I read two particularly thought-provoking posts today.

One was from the excellent blog, Twice the Rice, in which a woman adopted from Korea discusses her visit to a Korean maternity home. Her account of the gut-wrenching visit, entitled “Juice & Cookies With A Birth Mom,” perfectly captures a scenario that plays out all around the world: the pressures (subtle and not-so-subtle) put on vulnerable women to give up their children for adoption…usually from agencies or “homes” that claim to help pregnant women, but really just want them to surrender.

Ji-in, the Twice the Rice blogger, is also quite eloquent on questions surrounding international adoption, transracial identity, and the cultural divide. No matter what her topic, she’s always full of personality, and her writing is just plain good. Get on over to Twice the Rice and check it out.

Another terrific blog is from the birthmother, Paragraphein. Though I don’t know her, the author of Paragraphein, like me, is a birthmother in an open adoption who feels she made the wrong decision. However, she maintains a nuanced and balanced view of how to reform adoption without abolishing it. She understands that adoption in itself is not a bad thing, but that unnecessary adoption is always a tragedy. And she offers many wise suggestions as to how the entire process could be handled better.

All of her posts are worth reading, but I especially like her series on guilt in adoption. While she acknowledges that there is usually plenty to feel guilty about, for both surrendering and adoptive parents, she notes that “We ALL have to forgive ourselves for not being super wise at the beginning of our adoption journeys.”

That is my goal for this blog—to help you become as wise as possible before you surrender your baby. If I seem like I harp on the negative at times, it is only to be absolutely sure that you do not surrender your baby unnecessarily. The pain of adoption is still very great, even for those women who are sure they made the right choice, and who ultimately feel at peace with their adoption decision. If you top that pain with the unbearable anguish of realizing you made a mistake, you are in a very dark place indeed.

Plenty of other people will tell you about the positives of adoption--there's an entire industry built on it. I want to be the small voice that reminds you to remember the downsides, too ... even though you may well decide that adoption is the right thing for you and your baby.

I have no way of knowing who is reading this, or if there are even any pregnant women in my audience at all. But as long as you can make your decision feeling that it’s YOU who really made it, without pressure from any outside sources, that will make me one happy blogger.