My story- the beginning.

I’m Katie, Roman’s birth mother. This is my story.

Because one of my purposes in sharing my story is to reach out, inspire, and comfort other birthmoms and potential birthmoms, I want to start with a message to you: The road to adoption is one that begins with fear, heartache, maybe even despair. It seems an impossible road when you’re at the very beginning. But if you could only see the end from the beginning- you would not walk down that road, you would run as fast as you can. But the nature of the experience is that you must take one small step at a time. Along the way you will have angels by your side- some seen, some unseen. But you will not walk that road alone. I can promise you that.

I felt very alone in the beginning. It was hard for me to accept and grasp that I was really pregnant. It was definitely not part of my plans. I thought I had been pretty clever in hiding my many spiritual struggles and failures from my family. Now there would be no hiding it. I resolved to keep it to myself as long as I could and along the way I would figure out how to break such unhappy news to them. Until then I would deal with everything else.

How did I make the initial decision? I knew what all the options were. I never considered marriage. It wasn’t right for me at all. I didn’t even want Alex to go through this with me. I wanted to do it all myself. The big ‘A’ word….I have to be completely honest. It was a temptation. It was never even a remotely serious consideration, but a temptation whispered in my ear many times. An unwelcome pregnancy is the ultimate test of who you fear more, man or God. I prayed that I would just lose the pregnancy and that it would all be over. It’s hard to even take yourself seriously praying something like that- ‘I know I got myself into this, but please do I really have to go all the way through it? Can the scare just be enough?’ I knew how disingenuous I was being even as I was saying the words. What I didn’t know then was that a very wise and loving Heavenly Father, who can see the end from the beginning, knew how very badly I needed to go through this experience. Not just for Roman, or for Wendy, or anyone else- but for me. So it wasn’t out of anger or retribution that my feeble prayer wasn’t granted, it was out of a deeply profound love. In His wisdom he did not take away the trial.

All other options were unimaginable for me. I had always thought that adoption was the best solution to an unwed pregnancy. I’d argued that many times before in a general sense, never really thinking I would have to make that decision in my own personal life. So before I even needed to make the decision, in a way I had already made it. Since I had already studied it out in my mind, I knew what the right choice would be for me.

It helped that my feelings for Alex had completely turned even before I knew I was pregnant. I consider this to be a blessing, because it kept me from even being tempted to single-parent. That choice might be right for some people but it wasn’t for me in my particular circumstances. And when I even imagined “sharing” my child with a person I had very little respect for, someone I did not trust to raise my child with the same environment and values as I would, I was only thankful that I had another option. I knew that the only chance of giving my child everything he deserved was to find a family who could provide the most important things in life. I wanted him to grow up in a family, with two parents who love each other and are fully committed to each other. I wanted him to have a worthy priesthood holder in his home, to guide and protect him. I wanted him to grow up in the covenant, sealed in an eternal family. Adoption was the only way. And when I thought about adoption, I felt a peaceful excitement.

I might not have been very good at making the right decisions for myself, but I found that the love and concern I had for this tiny spirit I had never even met was empowering me to make the best possible decisions on his behalf. And that was not only to his benefit, but the beginning of my own personal spiritual transformation.