A woman is pregnant and she is due to give birth in two weeks.  Is she

1)  an expectant mother or mother-to-be

2)  a "birthmother"?

According to most adoption websites an expectant mother is a "birthmother" or "expectant birthmother".  This is a very sinister and coercive use of the word "birthmother" making it seem as if it is a foregone conclusion that a mother will surrender her parental rights. 

"Most birthmothers keep their babies," one person wrote to me.  What an odd thing to say.  I wonder some days whether when a baby is born some people actually say "Congratulations, birthmother!" 

A mother is a "mother" or a "mom" - the parent of her child.  She is not a "birth object" meant to be used as the source of a baby for adoption.  If anything, people should arrive at the hospital with baby gifts, a car seat and offers to help her when she takes her baby home, respecting her as a mother rather than assuming she will sign some papers.   

We have lots of advertisements on the web from people writing to "Dear Birthmother" or "Dear Birthparent"  looking for a baby.  How insulting it all is - a mother goes through nine months of pregnancy, goes through labor and delivery, holds her beloved baby in her arms and people arrive trying to get her to SIGN HIM AWAY?   Then woooosh! her baby is gone.  The adoption agency or adoption attorney gets paid, their real clients get a baby and the mom gets called a "birthmother" (aka "birth object", similar to a placenta). 

The mother may suffer horribly from the loss of her child, but it may be a matter of months or many years before she realizes how badly she's been used. 

A mother is a mother, not a "birthparent" or "birthmother".  It's important to use honest language, respecting the mother as the parent of her child.

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ADOPTED CHILD, Clothier. F. MD. 1943

"The child who is placed with adoptive [people] at or soon after birth misses the mutual and deeply satisfying mother and child relationship. The roots of which lie deep in the area of personality where the psychological and physiological are merged. Both for the child and the natural mother, that period is part of the biological sequence, and it is to be doubted whether the relationship of the child to it's post partum mother, in its subtler effects, can be replaced by even the best of substitute mothers."