Birth Mother’s Day

Category Archives: Birth Mother’s Day

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Birth Mother’s Day

Did you know that there is a special day set aside to celebrate birth mothers and their incredible sacrifices? Birth mothers are crucial in every adoption story, and deserve a day of celebration.

Around the world, Birth Mother’s Day is celebrated the Saturday before Mother’s Day. This year, that will fall on May 11th. On that day, adoptive families everywhere will take time out of their day to remember, acknowledge, and celebrate their children’s birth mothers.

At Crisis Pregnancy Outreach, we have an annual celebration of Birth Mother’s Day the week before, so this year our celebration will be on May 4. The adoptive families will join their birth mothers and have a delicious meal in honor of the women we love so dearly. Then, birth mothers will be treated to a day of pampering including massages, manicures, and makeovers. To top it all off, we have several professional photographers who will have areas set up and take portraits in whatever configuration the birth mother desires.

It is a very important day, and we here at CPO hope you will take the time to honor your birth mother every year. Make plans to see her, give her a call. Send flowers, have your child draw her a picture from the heart. Let her know how much you love her and appreciate her gift to your family.

Coming Up: Birth Mother’s Day 2017

Birth Mother’s Day is a pretty big deal around here at CPO. Our birth mothers are amazing people who deserve love and appreciation, and this Saturday is a day we devote to doing just that.

This day is important to birth mothers so we do everything we can to make them feel special. This year, birth mothers will be served a nice lunch, get pampered, and have pictures taken by photographers on hand.

If you’re a CPO family, PLEASE make plans to attend with your birth mother this year; it will mean more to her than you can imagine. If you know a CPO birth mother or adoptive family, please pass this blog on to them so they can make plans to attend. If you are not a birth mother and/or adoptive family that plans to attend, please consider volunteering to help with this fun event. The volunteer sign up page can be found here.

If you’re looking for a gift for your birth mother, consider donating a brick for her to be in our garden at CPO. You can order your brick here.

Thank you for your continued support of our amazing birth mothers!

Birth Mother’s Day: Act Now to Permanently Honor Your Child’s Birth Mom

Birth Mother’s Day is a pretty big deal around CPO. It’s a time for us to celebrate birth moms for their courageous decision to make an adoption plan. At CPO, we celebrate this special day by inviting birth moms and their adoptive families to CPO for a day of pampering, professional portraits, gifts, and a delicious meal served to them by adoptive dads. This year’s Birth Mother’s Day is on May 6th at CPO.

And this year, CPO has the perfect gift for the birth mom in your life. We are working on a beautiful area right outside of the CPO office entrance. It will be a monument to birth moms and you can add a brick with your birth mom’s name or a custom message. Plus, we have a donor who has offered to hire a landscape architect to create a beautiful area around the monument! Keep reading to the bottom to see the exciting mock up of the future monument.

Some bricks are already currently in place. You can see pictures below of the bricks with a couple of the Jacobson kids having fun around them.

Here are the renderings for what it will look like when it’s done.

This will be a permanent structure. If you want a message of appreciation for your birth mom, sponsor a brick now! To get your brick, make a $200 donation online. 100% of your donation goes to CPO and we’ll get your brick ordered and set. The bricks may not be installed by Birth Mother’s Day, so if you’d like one, please email Kelly Jacobson at jacobsonjam@sbcglobal.net and she’ll get a certificate for you to give as a gift to a birth mom.

Birth Mother’s Day at CPO

This year’s Birth Mother’s Day celebration at CPO was on April 30. It was a wonderful event!

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For those that don’t remember, Birth Mother’s Day is an event planned to honor the women who have made adoption plans for their birth children through Crisis Pregnancy Outreach. It is a day set aside to acknowledge the courage and sacrifice it took for them to make a loving adoption plan for their birth child.

As birth mothers arrived, they were greeted with a smile by some of our volunteers.

They received gorgeous custom-made tote bags filled with fun make-up, accessories, and coupons to a local salon. The tote design was hand-drawn by one of our very own CPO birth mothers, Angela McLaughlin, and printed by a CPO adoptive mother, Carrie Jones.

Birth mothers were also encouraged to sign up for door prizes. Among the prizes were designer bags, robes, bath supplies, gift certificates, and more. Wow!

