We recently connected with Renee Gelin and have shared our conversation below.

Renee, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

The concept for this organization began in 2011 when I connected with Lisa Woolsey in blogland over our mutual loss of our infants shortly after they were born through unnecessary infant adoptions. As we grew our relationship, we realized that we were grossly misinformed and misled about adoption from the natural/first family perspective. I knew we had to do something so that others would not learn the consequences too late, like we did.

We assisted a mother who reached out to us who felt she did not have the support she needed to keep her unborn baby. We were able to educate the mother on the realities of adoption loss, and provide the support she needed to empower her and help her believe in herself that she was best for her baby and she was enough. We continued connecting with and working with expectant mothers across the country who were experiencing a crisis pregnancy with the goal of helping them ensure they were fully informed and not applying a permanent solution of adoption to their temporary crisis.

As we connected, listened to and worked with more mothers we learned:

Many expectant mothers face circumstances that arise during their pregnancy that often leave them unsure of where to turn which creates fear and uncertainty, which is never a good time to make any life-altering decision.

When an expectant mother turns to an adoption agency and she is told that she will have support regardless of whether or not she relinquishes her infant. In actuality, almost all adoption agencies drop any assistance they were providing to the pregnant/new mother as soon as she decides to parent.

New mothers still in their hospital beds are given the impression that they need to sign an adoption consent as soon as the law in their state will allow and many times the mother is still under the influence of medications administered during childbirth.

Mothers are rarely informed of the trauma that both they and their infant will suffer by separating so soon after childbirth, and that the trauma will affect their infant’s brain development.

That by educating and empowering mothers with knowledge of their rights, adoption facts regarding trauma, pre-birth services, open adoption realities and connecting them with local support and resources it gives them the confidence and positive outlook that they are enough for their baby.

Through advocacy and outreach SOS gained momentum as others in the adoption community began to see the positive outcome of families being preserved when possible and wholeheartedly supported us and our organization and mission to help every expectant family make an informed decision by providing a positive, supportive and strong beginning.

Thirteen years later, we are still the only organization that we are aware of doing this work for free.

Renee, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Unfortunately, I ended up in this space because I panicked during my pregnancy. This happened pre-Affordable Care Act being in place. I had no ‘maternity’ coverage, and my insurance company was denying all of my prenatal care claims. My OB informed me of this and told me to contact them and find out what was going on. I called the insurance company and they told me because I did not have a ‘pregnancy rider’ my prenatal visits were not covered, nor would the delivery be covered. So from there on out I had to pay cash for all of my prenatal visits.

I was already single parenting and had no assistance from her father. I had just moved across the country from the Midwest to Florida and had no family nearby for support. My business had gone under like so many others did in 2008-2009 which caused me to be well over six figures in debt. My baby’s father had his identity stolen and was in a bad place financially as well. Then due to the stress of my reality I ended up with hyperemesis gravidarum. HG as it’s also called, is when the pregnancy causes severe nausea and prevents pregnant people to be unable to keep anything down. I had my OB prescribe some nausea medication as I could not leave the sofa without it and if I couldn’t work, I couldn’t eat, pay rent etc. When I went to pick up the Rx.

It was the perfect storm.

I reached for the wrong help and was grossly misinformed and misled and made a permanent decision (adoption) to my very temporary crisis.

Because of all of the things that I learned too late and didn’t even know to ask that were left out that would have led me to make a different decision, I felt the need to to do something to stop what happened to me from happening to other unexpected pregnant mothers who were facing a crisis situation.

Now, I’m being who I needed then.

SOS supports expectant parents and their families by providing them with resources to navigate their crisis & build confidence in themselves and their abilities. By empowering and educating families, they are able to realize that they are who and what their babies want and need which gives them the confidence to overcome their temporary crisis.

SOS provides families the ability to make truly informed decisions – eliminating the trauma of separation for the mother, infant, current and future generations of their family.

SOS provides INFORMATION:
SOS provides education and information that adoption agencies and other legal professionals may not explain to you. We will provide detailed facts, explaining possible risks, allowing you to make a truly informed choice.

SOS provides SUPPORT:
If you love your baby, but just can’t seem to find a way to overcome the challenges you are facing and feel that relinquishing your baby is your only option, SOS will do everything we can to help. We will listen to you and identify realistic solutions to eliminate those challenges, allowing you to focus on successfully parenting your baby without undue pressure.

