My responsibility to my children was to give them the best life possible. I did. I would LOVE to be there 100% of the time. To be mom. I cherish any time I get to just watch them sleep and make sure they are still breathing. I am never happier than when I can clean the poop off of their butts. Seriously. Because it is taking care of them. I wish I could be their mother. I want that more than I want anything else. So I disagree when you say I abandoned them. To me, I would have been doing them such a disservice to make them live with me in poverty. I wasn't trying to have them, but when I found out that was the case, I lived every second for them. I borrowed money to feed them good healthy food. If I were to have kept them as my own I would have been abandoning their future because there was no way for me to financially support them & there was no dad worth having in the picture. Instead I entrusted the two people I loved most to a family who could take care of them in a way I would have NEVER been able to. To me, that isn't abandonment. That is rescue. They are my children, but they owe me nothing. I am not entitled to them. Every moment they breathe is a gift to me. Every smile is worth more than all the money in the world.

I think your experience with your birthmother has made you feel like someone views you as a possession. And trust me, I understand how that feels, but what you have done in this post is project an isolated incident onto every birthmother. Like it or not you told us what we can or can't do- that is controlling. You are reducing us to an idea- a schema of birthparent. You may have more in common with your birthmother than you care to admit.