Our Open Adoption

We said in a previous post that we would explain a little more about our experience with the adoption process and especially with our open adoption.  We have chosen to be very candid with our family members and friends (and blog readers) about our adoption process in hopes that it will be a learning experience for all of us.  There are so many misconceptions about adoption, many of which made us nervous as we entered this process last year.  With lots of exposure to the truths about adoption through our many training sessions with our agency, as well as through personal stories of other adoptive families, our eyes have been opened (and our minds set at ease) by all that we have learned.

The openness of adoptions falls on a continuum.  At one end you have closed adoptions (no information is shared by either party and there is not an ongoing relationship) and at the other you have fully open adoptions (identifying information is shared by both parties involved and there is a commitment to maintaining an on-going relationship).  In the middle you have semi-open adoptions (where the families communicate via the adoption agency and there is an opportunity to maintain a relationship in the future).  Each adoption is unique and can fall on a different place in this continuum.  Openness in adoption is probably the aspect where our minds and hearts have changed the most over the last year or so.   Originally we only felt comfortable with a semi-open adoption.  However, through lots of prayer we learned that God's plan for our adoption story was for an open adoption.  Even now we can tell that we wouldn't have it any other way.

Even within the category of open adoptions, things can look very different, so here's a little about our unique and beautiful experience getting to know our birth mom.  We got "the call" on April 2nd (at 2:42pm) that we had been chosen by our birth mom and that she was eager to meet us.  On April 10th we nervously entered our adoption agency's office and awaited the arrival of our birth mom.  When she arrived, we greeted each other with hugs.  Everything flowed naturally and we talked, laughed, and shared stories with one another for about 2 hours.  We left this meeting knowing that our birth mom was an incredibly special person and that we were already forming a deep attachment to her.

She let us know that she wanted us to be very involved with this process so that we would be as close to "experiencing child birth" as possible.  So she invited us to come to a doctor's appointment with her 3 weeks later to see an ultrasound.  Between our meeting times (because we were comfortable with it) we set up an email account just for our communication with our birth mom and also gave her my phone number if she would like to contact us.  We started texting shortly after our first meeting and continued to check in every week or so until the ultrasound.  It was so amazing to hear Isaac's heartbeat and to see him squirming all around!  After this appointment, we went with our birth mom and her 4-year-old son to eat.  Conversation continued to flow naturally and afterwards we played with her son, whom we adore.  We really bonded with her son, and this meant a lot to us and to our birth mom.  It confirmed that this was/is a great fit.  Since this visit we have continued to communicate with our birth mom regularly.  She is so thoughtful and will send us messages like "Isaac says good morning!" or "The appointment went well and we can't wait to see you again soon!"  We'll check in and find out how she's doing as well as how her son is doing.  It has developed a lot of trust between us to maintain this type of contact and it has created such a special bond between all of us.  

Earlier this week we were thankful to be able to take a day off of work and go spend the day with our birth mom and her son again.  This was our first meeting without the social worker from our agency, and I think we were all just a little nervous about how it would be.  It was a really great time of getting to know each other better and it was obvious by the end of our time together that we all feel more comfortable with each other.  We were able to talk through the plan for Isaac’s birth and we are excited that she wants us to be at the hospital and very involved in the process.   After he’s born we’ll definitely share more about our time together in the hospital, which we are very excited about!

I’ll end this post with a quote from one of our birth mom’s recent texts to us that really shows how wonderful she is: “Very excited for everything that we are about to do together!”

6 days or less!