April Morgan, Mesa AZ

I have had the great honor of talking with April. She is a birth mom and placed her baby 11 years ago. Even for me it is great to talk with someone that has some serious years under her belt. We are the same age but I only placed my son 5 years ago. I am so excited to have April be part of our BIB birth moms.

April is about to graduate with a degree in Social Work. We have asked April to join our team! She will writing a post once a month addressed to the birth moms helping them with their mental and emotional healing! We are so lucky to have her and I know she will be able to bring a great deal of peace to many women....I know she already has mine!!

Thank you for sharing your story April and welcome to BIB!

My name is April and I was almost done with my first semester of college when I found out that I was pregnant. I was 18 years old and 19 when I gave birth, I am 30 now. I flew back east to visit my sister and vomited all over myself multiple times on the plane. So embarrassing. My sister asked me if I was pregnant and I said no way. I had taken a pregnancy test at Planned Parenthood and a home test a week earlier and they were both negative. Plus I was on birth control pills. I tried not to worry the week I was visiting my sister even though I was sleeping a lot, vomiting, and craving weird foods. When I got home I took a home pregnancy test again. It was positive before I put it down. So my boyfriend and I went back to Planned Parenthood the next day and again it was positive. A few days later I went to the OBGYN and they did an U/S. I was amazingly already 10 weeks and 2 days along.

Well my parents were of course upset and they wanted me to look into adoption after my boyfriend and I broke up. I did not want to place my baby for adoption but I decided to look at families to get my parents off my back. I went in and I was given 6 families to start out with. I did not feel anything for the first 5 couples and couldn’t wait for it to be over. Couple 6 was totally different. Within the first paragraph I was crying, my heart was pounding and I felt this warm feeling throughout my body. It was a very spiritual experience. I knew right away that they were the couple to adopt my baby. I wrote them a letter a week later and when I was 6 months pregnant we met. I was able to see them again at the hospital because he had to spend a few extra days receiving some specialized care. I gave birth to J in July 1999 after about 16 hours of labor. I will refer to him simply as J and will not reveal his parent’s names or initials to respect their privacy. J is 11 years old and things were done a bit different then. We have a semi-closed adoption. The first year I got as many letters and pictures as his parents wanted to send. At age 2 I got one letter and one picture. At age 3 I got one letter and one picture. Age 4 and older I get one letter a year and no pictures until he is 18. Once he is 18 it will be up to J as to what information I get.

I am SO thankful for everything I do have. Knowing how happy J is makes me thankful that I was able to put his needs before mine. One thing I love about the age he is now is that he is old enough now to take part in the yearly letter writing. He said that I am the best birthmother in the whole entire solar system! I know how hard it is when the placement has recently happened but there is SO much to look forward to. It is such a blessing to read how school, church, family, and fun activities are making J such a happy loving boy! He always has and always will be the apple of my eye; the one that makes my heart beat, and the one that makes me smile through the storm. It does get easier and the blessings increase more than you can imagine! Something you all will learn about me is I love quotes and poems. I will share one with you now that I have by my desk:

“Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before,
but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God”.
--- Ram Dass

Much love to you all,

April