Closed Adoption and Birthparent Tracing - Jennifer's Story

Have you taken time to meet our Featured Family of the Week, the Caulk Family? They are in process and trying to raise the last remaining funds for their domestic adoption. Please pop on over when you get a chance and donate $1 this week. (Roman thanks you.) Today's blog post comes from Jennifer and offers an adoptee's perspective into reaching out to a birthparent. A huge hug goes out to Jenn for offering us a window into her life to better understand adoption in our own families.

Growing up, I always knew that I would want to find my birthmother. Because of laws in my state I would have to wait until I was 18, but was reassured by my parents that they supported the search.

My 18th birthday came, I moved into a dorm, started college, and broke up with my high school boyfriend. I wasn't ready to bring the emotion it would take to begin the search, and possibly start a relationship. It wasn't until a year later that I was ready to begin the search.

After calls to my parent's lawyer, my birthmother's lawyer, and the state vital records office, I had a plan. My brithmothers lawyer warned me that though she hadn't talked to her in years, I need to be prepared that she wouldn't want contact at all. That was a blow, but I continued on my search.

The state I was born in, New Mexico, didn't allow me access to my records, instead they had 'intermediaries' that had been trained in confidentially practices and how to legally search. We contacted one off the approved list, Linda, and my parents paid her fee. I knew they always supported me looking for my birth family, but them paying the cost for the search showed me how supportive they truly were. After a few weeks, I received a call from Linda saying that she had found my birthmother, so I should begin writing my letter. She explained that this might be the one and only contact I'll ever have with my birthmother, and I need to put the most important information at the top of my letter (opening lines), because she might not read the whole thing.

I wrote several drafts, each one being edited by Linda for confidentiality purposes. I couldn't write "I'm a sophomore at the University of New Mexico", I had to just say I was in college. I thought that was funny, because I WANTED her to find me, why would info about me be an issue?

Every draft began the same way though I just wanted to say thank you. More than anything I needed her to know how grateful I was for the decision she had made. I didn't know much of our story, just that she was young, and had gotten pregnant by an older man, who was married and had a family. I knew she was sent to New Mexico to live with a relative while she was pregnant, and then flew back to New York. I know it caused a rift in her family. I know I was blessed by it.

Linda sent the letter, and a week or so later, she called me saying it did not go over well. My birthmother called her and was very angry she had been contacted. Linda advised me that all hope was not lost, she might calm down and change her mind. I was discouraged, but at least I could say that I had tried.

Several weeks later, I received another phone call from Linda. My birthmother had contacted her again, apologized, and asked for a way to contact me. She preferred email, so I gave Linda my address and anxiously awaited an email.

The first email came later that night, and we corresponded for several weeks over email. She then asked for my number so she could call. I remember I was walking between classes on campus when she called.

We talked for over an hour that first time. Our conversations were a lot asking questions and giving answers on both our parts. Our relationship grew, though there are still trust issues that have had to be overcome.

Going through the adoption process with our son, it made me think of the type of relationship he would have with his birthparents. Would it be though handwritten letters, or more likely, over email and FaceTime?

How has modern technology influenced the relationship with your child's birth families?

National Adoption Month

As we begin November, we leave all the pink ribbons behind in October.  Everyone knows what they represent and honor.  You can buy you're cereal with a pink ribbon on it, and even the NFL players are willing to wear pink one day a month.   Now that the month is behind us, the pink doesn't seem to be plastered everywhere.  However, do you know that November is known for something too, it's National Adoption Month.

There was quite the conversation that many of my friends on Twitter had.  Many of them had been touched by adoption, either as an adoptive mother or a birth mother.  It was during that conversation that my opinion about this being a 'special adoption month' changed.  Many times, this month is seen as a celebration, however this celebration often leaves out one critical part of the adoption triad.  Though the adoptive parents are beyond thrilled to celebrate the addition's to their family, it ignores the third side of the adoption triad, the birth families.  Though they may celebrate the life their child has, their pain and grief are mostly ignored for this month.

