I was at a friend’s house and we did a pregnancy test and it was positive! I was so scared to tell my parents but I knew that I needed their help to get through this.

At 15 years old, I knew that I could not give my baby the kind of life my parents had provided for me. I also had things that I still needed to accomplish, like finishing high school and going to college. I had made some choices that had landed me here and now I was about to make the most important decision of my baby’s life.

I decided that I would make an adoption plan. People would ask me how I could “give my baby away” and I would tell them that I knew it would be hard but that I was not giving my baby “away”, I was instead giving my baby a “family”. In my case, the birth father was not going to be a part of this baby’s future and I wanted my baby to have a two-parent home.

I made a semi-open adoption plan and today I have a relationship with my son. He knows that I am his birth mom, who carried him in her tummy and then placed him in the family he calls his parents. I have lots of pictures of him and every time I look at them I see the hope of a great future shining in his eyes. I gave him that. I also gave myself the opportunity to make him proud, by graduating from high school and college. One day, when he is ready, we will meet and we will have a lot to talk about."