Review: I'm Having Their Baby

Emotions Boil Under the Surface on Adoption Series
TVFirstLook

There may be no decision a mother makes that's more life changing and heart wrenching than putting her baby up for adoption. No matter that the decision is often the best one for the baby, the mother, the father and everyone else involved.

It's curious then on Oxygen's I'm Having Their Baby (11pm) that the emotional turmoil of giving up a baby, and the joy for the parents adopting that baby, seem to be in short supply.

The show, not unlike MTV's True Life, but not as good, focuses on two women giving their baby up for adoption. On tonight's premiere, that's 28-year-old Amanda, who already has kids, and Mariah, a teenage mother who's giving up her second child.


But as I'm Having Their Baby delves into Amanda's and Mariah's stories, you get the sense that emotions are under the surface.

For the parents adopting their kids - a gay couple in Alaska and a young married couple, respectively - they don't want to reveal too much, perhaps out of fear they'll jinx the fragile adoption process .

For Amanda and more so for Mariah, their emotions seems to be bottled up out of fear that the slightest crack will lead to a flood of emotions that will be too much to bear.

Curiously, on I'm Having Their Baby, because those intense emotions are bottled up, watching Amanda's and Mariah's stories leaves you feeling a bit empty. And, for much of tonight's episode, perplexed, too. "What's going on and why isn't anyone crying?"

But, by the end, when Mariah is saying goodbye to her newborn baby, afraid to touch him so she doesn't get attached, holding back tears, you realize just how painful adoption can be.

And, for the parents adopting her son, how overwhelming their relief is when they can finally call her baby their own.