After being greeted, birth mothers were treated to a delicious meal. Dedicated volunteers Tracie Roesslein and Jeff Bauman (along with a crew of others) served fresh smoked BBQ meats, salad, baked potatoes, and mini bundt cakes for dessert. Of course, there were hot dogs on hand for the many kiddos in attendance, too. The food was absolutely perfect. Yum!

After the meal was devoured, the “pampering and photos” portion of the day began. The CPO Day Spa officially opened.

There were sign up sheets for nails, massage, and make up. We had 5 professional pamperers who graciously volunteered their time, supplies, and skills to make our birth mothers feel special. The lobby outside of the “spa” was full of birth mothers, adoptive families, and volunteers all chatting as the girls happily waited for their turn to be pampered. Some adoptive families chose this time to give Birth Mother’s Day gifts to the women they love.

Meanwhile, a nursery was provided for children under 4 years, and a volunteer-supervised bounce house was available to entertain kids of all ages.

We also had 3 professional photographers volunteer their services: Melissa Barnes, Melinda Hunley, and Ashley Ledbetter. They each had their own style, and birth mothers were able to choose what kind of photos they wanted: indoor or outdoor, lots of props or simpler, etc. They were also able to choose who would be in the photos with them: just their birth child, all of their children (those they placed for adoption and those they parent), or the entire adoptive family. This variety made for some beautiful photos the birth mothers (and adoptive families!) will cherish for years to come.

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In all, it was a wonderful day, and we couldn’t have done it without an amazing set of about 30 volunteers. We hope the birth mothers from CPO felt as special as we all know they are!

Coming Up: Birth Mother’s Day 2016

Birth Mother’s Day has always been a very special day at CPO. It is likely the most important CPO event all year, as our birth mothers need and deserve all the love and appreciation we can show them.

If you know a CPO birth mother or adoptive family, please pass this blog on to them so they can make plans to attend. If you are not a birth mother and/or adoptive family that plans to attend, please consider volunteering to help with this fun event. The volunteer sign up page can be found here.

It will be a very fun, celebratory day and we’ll be sure to post photos of the festivities after the big day. Until then, enjoy the photos from last year’s Birth Mother’s Day

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Volunteers Matter: Ashley Ledbetter

Crisis Pregnancy Outreach has been 100% run by volunteers since its inception more than 30 years ago. No one has ever received a salary, which enables CPO to make an even bigger difference in the lives of Tulsa area women. We know that volunteers matter, and to honor them we periodically interview and highlight one of our volunteers. This week we hear from a dedicated volunteer, Ashley Ledbetter.

Q: How do you volunteer with CPO?
A: After hours phone calls, interviewing parenting moms and writing their stories for the blog, photography for CPO events like the Easter party and Birth Mother’s Day.

Q: How long have you been volunteering with us?
A: Since the beginning of this year.

Q: How did you find out about CPO?
A: We have friends who have adopted through CPO and my friend mentors a CPO birth mom. We also found CPO on the internet when trying to choose an adoption agency. After we pursued DHS adoptions, God told us we needed to use CPO.

Q: Why did you choose to volunteer with CPO vs. other organizations? What is it about CPO that drew you to us?
A: Well, because we have to for our adoption to be finalized! But it worked out because I actually wanted to volunteer last year but I had just delivered Siren and we were still settling into Tulsa. I ended up putting it on the back burner and then we became a waiting family so it was time to volunteer!

Q: What is it about crisis pregnancies that drew you to us?
A: The opportunity to serve a baby AND birth mother. The opportunity to have an open adoption and try to experience that reality. Initially we thought of adoption as a “win,” because the baby is being rescued from a home that can’t take care of it, and because we gain a child into our family. Later we started seeing it more as a “loss,” because the baby has this deep innate need for their biological parents and the solution for the brokenness coming from that separation should be reunification. The solution should be an equipped mom and dad, a healthy household, a clean, safe, loving environment… so without that adoption felt like a “loss” for everyone. Ultimately, we are now seeing open adoption as “adoption.” Not a win or loss, just the receiving of an entire family unit (however big or small in each case) into our family unit. Through open adoptions we can experience the win and joy of receiving a child into our home, we can redefine reunification by encouraging and nurturing healthy relationships between our adopted child and their birthfamily while also developing a new union between ourselves and our adopted child’s birth family. And since CPO is a Christian ministry, we can do all of this with Jesus at the forefront of our plans, relationships and actions, without which, all of these hopes would ultimately be unattainable. Because God is at work in this organization, we are eager to be at work in it too.

