This great book
Dec 22, 2002 Adoption
Angela recently sent me two books about adoption for no reason except that she’s a lovely person. She’s an adoptive mom and has been very supportive of our journey towards adoption. I heart her.
One of the books is about open adoption and it’s helping to dispel some of my concerns. There are so many great things about open adoption and even though I have some fears about it, I definitely think it’s the way to go. How much contact the birth relatives have with the child is up to both the birth parents and the adoptive parents and it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around things like visitation right now but I figure that as we get into the process we’ll know more and understand it better.
I keep thinking about a friend of mine who is adopted. Her adoption story goes something like this:
One day your mother and I went to a room full of babies and they were all crying. But then we saw one beautiful, smiling little girl and that was you and we knew that that’s the one we wanted.
What my friend got from this is that her parents chose her because she was cheerful and not much trouble. It was her parents way of warning her, in a way, that they expected her to be a good girl; that’s the part of her that made her the chosen one. Compare this to an open adoption where you can say, “Your birth mother chose us and we’re the ones who have to live up to that choice.” Imagine the value of an ongoing relationship between child and birth mother (even if it’s just in letters or very occasional) because then there isn’t any mystery. I’ll admit, it totally freaks me out. I have visions of a birth mother who will tell me that I’m doing it all wrong or who will show up uninvited or will be a completely unlikable person. But compared to the birthmother’s fears — that we will be horrible parents, that we won’t allow her to know her child is safe — I’d say that she’s got a tougher row to hoe.
This is something else the book emphasizes: that open adoption equalizes things. It’s not the privileged “good” parents rescuing the child from the “bad” parent.
Anyway, in this book it works beautifully. I hope it works beautifully for us.
I do have to say, though, that the more I read about adoption and specifically about transracial adoption, the more intimidated I am. I do wish I could just go make us a baby and quit thinking about all of the gigantic issues we’re facing and sometimes I throw a little mental hissy-fit because I can’t. I would rather do things the easy way but since my body won’t cooperate, this is the way I have to go.
Brett is being very supportive as I freak out, thank goodness.
December 23rd, 2002 at 1:39 pm
Hey, Mike G sent me a link to this entry. We’re the adopting parents in an open adoption that’s very new - Kit’s 5 months old - and still sorting out how it’s all gonna work. It *does* work, and the good news for those of us on this side of things is that we’re in much more control of how it works than the birth parent(s) are. But the amount and kinds of contact are definitely still under discussion for us at this point.
Our birth mom was just here visiting us (she lives in rural SE Kansas and we’re in rural NE Calif.) for the 4 days ending yesterday - her first visit w/Kit since he was 12 days old. (We were present at his birth and ‘had him’ from that moment on, but she and her family visited with him every day until we were cleared by both states’ agencies to leave for home.) So today my sweetheart and I are decompressing a bit and figuring out what was good and what we want to do differently next visit. The birth mom wants to come again in March, and we’re thinking May.
It’s hard to balance our need to be a quiet family and keep our own routines — or lack of them
— against her entirely understandable need to see and hold him and be reassured he’s well and happy.
I’d be glad to email or chat w/you in more detail about our situation… Mike or Dana could give you my email address or YIM ID if you’d like.
-Shelley
December 26th, 2002 at 11:52 am
Hi, there was an interesting article in an Iowa newspaper about adopting baby girls from China:
http://www.wcfcourier.com/regional/021225family.html