This guest post is by Nicole, a hopeful adoptive mother and blogger.
The adoption journey for us so far has been an interesting one. We knew that if we wanted to have a family we’d adopt because I didn’t want to do IVF.
Well, that is much easier said than done.
At the time we were first investigating adoption options, we kept hitting road blocks. Like the agency was closed or they only did closed adoptions. We wanted at the very least a semi-open adoption. Continue reading
This guest post is by Lisa Raymond, an adoptive mother and adoptee.
I am the proud momma to three children who are the loves and joys of my life. My darlings all came to me through adoption.
Having been adopted myself, I somehow felt prepared as my husband and I began the process ourselves. What I learned was, I wasn’t.
Some things were much harder than I expected and others could have been easier had I known a little more. It took me a lot of tears and banging my head against a proverbial wall to figure some of it out.
More of it I realized as a Monday morning quarterback, looooong into the process. It is actually pretty amazing that I made it through one adoption, much less three, with all my hair (I can’t say the same for my husband) and most of my sanity. Continue reading
Meeting your baby’s adoptive parents for the first time can feel like a job interview.
But it’s more like a date.
You’ll want to like them. But you’ll also want them to like you.
And yet as with any date, there are things you can do to make your first meeting a success and build your relationship before an open adoption. Continue reading
In open adoption, you get to choose the adoptive parents for your baby.
As great as that sounds, you want get it right.
You don’t want to pick any old family to raise your child — you want to pick the right one.
So how do you do it? Is there something you can do now, before the adoption, to help you make a decision?
For starters, you can look online at the hopeful adoptive parents’ adoption letter. It tells their story in words and pictures.
In it, you can find out all kinds of things about them: how long they’ve been married, what they like to do for fun, about their families and their home, their thoughts about parenting and open adoption, and how to get in touch with them. Continue reading
“How do I find a birthmother?” hopeful adoptive parents will ask.
“Do you mean a prospective birthmother?” I’ll say.
I don’t mean to be difficult. I just want to want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing.
“Yeah, you know, a person who’s giving her baby up for adoption.”
“In that case, you do mean a prospective birthmother.”
Birthmother. Prospective birthmother.
They sound similar. And yet they’re world’s apart. Continue reading
