Yes your natural instincts as a Mother are correct. You should keep your baby as your baby once born only knows itself as part of you. He will not understand he is a separate person for almost a year. Babies want one thing in this world. They want their mother, whom they know the smell of and taste of and heard for 9 months.

If money is a problem you can get on WIC, Food Stamps, Section 8 Housing, Child care assistance. The salvation army will help you with food and clothing. Lots of places that will help you keep and parent your child.

Did you ever think that your boyfriend is trying to get out of child support? If he can get you to abandoned his child then he doesn’t have to worry about paying for diapers or taking care of his responsibility.

Honestly it sounds like he’s asking you to pick, him or the baby.

Never put a man’s needs above your child. You already seem to know what you think is best and as a mother you are right. Your child needs and wants only you. You aren’t thinking of yourself, you are thinking of your family and how to keep it together. What your loving boyfriend is doing is subtle coercion, ditch him and enjoy your new addition.

Congratulations!

DO NOT ABANDON YOUR CHILD TO ADOPTION!

Seriously.

Adoption Truth @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOZGwqHVnKs

Myths told the unmarried mother @ http://gift-not-choice.tripod.com/myths-against-the-mothers.html

What you should KNOW if you’re considering adoption for your baby @ http://www.cubirthparents.org/edd/index.php?id=1

If you knew you didn’t want it, then you should’ve done the decent thing and got a bloody abortion, because if you abandon it, you’re screwing it up for life – and probably yourself too. Since you haven’t aborted, please do not allow anyone pressure you into abandoning it.

Also, don’t listen to anyone suggesting that open adoption is the way to go – it is almost never legally enforceable! Many parents have lost access to their children due to “open” adoption promises. Please read http://lifemothers.com/thewall.html and http://www.bringperihome.com/history.html and http://www.exiledmothers.com/adoption_facts/wish.html and http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100709095305AAjeM4z before listening to the hype.

I was abandoned to adoption at 7mths old. I didn’t have a bad adoption – my afamily are the best I could ever have chosen… but if I’d been able to choose, and I’d known then what I know now, I’d've chosen to be aborted before birth instead, ’cause at least that way the lifetime of agony I’ve gone through would’ve been over in minutes, instead of the decades that I’ve been suffering for now.

I’ve been in reunion with my bfam for a few months now, and even that’s proving to be completely agonising.

Taken from Nancy Verrier’s book, Coming Home to Self: http://www.nancyverrier.com/self_book.php

For the adoptee every day is a challenge of trying to figure out how to be, although he probably doesn’t understand the difficulty this presents for him. It has been true his whole life and, therefore, feels normal. However, it takes a great deal of energy and concentration. And it never feels quite right. He never quite fits. Therefore he feels as if /he/ is never quite right.
(pg 50)

Abandonment and neglect are reported to be the two most devastating experiences that children endure – even more devastating then sexual or physical abuse. That’s why some neglected children do naughty things to get attention. Even though the attention is hurtful – being yelled at, hit, or otherwise harmed – it is better than neglect. /Anything/ is better than abandonment. Abandonment is a child’s greatest fear. For adoptees, it is also reality, embedded in their implicit and unintegrated memory.
(pg 102)

It is sometimes difficult to spot grief in children. After all, it isn’t as if the child sits in a puddle of tears his entire childhood. As one adoptee said, “Of course I played, laughed, sang. Do people think that if you’re not sitting in a corner with your head on your knees, you are not sad? I had happy times, but the sadness was always there, even when I was having fun.”
(pg 117)

Please, since you haven’t aborted your baby, then make damn sure you parent it. http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/03/breaking-silence-on-living-pro-lifers.html is by someone who made both choices at different times in her life.

Links that can help you learn how to be able to keep your baby. There are also links that will show you how adoption affects a Mother and her child:

Unplanned Pregnancy without Crisis @ http://www.motherhelp.info/index.htm
Considering adoption? Don’t feel you have any other options? @ http://www.keepyourbaby.com/

Single Mom @ http://www.singlemom.com/
Mentor Moms/MOPS/Teen MOPS (support!) @ http://www.mops.org/
Angel Food (food assistance) @ http://www.angelfoodministries.com/
Feeding America (food assistance) @ http://www.feedingamerica.org/
Co-Abode (housing assistance) @ http://www.coabode.com/
Safe Families (for emergency/crisis care) @ http://www.safe-families.org/
Teens @ http://www.teenbreaks.com/pregnancy/pregnancyhome.cfm
Concerned United Birthparents @ http://www.cubirthparents.org
Adoption Crossroads® and Adoption Healing @ http://www.adoptioncrossroads.org
Adopted Child Syndrome @ http://www.amfor.net/acs
Origins-USA @ http://www.origins-usa.org
United Family Services @ http://www.unitedfamilyservices.org/
Family Assistance Foundation @ http://www.familyassistancefoundation.com/
Safelink Wireless @ http://www.safelinkwireless.com/

Good luck!

You’ve answered your own question. You want to keep your baby so stick with your natural instinct otherwise you’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you surrender and hate the father of your baby. You have family support so accept it and tell the father to either get his act together or get out of your life but make it clear he is legally obliged to support his child financially.

You’ll be a good mother.

If you want to keep your baby, what he wants doesn’t have anything to do with it. (Before anyone accuses me of sexism, let me say that it goes the other way too. If the father wanted to keep the baby and the mother wanted to choose adoption, the mother’s desires don’t outweigh the father’s rights.) He may want to choose adoption but he has no right to force you into it.

Do YOU think you are only thinking of yourself when you want to keep him? I think choosing to parent your baby is anything BUT selfish. You will be giving up a lot to raise your baby. Your whole life will change. How is that selfish?

He hasn’t even told his family, he hasn’t been very supportive of you – I don’t think he sounds like such a responsible adult that he has any room to try to tell you what to do.

Just so you know, I am an adoptive parent, and I am not anti-adoption, though I recognize that it always involves loss. But I don’t see anywhere in your question any evidence that YOU want to choose adoption, and if you don’t want it, it is not the right choice for you or your baby. I just hear you letting this guy pressure you and make you doubt yourself. And it sounds to me like he is the one only thinking of himself.

You want to keep your baby, then that is what you need to do. Its easy for a guy to tell you to place, they haven’t been through all the things you have been through AND I get the message he doesn’t like responsibility.

My advice, let him talk, don’t do anything he says and when you have the baby tell him you are keeping your child because you don’t believe in abandoning your children.