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Tania is a birth parent counselor with five years experience at a licensed child-placing agency.

She not only is a birth parent counselor, but also is an options counselor, and a post-adoptive caseworker. In addition, Tania works with teen parents in a school setting, and is, herself, a young mother.

Tania is here to help answer your questions about adoption.

 

 

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3 :: The Right Decision?

I always knew I made the right decision. And I never doubted that and I never regretted the decision that I had made. I definitely had times where it was difficult … where I was sad about the decision I had made or wished maybe it could have been differently if I had been at a different point in my life. But I never doubted that I made the right decision. And every time I see him or talk to them, I know that it was the right decision because I see how happy he is and how wonderful he’s doing with them. He has a wonderful family and he’s a great kid, so I’m very happy and very satisfied with the decision I made.

After the birth of Christopher, I had an enormous amount of support from my birthparent counselor. She called me, checked in with me. The day that I had to go to court to officially terminate my rights as a parent to him, she came down a week beforehand and kind of sat down, went over the paperwork with me: prepared me for what the judge would ask me, the questions that would come up. And she went with me to court and stood with me while we did that and walked me through that. She checked in with me on a regular basis afterwards just to see how I was doing, or if she had heard some news about how Christopher was doing she’d call and let me know. And, you know, there are support groups that were offered to me. I didn’t choose to go to any at that time, but they were offered to me. And there was individual counseling offered to me. There was a huge amount of support. I felt like I had enough support through my family and friends at that point, that I didn’t need it or didn’t use it, but it was definitely there.

When I first was going through the pregnancy and his birth and the adoption and everything, I never worried about what people would think of me, mainly because I was very open and up-front about it with everyone. So rather than waiting for people to ask questions, I just kind of came right out and said, “This is what I’m doing. This is my plan. This is why.” And no one ever questioned me on it. I think that helped me gain a lot more support, you know, that I was so up-front about it.

I have the random comments from time to time: “Oh, how could you give away your child?” And it’s mostly older people who don’t understand … I think what a lot of people don’t understand is it’s, at least for me, it was not giving my child away. It was me finding a home and a family for him and placing him and giving him that family, not giving him away.