Q: Why is our cause so close to your heart?
A: I think because God has put it there, but also because I can relate. I grew up in a non-Christian home and I have made most of the mistakes I have heard some of the birth moms mention in their own lives. I can relate to broken relationships, sometimes wreckless behavior etc. Also, I love babies and children (nannied for 5 years before having Siren), so both beneficiaries of CPO’s focus are people that are close to my heart.

Q: What have you learned about yourself since volunteering?
A: I put way too much pressure on myself- because I was glued to my phone all day on Valentine’s Day worried I might miss a call! Maybe also that is hard to motivate myself sometimes to serve, until I am serving, and then its easy and fun and I can’t wait to do more. So I guess I have learned that my heart really does WANT to serve, and it’s important to carve away everyday obstacles and distractions to really protect that time to give to others and to give to the Lord. Because I need to serve more than I need to wash the dishes… but I forget that’s true when the sink is full of last night’s pots and pans.

Q: How have you seen God’s hand at work through CPO?
A: Oh gosh, I have seen one of my closest friends raise a baby boy they adopted through CPO, that could be enough right there. I think any time I hear a story, of adoption or parenting, it’s pretty evident that God has planned these families with intense attention to detail and personality and circumstance and timing. Even when we didn’t have a baby yet I kept hanging on the day in October that I KNEW God wanted us to use CPO. I was crying and telling Chase we have to drop DHS and use Crisis Pregnancy Outreach instead and he was like “I know.” Those days are God’s hand at work.

Q: What would you say to anyone considering becoming involved in CPO?
A: There are so many different ways to help. You can be involved a whole lot or you can do something very small once a month or once every few months. It’s worth it. Just check it out and find a place where you fit. I came in willing to do anything, even though one of the only things I was secretly hoping to get to do was photography. I didn’t think there would be a need for photos because there is such a need for phone answering and office type work, and I found out on one of my first days that CPO was actually in need of some photographers for BMD! Praise the Lord! So, even if you think there might not be a place for you, God probably has a place for you. And if He DOES have a place for you, it’s probably a place you would love to be in. So check it out.

At CPO

At CPO, women feel safe.
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At CPO, children play freely.
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At CPO, volunteers are dedicated.

At CPO, women learn to trust.

At CPO, we come together.

At CPO, we celebrate accomplishments.

At CPO, we live.

At CPO, we thrive.

At CPO, lives are changed.

Birth Mother’s Day 2015

The annual CPO Birth Mother’s Day celebration was very different this year. We’ve heard from many of the birth mothers in attendance and it seems like it was a big hit! This day is VERY important to many birth mothers, and they have told us that having their adoptive family there to celebrate with them means the world. If you are a CPO family, please make plans right now to attend with your birth mother next year. She will appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.

Below are some photos of the event. Enjoy, and we hope to see you next year!

CPO birth mothers were greeted as they entered by volunteers at this table. There, they received a beautiful necklace, a handmade key chain, and they signed up for door prizes. Meanwhile, adoptive families were encouraged to check out some of our fundraisers: canvas photos for the CPO classroom and our brick campaign.

Birth mothers and their families were then treated to a delicious meal of Steaks and Cakes (and more!)

Many wonderful CPO volunteers worked tirelessly to provide a wonderful day for our girls.

The CPO classroom was transformed into a “day spa”. Professionals volunteered their services including manicures, facials, and chair massages. The finishing touches on the CPO Day Spa were soft lighting, flute and nature music, and diffused essential oils. No pics of that area, as we didn’t want to interrupt the pampering process.

The highlight of the day for many girls was the opportunity to receive professional portraits from two wonderful volunteer photographers. They had the option for outdoor photos (generously provided by Ashley Ledbetter) or indoor studio-style photos (generously provided by Angie Hepp of Little Light of Mine Photography). Below are some of the beautiful images captured, posted with permission.

It truly was a wonderful day. We are already planning next year’s event and have some ideas for making it even better!

