A Birthfather’s Story: Part 1

My girlfriend and I both grew up in upstate New York. When Jackie decided to move to Pittsburgh for school, I came with her.  I lived in a small efficiency apartment and drove a one bench truck, Jackie was still in her college dorms.  I was working full time while finishing-up school.  A few months later when I was back home visiting family in New York, I got a late night phone call from Pittsburgh.  Jackie had discovered she was pregnant. She was already 5 months but never showed and she barely had any symptoms of pregnancy.

At first I felt mad and very scared. I was mad because I didn’t know how this could happen. I felt that everything around me stopped and I was alone with nowhere to run to.  My mom and I are very close, but this is was one of those things that I felt like I had to hide and deal with on my own. So when I got back to Pittsburgh Jackie moved into the small apartment with me. We started going to the doctor and making sure our baby was taken care of.  But I was only 19 and Jackie was 20. We were both still in school. We didn’t have much money and we didn’t want the government to take care of us. We had a lot of bills and the truck I had could never fit a child’s car seat. But in the back of our minds we kept thinking how we wanted to have the baby in our lives. Together, we decided we had to tell our parents next.

Both Jackie and I come from split homes so we had to deliver the news four times. Both my parents and Jackie’s Dad assured us they would stand by our side regardless of the decision we made; Jackie’s Mom was another story. At first she chose to disown Jackie and she wanted absolutely nothing to do with us. Then Jackie’s Mom told her she needed to move back home, back to upstate New York and away from me. We couldn’t do it. We tried to see what our other options were, so that’s when we decided to call Adoptions From The Heart. After hearing about them on the radio, we didn’t really know what to think about it because it was only from listening to an advertisement, but looking back, we are really glad we called.

Once we spoke with people at the Adoptions From The Heart, we thought adoption was the best thing for us to do. We called up our parents and told them we had decided. Everyone’s family was heartbroken at first, but they still did their best support our decision; except Jackie’s mom. She told Jackie to move to South Carolina with her sister and that I was to have nothing to do with Jackie or our baby. We said no. We told her we would stay strong in our decision. There was a reason we chose adoption for our son.

(To be continued…)