Do we talk to AJ about his birth mother? No. He can’t handle it yet. I wish he could but he can’t. We talk to him, instead about Russia. About the orphanage. About the country he came from, not about “where” he came from.

I wish I could because she is part of me too. No matter where my child is from his birth parents are a part of him and we need to teach him that. We need to show him that. With AJ we just need to allow him to guide us and let us know when it is the right time.

To define open adoption would be like defining the word faith. Every open adoption is different in that every family has their own degree of openness in which they are comfortable. Technically Open Adoption refers to the sharing of information and/or contact between the adoptive and biological parents of an adopted child. This can occur before, during and/or after the placement of the child. However, there are typically three types of open adoption: confidential (minimal information shared), mediated (information mediated through an agency), and fully disclosed (involves full disclosure between adoptive and birth parents).

Adoptive parents should know that having the birth parents in their lives does not have to be a threatening situation. Having them close allows you to better know your child by knowing the birth parents.

Additionally, research conducted back in 1993 shows that adoptive parents and birth mothers are generally satisfied despite the “normal” amounts of grief that accompanies adoption.

Read some Birth Mother Stories at Adoptive Families

Read these stories on Open Adoption.

Post from: Blisstree

The Basics of Open Adoption

Adoption has always been a close topic to my heart. I was adopted when I was 8 months old. I went back and forth for years when I was a teenager trying to decide if I wanted to search out my birth mom. I never took that leap of faith and I really didn’t realize why until I was older. It was because I was scared. I was scared that I would open myself and my family up to a relationship that would be destructive. I had enough destructive relationships in my life at the time to keep 5 of me busy. Why add one more?

I also had the fear of not being wanted. What if I did finally find my birth mom and then she wanted nothing to do with me? What if I opened up old wounds for her that she had tried so hard to forget? For years and years there were these questions swirling around in my head. So, I did nothing until late one night on a whim.

It was very late and I was surfing the Internet. I ended up on this adoption forum. How? To this day I still don’t know how or why, but it was an event that would change my life forever. I was reading all these postings from people who were searching for their birth parents or from ones who had already found them. There was one comment that hit me so hard that I just sat there at my computer sobbing. One girl had finally tracked down her birth mom after looking for 2 years. When she finally found out who she was, it was too late. Her birth mom had already passed away. She was devastated and offered one word of advice to those of us thinking about taking that leap. She said “Do it”. Do it before it’s too late and you end up regretting a decision that you can never take back.

So, I took her advice and started my search. I was one of the lucky ones. It took me only two weeks to find out who my birth mom was and get her contact info. How did I do it so fast? I found some old Texas documents that someone had scanned and posted on the Internet. They were old birth records from the county I was born in. I scanned and scanned the document until I found my birth date. All I had to do was match my birth certificate number to one of the names of the women.

I had to rush order a birth certificate and when it got to me, I ripped that envelope open so fast, grabbed the documents I had printed out and one of the numbers matched. To say that I had a dozen emotions flooding through my body would be an understatement! I was excited, scared, elated, happy and totally freaking out all at once. Now I just had to track down my birth mom’s married name and address. I contacted one of the adoption angels from the forum I visited and within a day she sent me who she was 99% sure was my adopted mom’s information. She suggested writing her a letter instead of calling because calling is a little invasive. So, I wrote the letter, put a picture of my family in there and mailed it off. That was in August of 2006.

On July 4^th, I received an email from my birth mom. I was shaking as I read the email. I had no idea what to expect. Would she tell me to leave her alone? Would she be happy? Needless to say, she was ecstatic to hear from me. We emailed back and forth a few times and then I called her. Hearing her voice, MY birth mom’s voice for the first time was an experience I will never forget. I felt so complete at that moment. I finally knew that she was something that was missing in my life. She was someone that I needed and I had waited all these years to do something about it. I will not allow myself to regret waiting so long, but instead look toward the future.

My birth mom was married and had two kids who were younger than I was. We all wanted to meet, so she flew me out to Texas to spend a few days with them. For my entire childhood and teenage years we lived 30 minutes from each other. 30 minutes!! I spent a few days in September of 2006 with her and her family. I was able to meet her mom, her sisters, her husband and kids. It was an instant bond with everyone. My half sister and I are so alike it’s scary.

A few months later, her and her family visited Georgia, where we were living at the time, and they got to meet my husband and 3 kids. Again, instant bonding. We had so much fun together and felt like we had known each other for years.

