One of the most common questions I get asked from Hopeful Adoptive Parents or people considering adoption is around the idea of open adoption. Questions like, how will this open adoption affect me? How will it affect my children? Our family? My extended family? Is it co-parenting? WHAT IF THEY WANT THE BABY BACK!? There is a lot of fear that can surround the idea of open adoption – and I have been there – I had many of those same worries and questions myself. I can tell you a few things that open adoption is and isn’t. And like most hard things in our life, I have seen so much beauty come from open adoption. Sometimes the things we fear the most, become the most beautiful parts of our lives. I wonder what would happen if before we jumped to fear around open adoption and thought about all the ways it might change us and our families for the worse, if we considered the ways it might stretch us and make our families and lives so much stronger and richer – to see family in a new way, to experience a broader love, to teach our kids about loving people that might be different from us. What if we thought about all it could add to our lives, instead of what it could steal from us?
Open Adoption:
- Is not co-parenting
- Can look very different to different people. Some with lots of visits, some with just calls, some with just letters…
- Is a life-long journey and process! As Beka Overby recently put it, sometimes we want a Thanksgiving meal out of a microwave and that is not how open adoption works.
- Has both seasons of space and connection.
- Takes work, just like any relationship
One of the most common questions that adoptive parents get asked, usually from people outside of the triad, is “What was it like when you first saw your son or daughter? Was it love at first sight?” But no one prepared me to have love at first sight for my children’s birth mom.
I will never forget it. We were in the parking lot of a Longhorn Steak House. We were both so nervous. We walked up to each other and embraced. The first thing she said to me was, “You have the most beautiful eyes.”
I have never been told this in my life. People usually say this of those deep blue ocean eyes, or those speckled hazel eyes that makes the green in their shirt stand out – but not my honey poo brown eyes.
The girls were born the next morning after our first meeting.
She invited me into HER space. Her holy ground of delivering her babies. I held her hand so tight, I told her she was my hero, and she looked up and said to me, “no, you are mine”.
Two moms welcoming their beautiful daughters to the world. Two moms saying. “We have been waiting for you.” One mom saying. “Look, it’s Jordan”, and me looking at the same round face and seeing my Olive.
Although I was happy to see my girls and it is a day that is forever etched into my mind and heart. The person that stole my heart that day, was their birthmom.
No one can prepare you for the wrecking of the hospital. To watch your child’s birth mom rock and sing to her babies, and then say goodbye and hand them to you. Your heart crumbles on the
I didn’t want to leave her side. She was there alone. I know the girls were in safe hands in the NICU and with my husband.
So, I sat in her room, and I got to know her, I held her hand and learned about what music she liked, and about her family, and that she loves to write, and what sports she played when she was younger.
That day, my heart was split between two rooms, and I experienced a greater love than I ever expected. Something I could have missed out on if I let fear win.
