Big thing for me. The other kids! How many cousins, relatives, close friends have young children. I want her to grow up with playmates and peers and have FUN. So cute shots of your niece and nephew playing are a plus. don’t overkill on the pics with you surrounded by kids though.  It’s too obvious, and looks like your kinda weird….jk!
Grandma and Grandpa are a plus… (but not a requirement)

I wanted a strong Christian family, that really followed God and worked daily to know Him more. That’s hard to convey in pics and words…but some do it very well.

I am not suggesting anyone lie, it’s best to be honest on everything. You don’t have to be the CEO of some huge company for us to think your financially secure…(almost anything was more security than I could offer at the moment) Sometimes the profiles look too much like a job application or recommendation letter..
All of the girls (I mean, huge pregnant girls) shared profiles with each other and when they decide on one they would pass it around the room, half bragging over their choice and half scared they missed something and picked the wrong one. I had my roommate go thru it a dozen times for me, just in case I mssed some huge warning flag .(like something in the background that would give them away..haha) We ruminated over those profiles for days, it was probably the first time any of us ever experienced what it was like to be a mom, and make decisions so crucial toyour child’s future! What if? What if ? I had God answering me quite a bit then though! But after the decision is finally made, for good, on a couple, I have never seen anyone change their mind. In a way this is when the process begins where the birth mom slowly falls in love with the family of her choice (maybe because we know we have to or maybe it just comes natural. I’m leaning on the natural side, because (speaking for myself) I wasn’t thinking all that deep then! I was just wondering what my body was going to do next, and “is that normal?” haha
My “counselor” case worker asked me if I could pick five things very detailed what would they be. So I said mainly just for fun because I knew no one would have EVERYTHING  I wanted for her. But the next day, what do ya know? She handed me “the profile”  “My wishlist” of the perfect family was: 1. They had to be from Texas and live in Texas and love Texas (simple request,lol) That is just important to me.. I want her to grow up with lakes and land and friendly people all around her!  2. I said I wanted a sports family, football especially. I wanted a dad that went to a Texas college and after college watched almost every football game. (is a UT grad Longhorn for life, close enough!) I wanted him to be tall and strong and very protective. (This was all what I just came up with for fun when she asked, I’m not really this shallow. It is just amazing that the family was what I described jokingly the day before. I even said 3. I’d prefer a blonde mom (cause I am blonde? Maybe a weird way of “kinda” like me. Then when we met after she is all grown up, I wouldn’t seem like such a foreign figure to her..yeah I thought that out a little too much. There is always hair dye) 4. I said a big backyard. there’s was huge! 5. I wanted a Christian family (that was the main #1 factor a profile had to have before I would even consider it. That is just me though. Most of the other girls did not care one bit about their religion, and “really a Christian” who walk with god daily. 6. I slipped in how I’d like if they have boat on the lake, and were naturally athletic in their genes (cause she will be) and yep they actually had that one too. All of these things were shown in their profile, that is why I was truly shocked. They picked these out as important, if they put in on these pages…we think alike too! Ok, that was freaky and rare…but point is, there is a perfect fit for everyone, and it will happen!

Another bonus is to have the husband describe the wife’s personality and the wife describe the husband. It allows you to say so much more.  Describe your partner’s personality, but don’t forget to put something romantic in too! (what made you fall for her, or what is your favorite thing about you wife, etc…) The romantic stuff is cute and needed in any relationship, just don’t go overboard with it.  A little genuine love will go along way when a birth mother sees it between you both. I think most of us b moms would rather not our child go through a divorce as well as an adoption at birth.

This disenfranchised griefis when the grief is connected with a loss which cannot be openlyacknowledged, publicly mourned or socially supported. In many cases ofdisenfranchised grief, the relationship is not recognised, the loss isnot recognised or the griever is not recognised. The loss of a childthrough adoption is usually a loss which cannot be openly acknowledged,which is why mothers often suffer in silence…people who haveexperienced any type of loss often feel anger, guilt, sadness,depression, hopelessness and numbness and that in cases ofdisenfranchised grief, these feelings can persist for a very longtime.  The lack of recognition of their grief often results in them holding on to it more tenaciously than they might otherwise have done.

“Post-Adoption Depression Syndrome” (PADS), which is not yet a distinctillness recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. PADS canrange from a full-blown episode of severe depression that requireshospitalization or just a simple case of the blues that lasts a monthor two. The few scientific studies of PADS indicate that over half ofadoptive mothers experience it. For example, in 1999 Harriet McCarthy,manager of the Eastern European Adoption Coalition Parent Education andPreparedness, surveyed 165 mothers who had adopted children fromEastern Europe and found that 65% reported post-adoption depression.Other researchers have determined that you are more likely toexperience PADS if you adopt from overseas or if your child has specialneeds.”