Our family has chosen not to celebrate this month anymore than we celebrate each day Isaac is in our life.  Instead, our goal is to bring awareness to all the many different aspects and types of adoption.   Though our family chose to adopt domestically through an agency, there is also foster to adopt, and kinship adoption, and private adoptions that happen.  These are each important and special types of adoption, often clouded by assumptions and misinformation by the general public.

As we go through this month, I think of Isaac's birthmother.  She's on my mind often, but the frequency increases when he hit's milestones and around holidays.  I think of how no one in her family knows what a brave woman she is, putting her son's life above her own feelings.  The only person that knows about the adoption is Isaac's birthfather, who lives several states away from her.  I often pray that the hurt and grief will become lessened  and that she will be able to find joy, no matter how small, in Isaac's life.  Though we don't have contact with his birth family at this time, I am lucky to know several birth moms.  They have each opened my eyes to the daily struggle and joy that they feel.  I am grateful for my friendship with them, because  they have made me much more aware and sensitive to the third, and often forgotten, side of the adoption triad.  

May you think of them too, and honor them with me.

Adoption As a Plan B: Jen's Story

                For us, the transition from trying to have a biological child to starting the adoption process took several months.  I’m sure that others move from plan A to plan B faster and for others it may take years to make that transition.

                I think a key part of it for us was we had already started talking about adoption long before we even started fertility treatments.  I understand that not everyone who adopts struggled with fertility, but we did.  However, being adopted, it was always something close to my heart and a conversation my husband and I had early on in our relationship.  The conversation went “let’s have a few of our own and adopt one or two, and have one huge, loving family”.

                After doing several rounds of fertility treatments, we were emotionally exhausted and I felt like my body was close to done.  With each treatment, after 10-12 days of doing injectable hormones, I would skip a day after trigger and then start taking an injectable blood thinner during my two-week wait.  Eventually, I would get a positive pregnancy test, they would take betas, the numbers would rise, then the numbers would fall, and I would miscarry.  We called this point in the process “Beta Hell”.  Then, we would start the whole process over.  The only time during the months that I wasn't injecting something in my body was while I was waiting to miscarry through cycle day 3 when we would start the new round. 

                In December 2009, we were in the midst of our fifth cycle.  Between the hustle and bustle of the holidays and being in beta hell, my husband and I decided that after this cycle was done, we could only go through beta hell one more time.  If that meant I got pregnant next cycle, then it would be our last, or if it took 3 more cycles to get pregnant, that’s when we would call it quits.  As we were getting dressed up to go out and celebrate our 5^th anniversary with dinner and tickets to the Nutcracker (my favorite part of the holidays), we got the call that the beta they had drawn that morning had fallen.  This pregnancy was over.  Needless to say, I enjoyed a glass of wine with dinner that night as we put on our brave faces, ignored the pain, and celebrated our five years together.

                After the new year we started what we knew could be our last cycle.  Just like my body had done the last 4 cycles, my two-week wait ended with rising betas…and then falling betas.  When we went in to meet with the reproductive endocrinologist I explained, through tears, that I just couldn't do it again. I couldn't go on the rollercoaster ride.  We had such a kind doctor who understood our decision. 

                For several months, we didn't talk about babies.  We each had to deal internally with the new knowledge that we would not have biological children of our own.  I grieved the fact that I would never know what it would feel like to have a baby move inside of me, or to look in my child’s face and see pieces of my husband and me combined. 

                Slowly, during those months, we stopped thinking about the treatments that had failed and started remembering how good it was to be ‘us’.  Us before the treatments; before the monitoring appointments, injections before bedtime, and timed intercourse.  We started laughing together again, and my husband started being silly.  For so many months, he had walked on eggshells around our house, not knowing what he might say that would turn his hormone-infused wife into a blubbering mess of tears.  Those days were past us and we could enjoy each other.  I remember that spring being extra warm so the pool in our neighborhood opened up a few weeks earlier than normal.  We decided to go up and swim.  It was that day that in my mind, we were back to ‘us’.  I will forever remember laying on the lounge chairs next to Travis, both with our eyes closed, enjoying the sun shining on us.  He reached over and grabbed my hand and said, “I love our life”.  For me, that was the defining moment.  No matter what we had gone through, no matter how we were going to build our family, he was with me, holding my hand for the long haul.  That was what I needed to hear.

