Tuesday, July 21, 2009

16 and Pregnant

No, not me. I'm well past 16 and I've had that possibility surgically eliminated.

I'm talking about the MTV show. Oh, hush. Don't judge me. Anyone who's known me for 5 minutes knows I'm a sucker for lame reality shows. I blame a lot of it on my stitching habit. I like something that is just enough brain candy to keep my ears occupied but doesn't require me to look at the screen very often as my eyes are otherwise busy (which is also why I *cannot* stitch and watch Dancing with the Stars - the effort to balance both makes my head spin).

Anyway - I don't sit and watch whole episodes, I just watch til the commercial comes on and then switch back to whatever shlock I was watching. However, I did watch an episode the other day which touched me personally.

The unwed teens featured in the episode made the decision to give up their baby for adoption.

Now, this is NOT a blog about pro-life/pro-choice, etc. so forth and if you want to make it so, do it somewhere else. This is not the point of my blog.

I was adopted from birth (the child of an unwed 19 year old who was in no position to take care of a baby on her own). Watching the difficult decision these two kids made touched me deeply. Especially since they did NOT have the support of their parents.

Their parents were pushing hard for them to keep the baby and raise it themselves. But even at their young age, they acknowledged they were in no place emotionally or financially to take care of this child. They picked an adoptive family. They made a scrapbook for their child and wrote her letters. And in the delivery room, they gave the baby up and held each other and cried as they reminded themselves of the better life they were offering their child.

Now, I know that adoption doesn't guarantee a child a great life. People are people and nothing is perfect.

But in watching that episode, it gave me a look at the sacrifice my own birth mother made on my behalf so I could have a life that she couldn't give to me. Was it a perfct life? Hell, no. But it was a good one. I have great memories, and I had the best dad on the planet and I would have never even known him if it hadn't for the gift that she gave to me at what had to be a great expense to herself.

I was very touched by that episode. And will probably watch it again (and cry a little and smile as I thank her for what she did for me).

Posted by Valerie at 10:17 AM