The Mothers' Story Project: A Mothers' Story

I got pregnant on my 19th birthday. I know that because my boyfriend and I only made love a few times in the several months we were together — not many places to have sex aside from the backseats of cars or on the beach. We were in Hawaii, where I went to high school. He was a Marine, 22, stationed at the air base there.

I was in love, which was all I wanted back then. The year was 1969. I’d had a year of college, but had no idea what I wanted to study or what career I might pursue. I was floating.

I was so naïve that I didn’t even realize I might be pregnant until I threw up one morning. By then I had had missed two periods. The doctor confirmed I was nearly three months along.

“Good girls” weren’t supposed to be “doing it.” My friends and I were all in the dark in terms of birth control. Two other of my girlfriends got pregnant that summer; one got married, one went to Japan for an abortion.

When I told my boyfriend, he said we would get married, but we should keep it a secret — sneak off to city hall, rather than plan a wedding. He kept postponing until I was four months along, then told me that he didn’t love me and didn’t want to marry me. He said I wasn’t “good enough” to be his wife. I can’t even begin to explain how that, along with losing my baby, affected my life.

With nowhere else to turn, I told my parents. They were so angry and ashamed. I felt helpless. I may have been an adult (legally), but at that point I was financially dependent upon them, and perhaps more importantly, afraid of losing their love. I went along with their plan, which was to give my child up for adoption. My father found an attorney in California who handled private adoptions and who arranged for medical care and places for girls like me to live (room and board in exchange for babysitting, housecleaning, etc.) until they had their babies.

Over the next five months, I entertained fantasies of how I might run away or ask friends for help, but in the end, I was too afraid, alone, and insecure that I just went along. Even though it felt wrong, I had to detach. Many mother talk about bonding with their babies during pregnancy. I could not risk that. When I couldn’t sleep, the doctor gave me tranquilizers and sleeping pills so that I could get through the days and nights. (Of course, now I wonder how that disaffected my son.)

My experience in labor and delivery confirmed my shame. I might as well have had “unwed mother” stamped on my forehead. I was ignored, uninformed, scared to death and no one cared. The nurses blew off my pain. When my water broke, I was given a saddle-block, In the delivery room, I was strapped down and a curtain was drawn across my mid-section so I could not see what was happening. They ignored my pleas to know if I’d had a boy or a girl, if he/she was okay. My baby was whisked off to the nursery and I was placed on a surgical floor, away from the maternity ward. I did learn that I had a boy and before I was released from the hospital, I snuck down to the nursery and saw him through a window.

The attorney wanted me to release him into foster care, but I refused. I insisted that he go directly to his new family. The day after I got home from the hospital, he came to me with profiles of families and I chose one. They were in New York. They flew in and took him from the hospital. Six weeks later, I signed the relinquishment papers.

I never recovered from that loss. I tried to believe that it was the best thing for my child, and for me.

When I reunited with my son, I learned that he had not had a good life. He suffered. His adoptive parents gave up on him at age twelve, made him a ward of the state. He spent years in institutions and group homes, escaped to the streets of New York, got into drugs and crime, and his life has gone downhill from then.

My guilt and grief was hard enough to work through before knowing that.

We are twelve years into reunion. The initial joy of our reconnecting has been an emotional roller coaster.

I’ve gone on too long here. Anyone interested in the details can visit my blog at

http://www.secondchancemother.blogspot.com/