                Within a week or so we started talking about the next steps we wanted to take.  We got information from several adoption agencies and met with a social worker from one of them.   We started filling out that agency’s short application in early May.  It only took us about 4 months to be able to move from our plan A to plan B, but that was very valuable time to us.  We needed those months, free of the stress of fertility treatments and absent of the stress that would come with the adoption process in the coming months.

                If I have any advice for couples thinking about adoption, particularly after they have been doing fertility treatments, is to take some time.  It doesn't have to be a whole lot of time, but you and your spouse probably would benefit from putting some distance between the end of fertility treatments and the beginning of the adoption process.  I believe that many agencies (like ours) feel this way too, because they often request that couples either do treatments, or pursue  adoption, but not simultaneously.   Both events are so taxing on your emotions, so don’t make either one any harder than then it needs to be!

Adoption Through Two Generations

This might look like any other family picture to you, grandparents glowing while their child and spouse hold the newest member of their family. And that’s what it is, in essence. My parent’s coming to visit my husband and I right after we got home with our son, Isaac.  However, to me, this picture is so much more.  It’s the happy ending that a mother promised her daughter would come.  

It was the answer to prayers that had been said.  It is the proof that all the tears and longings that those two women had for a family had been worth it.  It shows me how beautiful and wonderful adoption truly is.  

Because, in this picture, there isn't just one adoptive mother, but two.

My parents had been married 17 years when they adopted me.  They had been working with the state (who did all the adoptions at that time), but were actually matched with my birthmother through my Mom’s OB/GYN.  I was born on Saturday, and they got the call to ‘get ready’.  My Mom, Dad, and Grandma went on a shopping spree to prepare for me on Sunday, and my parents brought me home Monday (my Grandma’s birthday!). 

I know my adoption story.  Always have.  My parents started using ‘positive adoption language’ when I was very young, but to them, they were just doing the right thing.  They had no desire to hide anything, just to let me know how loved I was, by everyone involved.  Because I was born in the early 1980’s, it was a closed adoption, and since it was private, my parents got very little information from my birthmothers lawyer.  They knew basic info, height, complexion, age, hair color, eye color, where her family originated from, but nothing much more.   

As I grew older, they shared a bit more ‘age appropriate’ stuff with me, like the fact that my birthfather had been married, but had an affair that I was a product of.  That I have a half brother or sister very close in age, because both his wife and my birthmom were pregnant at the same time.  That the adoption plan my birthmom had made caused quite the conflict in her families relationships.  After that info, there wasn’t much more that they had, and with my records sealed, I would have to wait until I was 18 to try to get more info. 

As we were going through fertility treatments, I asked my Mom how she survived everything.  She had been diagnosed with endometriosis, and wasn’t ever given any treatment options.   I wondered how she made it through all of her friends getting pregnant, the baby shower invites, the newborns in church.  She shared stories, some that made me laugh, and some that made me realize, she knew the exact pain and hurt that I did.  We talked about her never being able to get pregnant, whereas I could get pregnant, but never could maintain the pregnancy.  We decided they each have their own type of pain and sadness.  

It was nice to know, that when I was sad, or depressed, or angry, that I had someone who had been there before that I could talk to.  Friends are great, but nothing beats a Mom who will listen to you, and TRULY understand what you are talking about.

When Travis and I began down the adoption path, we of course bounced a lot of things off my parents.  They had been here before, though we quickly realized our paths were quite different.  Many things have changed in the adoption world, and differences were a surprise to my parents.  As we went through our 8hr+ home study interviews and questioners, my Mom dug out their 2 page report that their social worker had written saying they were fit to have a child in their home.  As we agonized over our profile book, my Mom wondered how much my birthmother knew about them before she placed me with them.  When we were nervously driving the 8 hours to go meet our son’s birthparents, she told us she would never have had enough courage to do that.  While we were holding our son minutes after he was born, she wondered if she would have had the strength to do that, knowing that the placement might not happen. 

