I met Jackie Lang at a friends going away, I was feeding my infant son and we started talking babies. I was surprised when she told me so openly that she had put her most recent child up for adoption. I had never met anyone who had done this. I have friends who have been adopted and I have family who have adopted but I’d never met a birth mom. Knowing people who have adopted infants, I expressed to her how great of a gift it was.
Lang said she knew almost instantly she was going to make an adoption plan for her baby. "It's the first time I ever heard God really speak into my life."
Once she picked an adoption agency she was given a stack of over twenty parent profiles to go through. "My number one goal was to have an open adoption, so I could know what was going on in his life."
Lang had some health issues during the pregnancy and was put on bed rest at 20 weeks. She said the adoptive parents were supportive the whole time, but also hesitant to believe they were going to have a baby at the end of the process. "They were very scared I was going to change my mind. I couldn't reassure them that this was God's plan and that I wasn't going to change my mind."
Her adoptive parents had already tried to adopt an infant, but things fell through the day before the baby was born. According to the Gladney Center for Adoption, domestic infant adoption is rare, with only roughly 10 percent of hopeful parents being placed with a baby.
Despite her health issues Lang made it to full term. She said when Caleb was born there was a bit of confusion in the delivery room on who the nurse should hand the baby to. She said she told the nurse to give the baby to his parents. "I wanted them to be there from the beginning, to cut his umbilical cord, to expeirence as many of the firsts as they could."
Lang said Caleb is now four years old and has started preschool. She said she's currently working on a book to help other birth moms in the process. "I just try to empower them as much as I can, let them know what a beautiful gift it is that they're giving."