It’s now been over two years since she came into my life and it has been amazing. I don’t get to see them as much as I would like, but we talk on the phone and she sends my kids crazy good packages for their birthdays, Christmas and other holidays. My kids call her grandma and her husband grandpa, as well as my half sister and brother aunt and uncle. It just felt natural for them to call them that.

I am so thankful for that late night that I decided to surf the Internet and ended up on that adoption forum. I am so thankful for the fact that my birth mom wanted me in her life and that things have worked out so amazingly well. I know that my case is rare. I have had people who are adopted hear my story and it has made them want to search out their birth parents. I always advise them to not go into it with any expectations. Just take that leap of faith only if you are truly ready for whatever may happen.

Thanks for listening to my story. I would love to hear some of yours!

–
Julie Bonner
Staff Writer
www.b5media.com

Post from: Blisstree

Guest Post: A Natural Tie

General

Anti-Racist Parent

A Birth Project

Adoptive Parents

Domestic

Production, not reproduction

Plain Jane Mom Letters to a Birthmother

Gotcha Baby

Baggage and Bug

Fostering Pride

Overwhelmed with Joy

This Woman’s Work

The Other Mother

Mayhem and Magic

Peter’s Cross Station

International

My Two Boys

Salsa in China

Jesus was Not a Republican

Two Different Loves

It Only Takes One Step

Pundit Mom

A New Flower Blooms

Artificially Sweetened

Alison and Jim’s Adoption Journey

Come Undone

Now What?

Just Enjoy Him

Third Mom

American Family

Hearts Wide Open

Uterine Wars

Fling Poo

First Parents

Not Mother

Writing My Wrongs

Magic Pointe Shoes

Wet Feet

Reunion Writings

Chronicles of Munchkinland

I should really be working

Paragraphein

Adoptees

Harlow’s Monkey

Ethnically Incorrect Daughter

3 Generations of Adoption

Adoption and its Triad

Land of the Nos-So-Calm

Ungrateful Little Bastard

Heart, Mind, and Seoul

Bastard in a Handbasket

Adopt This

Twinkle Little Star

Infertility

A Little Pregnant

So Close

Stirrup Queens

And I Wasted All that Birth Control

Post from: Blisstree

The Best of the Best: Top 50 Adoption Blogs

Adoption, relinquishment, loss, abandonment, neglect, abuse, are full of grief.

Infertility and miscarriage are full of grief.

And no one type of grief can trump the other. 

I have read so many posts (and I’m not going to link them) and angry and hurtful comments this past week and I am ashamed at some of the words people have said to each other. The kinds of things that people will write because they can’t see the hurt in each other’s eyes or hear the anguish in their voices when they talk about relinquishing their child or having social services take him away, or they don’t know what it is like to never be able to conceive, or they have never experienced a miscarriage (or 6), or they have never been told their child has been “given” to someone else.

I have lived through the grief of infertility and it sucked. And I have seen and felt the grief of my own son. And that was even harder. He has still not come to terms with his own birth mother issues (and I certainly don’t expect him to at 4 years old) and we have learned that we can not talk about his Russia Mama (we can only talk fleetingly about Russia).

However, I can’t imagine what it would be like to make an adoption plan for a child and I don’t understand how other people can trivialize it or dwindle it down to the “see ya, have a good life” mentality that  the movie Juno seems to have done (note: still have not seen it…just going off of reviews). And I can’t even imagine AJ’s birth mother never thinking about him or The Bebe’s birth mother never thinking about him (who is with him this very day in Family Court). How could that EVER be possible?

The one thing about life is that no one person can ever outsmart grief no matter what the source because grief comes from the core of a person, from the very soul. And no matter how hard one tries to outsmart it and push it away it will fester and breed, and fight to get to the surface.

Post from: Blisstree

You Can’t Outsmart Grief

Adoption has become a very controversial topic lately not only because of posts like this but even in the general public when people like Madonna adopt children who have parents still in the picture (and not ready to relinquish).

My husband and I adopted because we are infertile. We hope we are not, as many people see adoptive parents these days, baby stealers. We are parents of a fabulous 4 year old but we don’t think that we deserved him any more than anyone else deserves a child. Our journey to him was just as unique, just as adventurous, and just as special as anyone else’s pregnancy or adoption.

