinquish, so I was around seven months along. She just looked at me and asked me if I was talking to my baby. And I burst into tears. She was the only person during my entire pregnancy to ask how I felt toward my baby. Everybody else was acting like he wasn't my child, that he already belonged to his adoptive parents. And I guess I played along with that mindset. I kept my own feelings secret, so I felt that I had been "busted" when my aunt saw me caressing my unborn child.

There has been a lot of research into prenatal bonding, and I truly believe that a lot of us bmoms bonded with our children during pregnancy. When I first met my son's parents, his dad told me that when DS was a baby and toddler, he would stop dead in his tracks if he heard a certain song come on over the radio or stereo. They tell me that my son would stop whatever he was doing, sit up and stare at the radio. He would then get the saddest look on his little face, sometimes reaching out with his hands toward the radio. His dad said that he always wondered what the little guy was thinking during those moments. I think he was remembering on some primal level hearing me sing him those same songs while he was in the womb...

[quantum]

Originally Posted by RavenSong

When I first met my son's parents, his dad told me that when DS was a baby and toddler, he would stop dead in his tracks if he heard a certain song come on over the radio or stereo. They tell me that my son would stop whatever he was doing, sit up and stare at the radio. He would then get the saddest look on his little face, sometimes reaching out with his hands toward the radio. His dad said that he always wondered what the little guy was thinking during those moments. I think he was remembering on some primal level hearing me sing him those same songs while he was in the womb...

That's so sweet and so sad.