That’s a disclaimer I would of like on the papers I signed! Geez. I don’t know what to think of this. My first thought wasn’t so nice, it was “Well hell (excuse me) don’t sit around moaning about it, give em backto us! We don’t want them with a mom that doesn’t ‘feel’ like a mom oris having trouble dealing with social aspects of adoption” Don’t spend time worring just bring em back please!” (My worstnightmare is thinking about her living in a place where she becomes thefamily’s Cinderella. It’s just, that I am sure ONE family of thelast 30 years, has regretted the decision to adopt? Ya know like a young couple who thought they were ready, but realized they have no clue…. Yet I have never heard of anyone ‘giving them back’ and I assume that would look so horrible on their part, that no one ever does. I’msaying 1 in a million families” The child in that family is my worstcase scenario. In the last moments on our adoption day I said (maybe twice) “Now promise meif you don’t like her, that you will give her back” lol (of course they were stunned and I could tell already were in love with her-had been for a long time) I had the best family for her ever, seriously…she is ’set-up’ for life.  So after myinitial shock and defensiveness, I began to understand how adoptive momsmight feel this depression too and it is natural for any woman adjusting to a new child and new experiences. They wonder why women are moredepressed than men (the recent study everyone covered last week) Theysaid that woman have every opportunity now, excel in theworkplace and still aren’t happy?  I say duh, the majority ofthem are mothers! Men don’thave the inate biological response to protect their child more than anything (at least I think, don’t they want to provide shelter or something? lol I will get my biology book out that I couldn’t sell back, and check myself here.)  As society gets more dangerous, of course women will be affected bythat. Depressed or not, 30 more % of men lost jobs this year than women..so something women are doing is also keeping their jobssafe! (so off topic again) I was just going to put one sentence before thedocuments here….and now I also add a part of one study. This is a biased viewfrom a woman that doesn’t like, more HATES adoption…so don’t take thecontext to be something I must believe as well. Adoption was verydifferent 30 years ago. This is in relation to post- adoption support:

Birth Mom Missions

Changing the face of adoption, cherishing life, & supporting women…one birth mom at a time!

were open about the adoption and told the little girl she was adopted at a very young age.

:

Like any prospective mom, as 21-year-old Angela Morton goes through her first pregnancy the family stories of her own baby years begin to emerge — including her mother’s trick of calming her with Aerosmith’s 1988 song “Angel” anytime she was a fussing as an infant.
“That was the song for me I guess,” said Morton. “But I’ve never even heard it since I was a baby.”
Morton’s mother may have discovered a secret infant-soothing property in Steven Tyler’s rock ballads. Or, more likely, she was was playing on an aspect of fetal memory outlined by researchers in Tuesday’s issue of the journal Child Development.
In a study of 100 of pregnant women in the Netherlands, researchers say they found evidence that fetuses have short-term memory of sounds by the 30th week of pregnancy, and develop a long-term memory of sound after that.
The researchers documented the memory by watching fetal movements with ultrasound while they played “vibroacoustic” sound to the growing baby. Five of the fetuses in the study did not move in reaction to the sound and were eliminated from the study.
But among the fetuses who did move, researchers repeated the sound until the fetus “habituated” to it and no longer reacted. Doctors let some time pass and then tested the memory of the fetus by playing the sound in intervals to see if the fetus “remembered” or recognized the sound and did not react.
The study found that by 30 weeks of age, a fetus could “remember” a sound for 10 minutes. By the 34th week a fetus may be able to “remember” the sound for four weeks.
Morton thought that same sort of memory could have been why she was calmed by Steven Tyler as an infant.
“She [Morton's mother] used to go play it when she pregnant and sing along… then when I was fussy as a baby she used to play it and I calmed down,” she said.
Right now Morton mostly plays Christian rock and The Beatles for her baby boy Christian, who is due in November. She says she’s thinking about expanding the music collection for her baby in case there is more to this research.
While researchers have long doc­u­mented “habit­u­a­tion” of the fetus?—?an exper­i­ment with car horns and preg­nant women in the 1920s was the first to do so?—?child devel­op­ment spe­cial­ists might not all agree that this is a form of mem­ory as every­day peo­ple think of it.

“In this case, they appear to be study a very prim­i­tive type of mem­ory called habit­u­a­tion or sen­si­ti­za­tion which is the ten­dency of ani­mals to stop respond­ing to a repeated stim­u­lus,” said Mark Strauss, autism researcher and asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Pitts­burgh wrote in an e-mail to ABCnews.com.

“It is already known that a fetus will habit­u­ate to a stim­u­lus. Indeed, even just a sin­gle mus­cle cell that is stim­u­lated by an elec­tri­cal stim­u­lus will stop con­tract­ing, indi­cat­ing a type of mem­ory,” said Strauss.
But Strauss was intrigued that the fetal mem­ory could last that either 10 min­utes, or even four weeks, as the researchers sug­gested.
What is critically important to recognize, however, is that these memories are not conscious or introspective voluntary memories they way an older child or adult thinks about past experiences,” said Strauss. “They are very different and, indeed, involve lower areas of the brain that are very different from high-level brain area.”But that difference only piques the interest of some neurologists who are looking at how memories form in the human brain from the first moments in life through the later stages of dementia.
“It’s interesting to say that babies have some memory, some intake of things, even if they’re born premature. There’s a lot of movement towards making intensive care units friendlier, controlling noise for example, for premature babies,” said Dr. Paul Graham Fisher, a professor of neurology at Stanford University.
“Early kids can lie down memories, but what’s going to be the really cool thing is how do they do it,” he said. “How do stem cells, the very early cells in the brain, encrypt memory in the brain?”
While researchers strive to figure out the mechanics of memory, child development experts say studies like these may encourage parents to keep the earliest of environments in mind.
“Beyond ensuring healthy nutrition, research of this type, along with the work of others regarding infant memory should help us understand the importance of a safe, relatively low stress environment during this very sensitive period of development,” said Rahil Briggs, a pediatric psychologist at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.”It really is as if there is a recorder going on in there from the beginning, and we’ve got to be careful about what it’s recording,” she said.

The Earliest Fetal Memory is a post from: The Story of A Girl

Tags: Anti-Abortion, Birth Mother Support, Current Events, Ethics, Life, Pregnancy & Birth, Pro Life & Pro Choice, Trials & Suffering, baby, birth mom missions, birth moms, children, invisible, memories, motherhood