Mother’s Day has recently passed and it has had me thinking of all the unique paths that lead to motherhood. Working in the adoption world has taught me so much about all the ways a woman can become a mother—whether that be through embryo adoption, domestic adoption, international adoption, or placing a child for adoption. While each path to motherhood is unique and has its own story, I want to focus on the story of the birth mother.
In my first couple years working at Nightlight, I worked strictly with expectant mothers who were deciding to place their baby for adoption. After placing their baby, they became “birth mothers” and just as any mother, will keep that title for the rest of their lives. Adoption is all about the unconventional ways to parenthood and this includes birth parents as well. In the process of working with expectant mothers, a large conversation piece that we often had was their value and affirmation as this child’s mother at this moment. They would not be parenting this child, but they were making parenting decisions for this child based on the family they were choosing to parent them. They were choosing the life they wanted for their child and choosing it in love, and that was not taking away their motherhood, but instead, validating it. As much as I reinforced this idea to them throughout pregnancy, I’ve seen more birth mothers believe this truth most when the adoptive mother reaffirmed her of this when they hold the baby for the first time or when the final goodbye is being said. Those have been the most tear-filled moments of my job not because of immense pain or joy from either party, but because of the raw, beautiful experience that two mothers, both valid in their titles, share over the same child. It is then when humbleness and gratitude meet that all preconceived societal hierarchies of motherhood are broken down to share an immense love for a child.
While it is easy to recognize the parenting mother on Mother’s Day (and please do, they deserve it!) let us not forget the birthing mothers as well – the ones who carried children and made hard choices in the name of love for their babies because after all, that is what motherhood is all about.
So, if you are a birth mother reading this and no one has told you yet, Happy Mother’s Day to you too.