SOS provides ADVOCACY:
With Sisters on the Ground in every state, SOS provides experienced one on one support that focuses on the best interest of the family unit that every family member deserves, especially, the unborn baby who will be born wanting and needing only his or her mother.

SOS is a registered non-profit 501c3 since 2017 and is on track for our busiest year yet with 35 requests for assistance so far in 2024 as of 3/29/24 from desperate expectant parents across the country looking to avoid relinquishing their parental rights to their wanted and loved babies.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

So many people are living an adoption experience and have never had a voice or been able to share their experience or true feelings about their experience without being dismissed.

We at SOS came out and said it. We told our stories and we started doing something about it.

There is no one else that we are aware of in the United States doing what we at SOS do.
There is no money in family preservation and no one here at SOS is paid.
It actually costs money, a lot of time, energy and most definitely emotion – AND – it is the RIGHT thing to do.

We started sharing our successes – families who were preserved with just a little bit of help from us.
Facebook is the platform where it all started. Our early days of showing new mothers with their newborn infants who were so happy and relieved that they did not have to lose their baby because of temporary circumstances made a huge impact. Most impacted were those who were and still are ‘living adoption’ – mothers who lost children to adoption due to being unwed back in the Baby Scoop Era, mothers who lacked financial resources and social support. Adopted people who wished that their birth / first mother had our support. Even grandmothers who lost their grandchildren to adoption.

We started to gain more financial support when we shared just how little an expectant mother/family needed to navigate their temporary crisis. (It was a little as $500 back in 2014!) This really made an impact. The tragedy of people feeling as if they have no other option except to permanently separate from their baby via infant adoption instead of being able to garner enough support to navigate their temporary crisis rippled across the internet.

We began sharing the realities of what practices and actions that adoption ‘professionals’ were using to obtain newborn infants from vulnerable families. For example:
– The pervasive presence that the adoption entities and prospective adoptive parents had in the hospitals while the
mother was laboring or recovering,
– The fact that mothers who were receiving financial support during their pregnancies were having that used to guilt
them into following through with their ‘adoption plan’ or mothers would be given the impression that they would be
sued in court for the money they received – and the fact that this is illegal – except for in Idaho.
– That majority of the mothers who were inquiring for our assistance with revoking their consent to an adoption never
received any copies – signed or unsigned – of their relinquishment paperwork. They had absolutely no idea what
kind of contract they entered into.
– That mothers who did revoke or informed the adoption entity that they decided to parent were having CPS/DCFS
show up at their door or in the hospital and open a case because an ‘anonymous’ call was made after they separated
from the agency. (Essentially weaponizing CPS/DCFS.)
– That adoption entities were leaving their clients, the prospective adoptive parents to navigate the return of the baby
without any assistance from the adoption entity.

We started educating on the trauma of maternal separation that the infant and the mother will be forced to endure when separated. More people started listening, including foster parents and adoptive parents who were parenting children who suffered from separation trauma. They were living it – and they validated what we were saying.

We were proving that this was not just ‘one’ agency, ‘one’ attorney or ‘just that’ adoption professional and people were listening and seeing that we were right.

Have you ever had to pivot?

For many years before suffering the unnecessary loss of my child via an unnecessary infant adoption I always wondered “What is my purpose.”

This profound loss of my precious child, caused the person I used to be die.
I had to do something about it – or it was going to kill me. It nearly did on many occasions, too many to count.
I knew that sitting in a support group talking about my story over and over and over again was not going to fix it. It wasn’t going to change what had been done – what I did to us.

The trajectory of my life was drastically changed.

I was a good mom, a good person and I always treated people the way I wanted to be treated.
I still am and still do these things.

But I also had to evolve into this new person.

I had to channel the immense grief, and frustration of the betrayal, the unambiguous grief, the deception and lies I was told via omission into something that wouldn’t kill me I had to accept that people who collected money for my child who knew that I loved and wanted my child and did not want to relinquish him did just that.

I am now an advocate and an activist trying to help society apply a critical lens to the US infant adoption industry.

I have found my purpose – and it’s been a complete pivot on my once so simple and ‘normal’ life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://savingoursistersadoption.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/savingoursistersadoption/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adoptionSOS
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/savingoursistersadoption/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@savingoursistersadoption