A Birth Father At Peace With An Adoption Plan

When I found out about the pregnancy I was halfway through my first semester at college in Wisconsin. The birth mother called me on a lazy afternoon in October, and said we had a problem. We had had the “what-if” conversation before we became sexually active, and we knew what we had to do. Her mom had known a number of couples who had gone through Sunny Ridge and recommended them.

I called my dad, and I remember the conversation vividly: “Dad, I really love it here, and I don’t want to have to come home… but I messed up really badly.” “Is anyone dead?” “No” “Is anyone hurt?” “Yes.”

And I lost it. I can’t remember how I stammered the situation through my tears, but my selfish fear at the time was that I was going to have to quit school to be involved in this process. I knew I was going to be involved in whatever happened, but I didn’t know what exactly that entailed. I was fortunate that her mother, her best friend, and the counselors at Sunny Ridge were able to be there for her when I couldn’t be.

“Well, now what are you going to do?” And I told him our plan. My dad was adopted himself, and I think that although he was disappointed that we were in this position, he had some respect for our decision. He understood that although we had lives and careers in front of us, we could have kept her if we wanted to. It wasn’t our lack of desire for a child that prompted us to make the adoption decision; it was our desire that our child have all the opportunities that we had to live a normal and happy life.

Over the next few days, she and I talked online as we looked through profiles of potential parents. We met them, and everything seemed to go okay. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel when I met the strangers who were going to be responsible for the life of my first born child, so I let myself feel grateful that we had found a couple who loved each other and wanted a child to share that love with.

“The plan” was the most important thing in our minds. Yes, our situation seemed awful- but we could see a way out if we stuck together and stuck to the plan. I lived in fear of deviations from the plan. What if there was a complication in the pregnancy? What if she changed her mind? What if I changed my mind? With our minds adrift in a sea of what-ifs, the plan was our only hope of staying afloat. Satisfied that everything was going according to plan, I returned to my new version of life as usual. I was depressed for the next few months, convinced that I had not only ruined my life but also taken her down with me. Christmas break came and went, and I went back to Wisconsin.

Then came the second panic. Unbeknownst to me, she received an e-mail telling her she needed to come into the office. She received a letter telling her that the couple we chose “regretfully” had to withdraw from the adoption. Needless to say, this was not part of the plan. With just weeks to go and an exhausted list of potential couples, we began to panic. A counselor at Sunny Ridge reached out to a few more couples who were at various stages in the process, including one who was just finishing their profile. I was at school when she called me and told me she had found a new couple. She gave me a quick rundown and I was astonished at what a fit they seemed to be. She sounded completely confident, and I told her to go ahead without even looking at the profile. There wouldn’t be time to meet them myself, but with so little time to go and after having so narrowly avoided disaster, I felt fortunate that we were back with the plan and left it at that.

I was contacted by the adoptive mother a few days before the due date, and they were surprisingly interested in coming up to Milwaukee to meet me. I felt an emotional connection to this couple that I was missing with the first. Besides all of the “paper” qualifications that the birth mother and I had been looking for, they seemed to have a relationship that was similar to that of the birth mother and myself. For the first time, I felt like giving them our daughter would be building a family, not completing a jigsaw puzzle.

I understand that it is easy to discount the emotional struggles of the birth father. It seems that more often than not he is either uninvolved or unknown, but I have to say that my projected failure as a father was really eating at me. It was hard for both of us to look at couples who had tried to sum up their personalities, histories, beliefs, values, interests, etc. in a few pages, but it was even harder for me to try to imagine how anyone but me could be the father I wanted my daughter to have. I was going to worry about her constantly if I could not find the right sort of man to make sure she was safe but self sufficient, happy but not spoiled.

Someone who would run alongside her the first time the training wheels came off, and who would thoroughly interrogate boys who wanted to take her to dances, and who would give a heartfelt speech and kiss her away on her wedding day. Before I felt that spark, I had resigned myself to the knowledge that I wasn’t prepared to be that father, and that the best thing I could do in the circumstances was to set her up to have the best life she could, even if it meant that I would have to worry a little bit more.

Giving up my daughter for adoption was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, but I feel doubly blessed by the wonderful and open family Sunny Ridge found for us. First, because we have an open adoption, I’ve never felt I “gave her up” in the traditional sense. I get more pictures and e-mails from the family than I know what to do with, I am Facebook friends with her adoptive mom, and our families try to get together for holidays, special occasions, and for no reason at all. I have never once felt like I lost a family member, I feel like I gained another family! Second, because the open adoption has enabled me to watch my daughter grow with the family we found at Sunny Ridge, I am continually affirmed in our decision. The love I see in her adoptive parents, for their daughter and for each other, constantly reminds me that I don’t have to worry if she is in good hands.

I know she is.

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