Many of you may know that I went to law school to get pregnant. Suffice it to say, I did not accomplish my goal. That resulted in me building my family through adoption and leaving the door to my house and heart open.

How one builds a family is an intimate story. Some pieces are only for the child to tell, if and when he chooses to, because that is his story.

Due respect and care must be shown to all members of the adoption triad. For example, the woman who is pregnant and working with an adoption agency is commonly called a birth mother.  But, she can’t be a birth mother until she gives birth. Likewise, the father should not be called a birth father because he never gives birth. Etiquette demands for the woman to be referred to as pregnant, the expectant mother, or expecting a child, and the father, the expectant father.

Another one of my pet peeves, which surely everyone should know better by now: A woman, who gives birth to a child and allows someone to adopt her child, has not given her baby away.  There is no such thing. No one can give a baby away.  Rather, the child’s mother made an adoption plan for her child, knowing and understanding that she was in no position to raise the child. This is an extremely selfless act.

The mother of the child should not be referred as the birth mother.  Rather, she is the woman who gave the child life and allowed him to grow in her to become a child.  And the birth father, again, we all need to remember, if not for him, regardless of the circumstances, there would have been no child who found her way into the heart(s) of her parents who love her and nurture her.

A child who made his way into his family through a different route other than the “old fashioned way” should NEVER be referred to as an adopted child.  A child is a child is a child, regardless of the path she took to find her forever family.

I always told my children, they did not grow in my belly, but they grew in my heart.

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