Where Did All Those Days Go?

This next week, in addition to whatever projects I’m working on (like this one), I’ll be writing about Baby Goth. Baby Goth, as you might expect, isn’t much of a baby anymore. I’ll be writing about that too.

14 years ago – has it really been that long? – we had decided that this was the end of the road for our adoption voyage. If we didn’t hear anything by April we would be satisfied with being an uncle and auntie.Two weeks before, we had gotten a call from our agency telling us about a child. Nothing was certain. I went ahead and pushed it out of my mind, to the point that I refused to buy any more baby items. No more clothes, baby formula, no car seat, nothing.

Within a week we had met the baby, participated in most likely one of the most traumatic “entrustment” ceremonies ever – and not only traumatic for us, which was more difficult to deal with – and brought a baby home to live with us. We also, over the years, became a much bigger family than we had ever dreamed we would have.

Who Gets to Know What: OAB Roundtable #34

Heather, our overlord at Open Adoption Bloggers, posted a new question today:

It is likely that we’ve all had that experience at some time: someone asking us to speak to the choices or feelings of others in our adoption constellation. Perhaps it is someone asking a first parent how their child feels about being in an open adoption. Or someone asking an adoptee why their adoptive parents chose to adopt. You get the idea.

How do you handle such questions when they are asked of you? How would you want the other parties in your open adoption to handle those questions when they are about you?

I’ve become a touch less tactful in my old age. At first I didn’t really talk much about our adoption at all; mostly introversion, but usually nobody questioned my being Anabel’s parent. At least not to my face. Now I ask directly why they need to know.

Our questions came mostly from our extended family. My mother asked whether or not her first family could come and reclaim her (a remote possibility in some states, but not in ours). We had a good conversation about that, and that they’re more like extended family. They also asked why C & J (M’s parents) wanted to have a relationship with us. I still can’t answer that question, so I said so. I don’t think DadGoth’s family ever really asked about our adoption. There were some snide comments from certain corners, but we’ll just ignore that for now.

When Anabel went to kindergarten, we talked about the subject coming up. DadGoth and I allowed Anabel to make her own choices as to who to tell about her adoption. There’s a whole raft of other things that make our family a bit unusual, and adoption is the smallest part of that. Her closest friends know, and it’s not a big deal. I didn’t really know the circumstances of when or why they asked. I don’t think it even came up in her dreaded Family Tree assignment in 1st grade. It turned out that her teacher’s mother was adopted, and the tree itself was a giant lollipop-like object that each child could attach pictures of their family in whatever way they wished. Anabel did choose to share her information with the class, and introduced the people as “Mom’s side, Dad’s side, and my side” of her family. As she gets older, she does know the standard answer for just about everything to do with us: “Why do you want to know?”

Sometimes the answers to that question are illuminating.

My sister did ask, not long after our adoption was finalized, how much it all cost. When I asked, she said she’d wondered if it was more than the twins’ birth (that included an overnight in the NICU). “If we hadn’t had insurance, that’s how much (twin nieces’) experience was.”

As far as other people in our extended family, I think M introduced us only once to anybody we were with – her current boyfriend/roommate – as Anabel’s parents. He and I talked a little while A and M were hanging out together. He did mention that this was kind of unusual. I said that this was, for us, the right thing.
I was asked only once from another adult if Anabel was adopted was by her BFF’s mom. She and her husband had been investigating adopting from foster care at several points in their marriage. It seemed that every time they had gotten past the home study part, she got pregnant.

Open Adoption Bloggers Interview Project

This is my second time participating in the Open Adoption Bloggers interview project. This year, my interview victimsubject is Elizabeth, who writes at Blessings in Disguise. She is a first mother of a 1-year-old in an open adoption. Here is our interview.

1. What made you decide to start blogging? What are your regular daily-ish reads?
I decided to start blogging for a number of reasons. Primarily, I wanted to document my own journey for my own eyes, because while my emotions are raw and real right now and I can remember things (such as her birth) like they were yesterday, a day may come where I can’t remember it all quite so clearly. I know those are moments and feelings I will never want to forget, so I started writing them down. On a similar note, I also want to have this blog and my previous blog available for my daughter to read one day. I won’t edit or sugarcoat any of it; it will be here if she ever wants to see how I truly felt about her, her family, and my love for them both. I want her to know whatever she wants to know – the good, the bad, the happy, and the heartbreaking, about myself and her biological father. Thirdly, I wasn’t in therapy at the time that I began my blog and I found that writing was truly cathartic to me and helped me uncover and realize so many emotions that I was trying to subconsciously bury.
My regular daily reads are all of those listed on the right-hand side of my blog, under “My Favorite Adoption Blogs.” These are all blogs written either by birth moms, birth dads, or adoptive moms and dads!

2. In one of your more recent posts, you wrote about something idiotic that a friend had said to you. (I’m struggling with the urge to put quotes around friend in that instance, but anyway.) Have there been any others? Which ones are your “favorites”? Some of us call them #jackassadoptionquotes, so you know.
Quotes definitely belong around that word! I like that, “#jackassadoptionquotes”…I may have to use that in the future (because unfortunately I’ll probably need to). That conversation was, hands down, the most unbelievable one I’ve had in the entire year since I’ve placed my daughter. The only other one involves someone who was a very close friend in high school, but she and I have since drifted very far apart. She was trying to be positive and reassuring (or that’s what I’d like to think, anyways). Without knowing anything about my daughter’s birth father, our relationship, my education or job at the time, or my living situation, she said these words to me: “based on your life, you definitely made the right decision.” I believe she meant to be kind, as I said, but I’d love to know what ‘life’ it is she was basing this statement on! It was more of a “you are incapable of raising a child, although I know nothing about you” comment to me!