Birth Mothers Day is Here!

Have you guys heard about our upcoming Birth Mother’s Day celebration? We’ve only mentioned it 5,000 times or so. (Wink!) In case you somehow missed it before, it’s this Saturday! More details on the invitation below.

If you know a CPO birth mother, please encourage her to attend! She can RSVP to rhonda@cpotulsa.org, or you can do it for her if she likes.

Thanks for helping us spread the word. It looks like it will be a wonderful day for our wonderful birth mothers! (It’s ~~kind of~~ totally a big deal!)

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Birth Mother’s Day at CPO

Below is another beautiful article written by a CPO birth mother, Angela McLaughlin. It is meant to be informative about our upcoming Birth Mother’s Day celebration at CPO, but it is also insightful, as she shares her thoughts about the important day.

I’m going to be frank. I kind of dread Mother’s Day. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but in case it does, I’ll tell you why. We’re talking about a holiday that celebrates the joys of motherhood. For a birth mom, it can feel like a public reminder of the pain caused by placing her child for adoption. Those feelings are also conflicting, as many birth moms are very close to the adoptive parents, and your feelings can feel like a distraction from their joy.
These reasons, and the overwhelming love that she feels for birth moms, are why Cheryl Bauman, Executive Director and founder of CPO, decided to start celebrating Birth Mother’s Day. As she says, “Birth Mother’s Day is my favorite celebration! It is a time set aside to honor the women who have made Adoption Plans for their Birth Children. It is a time to acknowledge the courage that it took for Birth Mothers to make these loving plans. Historically, Mother’s Day has been one of the hardest days for Birth Mothers. At church, when the pastor would ask for all of the Mothers to stand up, they weren’t sure if they should stand up or stay seated. I am so grateful to a group of Birth Moms in the Pacific Northwest who decided to honor Birth Moms by having a day that is just for them. Birth Mothers are our heroes!”
For some, this is a day when they can celebrate their motherhood, even without parenting. It’s a unique opportunity to be recognized as a birth mom for your part in bringing life and love into the world. As birth mom Amanda told me, “The meaning of the day is so special, because it’s the day I’m celebrated for my part in [my birth daughter] Milly’s life. I’m a mother to my 6 year old son, Shaun, and we celebrate Mother’s Day, and I can tell you that this is very different.”
For some who are struggling with the grief of placement, this day is an opportunity to reflect on the joys of their adoption plan, especially their birth children. My first Birth Mother’s Day is an especially fond memory. I was asked to speak at the celebration, and I chose to read the following selection from poet e.e. cummings:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
—————————————-i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

This poem reflected the way that I, and so many birth families, feel after placement. As birth mom Dakota explained to me, “It’s hard to deal with a lot of the emotions that come from being separated from my baby. I don’t even really call him my baby because I feel like he’s [adoptive mom] Summer’s now.”
There’s a space where your child was, and it’s a constant struggle to fill that space with love. Speaking and sharing fellowship with other birth moms is a way to do just that.
And this year’s Birth Mother’s Day is going to be more celebratory than ever! After realizing that things sometimes felt a little too “heavy,” CPO has changed things up a little! As event coordinator Rhonda Fisher told me, “Previously, Birth Mother’s Day was a very somber ceremony. There were speakers including adopted kids, birth mothers, and adoptive families. There was worship music and a candle lighting ceremony. There were many tears. It was a day to remember the birth mothers and it was very respectful of them. But we heard from quite a few that they would like something a little more upbeat. So this year things will be radically different.”
This year’s event will feature “Steaks and Cakes,” with adoptive dads manning the grills. There will also be a special birth mom pampering area, with mini-manicures and pedicures, facials, and massages. And, the best part (in my opinion) are the mini-photography sessions. It’s difficult to look at all the adorable family photos of your adoptive family sometimes. It’s another, albeit tiny, reminder. But thanks to CPO, birth moms will have an opportunity to take photos with their adoptive families or birth children, or both! It’s an opportunity to take home a fabulous memento, as well as relax and be pampered.
Below you’ll find the birth mother version of the invitation for the celebration. We urge all CPO birth mothers and CPO adoptive families to keep an eye on their mailbox as their personal invitations should arrive any day now.