As the YouTube video underscores, your unplanned pregnancy is a journey with life-changing decisions to make and resources to find. You can’t afford to waste time on websites and books that only offer superficial discussions, talk down to you, or tell you what to think. Delve into the sections of this website to find useful resources, a method to assess your partner’s parenting readiness, and how this book’s approach is different.
Written by a psychiatrist, it has
- The essential questions to examine each decision
- Factual information checked by gynecologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists
- Discussions of 78 useful resources (many linked directly from the ebook)
- A method to examine your partner’s readiness for parenting
- A tool to open conversations with others
- An unbiased educational resource for doctors, counselors, and students
- A thought-provoking look at unplanned pregnancy today
Like a compass, EYUP identifies relevant questions to help you discover where you are and relevant resources to help you find your way, whether you pursue parenthood, adoption, or abortion. Women have decided on each of these options and years later been satisfied their decision was right for them. You can make a decision that will be right for you as well.
It can feel as if your world stopped when you realized that you were pregnant, but it is important to see your pregnancy in a broader view. While it is a serious situation and deserves your best thinking, it is not the end of your life. You may not be able to believe it now, but there will be times when you will laugh again, when a sunrise will move you to wonder, when you will have a sense of belonging, when you will feel more like you, and life will feel more manageable. Time will help. Take the long view.
You may think there is something wrong with you because of the conflicted feelings you have about your pregnancy. Other women can tell you that it is human and natural to have a whole range of feelings now. You may be feeling bewildered by the confusing mixture of strong emotions. It may help you to try to identify some of these feelings. Realize that others have felt the same feelings and have still found a way to make decisions and succeed.
When you think about dealing with your feelings about the pregnancy examine your strengths. Are you physically healthy? Are you young and do you have many more years of life before you? What are some life problems you have already overcome? What are the things you have already done in your life? What are the skills that you have already learned? Parenting is a set of skills that gets better with practice, like playing a sport or driving a car.
Here are just some of resources found in EYUP:
Deciding to be a mother includes being willing to be a single mother if anything ever happens to your partner. You can get an estimate of what it cost to raise a child at www.cnpp.usda.gov/calculatorintro.htm.
Parents Network (www.singleparentsnetwork.com) has useful articles, information, government resources, sitter locating, discussion forums, and book lists.
CoAbode (www.coabode.org) matches single moms with one or more children with other single moms so they can share housing, resources, and finances.
The American Adoptions website (www.americanadoptions.com) explains the adoption process in detail. It discusses how financial help varies with the state you are in, your living situation, and how far along you are in your pregnancy. It explains the difference between open, closed, and semi-open adoptions.
Pact (www.pactadopt.org) is an open adoption agency that focuses on connecting adoptive parents and children of color.
In determining how long you have been pregnant, you may want to use the interactive Pregnancy Information tool provided by Premier Diagnostic Services, Inc. (www.premierus.com/dynamic-pregnancy-wheel).
The National Abortion Federation has a table that compares advantages and disadvantages of the different types of first trimester abortions at www.prochoice.org/wp-content/uploads/comparison_first_trimester.pdf.
The Guttmacher Institute website (www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/overview-abortion-laws) provides an overview of abortion laws and each state’s abortion policy in brief, including the requirements and restrictions that it places on abortion. Your state may require counseling, a waiting period, or parental involvement. You should independently check the law in your state.
