Being Prepared

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The following post may be viewed as controversial.  This is my opinion only, and should not be viewed as the opinion of BirthMom Buds as a whole or individually.

The subject is birth control, or lack of it.  All birthmothers have lack of birth control or birth control malfunction in common, no matter how old or young we are.  My problem is not being emotionally ready for the decision we must face should we get pregnant and not being prepared to raise a child for whatever reason or reasons we have.  I personally did not feel financially prepared to raise a child, nor did I feel emotionally stable enough to properly care for her.  Becoming a parent is a lifetime decision and should not be entered into lightly, as I’m sure all parents would agree with whether they also happen to be birthmothers or not.

When we have sex, we should all think about the possibility that we could get pregnant as a result, no matter how careful we are.  Too often we think only in the present – how good sex feels (and it does), and we don’t consider the fact that sex was originally created for procreation.  We were created to make more of us.

Being a birthmother is NOT easy.  I never wanted to raise children of my own, and I love children.  The idea of being a parent scares me.  I admire those people who choose to parent, but I’ve always known it’s not something that I wanted to do.  Biologically the urge to parent my daughter is stronger than I was prepared for, and much stronger than I thought it would be.  I cannot imagine the difficulty of having to make the decision to become a birthmother more than once.  But that’s precisely why after I became a birthmother, I’ve now become a major proponent of making certain I won’t have to make that decision ever again.  Obviously the only 100% effective birth control method short of getting the uterus completely removed so carrying a baby becomes impossible is to not have sex in the first place.  Since that’s an unreasonable expectation for a large majority of the population in general, including me, we must be emotionally and mentally prepared for the “consequences” of our actions.

When we choose to place our children into homes other than our own, we choose unselfishly.  We choose to give them a life greater than the one we feel we could give them.  It’s an extremely difficult decision to make.  It is the ultimate parenting decision – putting the life of our child over the wants of our hearts.   If we become birthmothers and then make the decision to have sex, we’re taking the chance that we might have to make the difficult decision of placing again should we not be prepared the next time around for parenting.  To make it perfectly clear and plain, I’m not in any way trying to suggest that I don’t believe birthmothers shouldn’t have more children in the future at all.  I’m simply saying that we should use some form of reliable birth control until we are prepared emotionally, physically, and financially to have those children.  We become birthmothers because we don’t feel our lives are in a good place to raise those children, right?  So it only makes sense that we’d want to make certain that we’re in a better place to have children before we get pregnant again.  My heart breaks for the children of those mothers who are not yet ready to parent but who choose to parent anyway because they aren’t can't handle placing another child.  I don’t blame them for choosing to parent after becoming birthmothers initially.  I’m quite certain that were I in that position that it would be an even more difficult decision than becoming a birthmother for the first time.  That is why we need to be mindful of the decision we’re about to make, every time.