Jessica's Birthmother
A Story of Open Adoption

A Note To My Birthmother
Jessica's Birthmother Story of Open Adoption
A Transformative Event: An Adoptive Parent's Story

I don’t know you – but someone in your situation transformed my life.

I can only guess at the confusion, pain, and perhaps even panic you may be feeling. I know the birthmother of my oldest son was feeling all of those things as well. She was only 19. For many reasons, she could not bring herself to abort the child she was carrying. Thankfully, she didn’t believe the anti-adoption hype then so prevalent in the media. She approached a private adoption agency and was immediately reassured that her medical expenses, housing, clothing, and other incidentals would be taken care of. She had someone to talk to who would not judge her for being unexpectedly pregnant – nor for feeling that abortion was not the answer.

She read through all of the autobiographies dozens of couples had submitted to an adoption agency and chose my husband and me to be the parents of her infant son. He weighed 6 lbs 5 ounces at birth. We were able to hold him for the first time when he was three weeks old. It was the greatest day of our lives to that point. His brit milah was held at our home 8 days later.

We had lived through the very different but perhaps only slightly less intense pain of infertility. After years of trying to conceive I became sad at the very sight of a pregnant woman. But when I held our son Jonathan, all of that frustration, grief, and disappointment melted away. I became a mother. That this child bore no biological relation to either of us was a trivial matter. My husband and I are not biologically related either, yet no one is surprised that we love each other. We were so, so ready to welcome that baby into our family and into our hearts.

Jonathan’s mother must have gone through intense pain. I know we did. Yet because of her brave and life-affirming decision, Jonathan got a great family (he now has two younger brothers he is crazy about); we became parents, and she got the great blessing of knowing that she had transformed grief into joy, loss into gain, death into life.

At Jon’s bar mitzvah, I recited this little verse that I found on an adoption website:

Not blood of my blood, nor bone of my bone
But still, miraculously, my own.
Never forget for a single minute
You didn’t grow under my heart, but in it.

To Jon's mother- wherever you are, thank you from the bottom of my heart.