For us, each of those steps was just one more thing we had to do to bring Isaac home.  We really had no choice in most of them, because many agencies have similar requirements.  Just like, 29 years ago, my parents did what they had to do to bring me home, and just like 7years later, they did anything to bring my little brother home.  

Adoption isn’t easy, but you just do whatever you have to.  And the reward is worth it.   

I remember in the days after we got Isaac home, when it was just my Mom with us, she stood in my bathroom with me as I was holding Isaac and put her arms around both of us and cried.  After so many years of sad tears, from both of us, these were tears of joy.  

In that moment, she embraced her life, and how it had been blessed by adoption.  Through two generations.

Semi Open Adoption: From My Perspective

Today's post comes from Brandi who has adopted both internationally and domestically and is one of our Give1 Domestic bloggers. Her blog home is at www.ourcongojourney.blogspot.com

Every domestic adoptive family has to make a life changing decision in their adoption process. Most adoptive parents leave this choice to their children's biological parent/parents.

Ever hear of closed adoption...semi-open...open adoption and wonder what this means? Here is the definition of semi-open adoption I found online:

*Semi-Open Adoptions: A form of adoption that is intentionally designed to be a combination of a more traditional closed adoption and a more progressive open adoption, with the emphasis being on the "privacy" of all parties, rather than on "confidentially." Direct communication after the adoption is more limited, in the fashion that is agreed by the parties to be beneficial for everyone. Last names, addresses, and telephone numbers are usually not exchanged, while the sharing of photographs or other information for an agreed frequency and duration is common. All communication takes place through a third party, which is usually an adoption agency, an adoption attorney or a designated intermediary.

A semi-open adoption is the type of adoption we have with our son's biological mom. We wanted a completely open adoption, but we also wanted to respect our son's biological mom's choice and so we let her choose. While our situation with our son's biological mom is not exactly the same as the definition above we went with what we were most comfortable with and it works for us.

At first when we received the call she wanted a closed adoption. By the time we were ready to leave the hospital she changed her mind and chose a semi-open adoption. It's important that every family chooses the right decision for them. Semi-open adoption gave us (the adoptive parents) the option to be as open as possible to D (our son's biological mom) while also giving her the option to be as open or as closed as she wants. We agreed to exchange phone numbers, email, and her address as well as our Po Box, send her pictures and updates a few times a year because that is what we were comfortable with doing. She agreed to accept these updates, but at the same time she can choose to open those updates when and if she is ready. This works for our family. I love our semi-open adoption with D. She is an incredible woman and someone I want my son to be proud to have as a biological mom. She is a very special part of him and that is why I love her so much. She took care of him and herself for the 9 months he spent in her womb. She also made the best decision she could for him. I've always thought highly of mothers who are able to put their children and their children's needs before their own. That's what D did for our son.

I know that not every situation is like ours. Ultimately in making the decision closed, semi-open, or open adoption you should first think about your child/children. What is best for them? For example: D is not a bad example for our son. She is an incredible woman and when my son meets her I hope he sees D as a hero. She is someone I don't mind him looking up to because I know she wouldn't be a bad example for him. A friend of mine adopted a sibling group (2) through foster care. After the adoption was final she made every attempt to keep it open for as long as she could, but a few months later she had to sever ties with their biological mom because she was being a bad example. It was a painful decision for my friend to make, but she made the best decision she could during that time. She hopes that their biological mom will become the example their children need her to be, but until then the adoption is closed with hopes that eventually it can be opened again.

As a potential adoptive parent you should not agree to an open or semi-open adoption in an attempt to get a baby. I've heard of some adoptive parents agreeing to an open or semi open adoption with their biological child's mom and then when their child was born they closed it for no reason other than just agreeing to whatever the biological mom wanted before the baby was born so that they could get a baby. This is NOT right and if you don't think you can handle an open or semi open adoption then do NOT agree to one. This is something very important to discuss with your agency. If you are not open to a semi-open or open adoption then make sure your adoption agency does not show you to potential biological parents who do want a semi or open adoption. It's not fair to them and it's not fair to you.