Our infertility is not the result of STD’s, weight, smoking, an abortion, age, or anything else self inflicted or choice related. Our infertility is the result of poor genetics and inherited reproductive issues. We were 26 when we started trying to get pregnant and we were nervous. I had already had one surgery to help with scar tissue and we knew that there was a possibility that I would be unable to conceive. What we did not know was that my husband had fertility issues as well.

My OB knew of all of my female issues so he sent us to a specialist after 6 months (most OB’s won’t even talk to you without trying for a year). We did some more testing and then one round of ICSI. What we found out after that one unsuccessful round was that we had LESS than one percent chance of conceiving WITH medical assistance.

So, when people say things like But infertility is a medical problem – not a social issue – that needs to be resolved with medical treatments and with preventative education. It is NOT resolved by being the recipient of a child that a mother was pressured – because of no alternatives – to let go because they don’t agree with adoption practices it breaks my heart.

Should we have lived the rest of our lives childless because medicine couldn’t help us or should we have been able to adopt a child?

Our first son was in a Russian orphanage for two years before we adopted him. His biological mother and father never visited him. They never sent one letter or message to him. They never attempted to make contact with him and didn’t even show up for court the day of his relinquishment hearing.

Were his birth parents pressured to relinquish him? (We know that social services stepped in.) Did we steal him from them? (Is it stealing if there is no contact?) Did we use our infertility as an excuse to adopt? (No, it was our way to build our family.)

Every country has their own political woes, poverty, and social injustice. I, however, am not fine with women having babies for ffinancial gain or for adoption representatives selling babies to make a buck and if I thought our second son was in that position I would NOT be adopting him.

Adoption has become an open subject (as it should be) but it needs reform. Unfortunately, its not all about open adoption records but how birth mothers are perceived in the media, the adoptive parent/birth parent relationship, how international adoptions are processed, how agencies run their programs, and I could go on. But, that is all for later…

Clicking publish. Your turn to talk.

Post from: Blisstree

Adoption; Infertility, Baby Stealing, and the need for Reform

However, if one looks at this fabulous list of adoptees, adoptive parents, and, yes, orphans, one will see that no matter where they came from or whom they were raised by, they are extraordinary people.

Is that nature vs. nurture?

Adoptees

Michael Reagan (Ronald Reagan’s Son)

Nancy Reagan (First Lady- step-parent adoption)

Gerald Ford (step-parent adoption)

Eleanor Roosevelt (raised by grandmother)

William Clinton (step-parent adoption)

Herbert Hoover (raised by uncles)

Andrew Jackson (lost parents at 14, no adoption)

Adoptive Parents

Ronald Reagan

Famous Politicians

Jesse Jackson

John Hancock

Malcolm X

Sen Paull H Shin

Sen Robert Byrd

Birthparents

Strom Thurmond

Adoptive Parents

Senator Jesse Helms

Senator John McCain

Senator Lloyd Bensten

Senator Paul Simon

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson

William Delahunt

For more President’s Day Postings:

Blog Fabulous is Shaking Clinton’s Hand (which one? Read the post)

All Holiday Cafe has some great Educational ideas for kids out of school today.

Guerilla Parenting has a Month Rich in History Lessons

Post from: Blisstree

US Politicians (and Presidents) and the Adoption Connection

The new law will practically eliminate the participation of notaries, while creating the National Adoption Council, an oversight agency including Guatemala’s Supreme Court and foreign relations and social development departments.

Kudos for creating an agency to oversee the procedures of the administrators.

All orphanages will have to register with the council, which will be responsible for informing birth parents of their options and establishing fees that non-Guatemalan adoptive parents pay to the government.

Will these fees be regulated per orphanage or by agency or by country?

I have a problem with the timeline because I know that it would not have been possible in AJ’s culture to do this. Now, it is possible that many birthmothers in Guatemala are much different from the birthmothers in Russia but I know that there are some children that will need to be relinquished at birth. Where will these children go? In AJ’s case, he stayed in a Russian baby hospital until a bed became available at the orphanage. Will Guatemala provide funding for that or will they provide foster care?

Single mothers can now adopt from Guatemala.

The law expressly prohibits birth parents from being paid for giving a child up for adoption, and eliminates the notaries’ practice of offering children for adoption before they are born.

Is there any way to police the orphanage workers from paying women to relinquish their children?

As for my family…we are still waiting to hear if our agency will be issuing referrals.

Post from: Blisstree

Orphanages for Guatemala