3. I saw that you enjoy scrapbooking. Do you have other hobbies as well?
Oh, I LOVE scrapbooking. My mother’s always been involved in it, and I never showed much interest until I had such an amazing reason to start: remembering my daughter’s first year in words and pictures from my updates. My other hobbies include writing and photography. I took a couple of concentrated photography courses in my first semester of college, but the rest of my experience is very amateur at best. I enjoy doing it, though!

4. I know that you’re not having actual physical visits now. Do you anticipate having them in the future?
I do hope to have them in the future, yes. I don’t have any concrete idea of when, but if her family were to tell me tomorrow that I could drive up to see her, I wouldn’t say no. Her adoptive parents and I have an open discussion about this, and her mom said we can circle back to it any time either of us pleases. Her mom tells me she already talks to her about adoption, and has since the day she brought her home, so there will never be a day when she has some ‘big shocking discovery.’ I hope that she (my daughter) requests visits when she’s a bit older, and I hope her family is comfortable with it if she does. If not, I have faith that it will happen just when it is supposed to happen.

<strong5. Last question: Where do you see your relationship with Arianna and her other parents in 8 years?
In 8 years, she will be 9. I hope that my relationship with her parents is the same as it is now, if not better. We have very open communication, including email, letters directly to one anothers addresses, text messaging, phone calls, and Skype. I pray that our communication is always open and honest and increases rather than decreases. I also hope that her birth father chooses to stay involved (preferably becomes more involved).
As far as my relationship with my daughter goes…if, at that point, we are still not having in-person visits, I hope that she has a good grasp on who I am and knows that I am there for her but never would try to take the place of her mom. I hope she draws me pictures that can be sent to me, and I hope that she and I can Skype with her family (at my daughter’s own will). Simply put, I hope that the amazing relationship I have with her parents can be reflected into and expanded on in the relationship I hope to have with her.

Blessings in Disguise is a pretty great blog. Elizabeth writes well, and with honestly and humor. It was great getting to know her at least a bit. For more interviews, check out the Open Adoption Interview Project at Production Not Reproduction.

Happy Adoption Month

Yesterday was November 1, the beginning of National Adoption Month. As the link says, it’s designed to promote the adoption of children who are currently in foster care (children = ages 0 – 18) and give them stable, permanent homes when reunification with their original family is not possible.

I’ve never done a lot with National Adoption Month on my last blog, and I’m not going to start now. There are, however, some groups who are:

Heather at Open Adoption Bloggers is sponsoring an interview project this month. Keep an eye out for a link to the posts.

M at Sheeps Eating Me is reposting some of her favorite posts every day this month. Including the ever-popular “Jackass Adoption Comments” series.

Even a fiber related link…
The Red Scarf project is to make the transition from foster care to the “real world” a little easier for young adults. They’re accepting knitted or crocheted scarves from now until December 15, 2011.

From the comments this week:

Happy Adoption Awareness Month! As a fellow adoption advocate we thought you would enjoy taking part in Open Portrait, a blog that is painting a portrait of open adoption through photos, videos, and quotes. We would love you to participate and help spread the word! http://www.openportrait.tumblr.com

We are a very ordinary family and are probably not what they’re looking for in a portrait. But you might be, or know someone who would be exactly what they need. Check it out.

I’ve been working on some ornaments for a Ravelry swap at the end of this month too. Once they get sent off, I’ll put up some pictures.

Open Adoption? What’s That? OAB Roundtable #30

When did you first hear about open adoption?

Ironically, when we first heard about open adoption was in our pre-parenting classes at our agency. It seemed interesting; our child would get to know where s/he came from, would be able to meet their first family and get to know them, wouldn’t have to wonder about their “other” parents. Scary, too. I wish I had realized at the time that our agency’s idea of “open adoption” wasn’t really all that open.

They talked about a schedule of pictures and letters, becoming more infrequent as a placed infant grew up, and stopping all together at the age of 5. We did have the option of choosing a different, later age to stop contact, but it was…strongly discouraged. We did it anyway.

When we had The Birthparents section of our pre-placement classes, open adoptions were talked about some more. The first parents on the panel (2 first mothers and a first father) had regular visits with their children and their children’s adoptive parents. They seemed happy about pictures, letters and visits. The visits seemed to be occasional. Only one first parent admitted to still having “baby moments” when she missed her son horribly. But everythinig was working out for the best. (See, look! They’re talking about it! They’re still alive! Things must be okay!)

It turned out that our agency’s “open adoption” was other people’s semi-open. No actual contact without an intermediary (from our agency, of course), no exchange of personally identifying information, even a cell phone in place of contact by land line. Because a land line had a greater chance of Caller ID information leaking out. If it hadn’t been for M, our daughter’s first mother, things would have opened up a lot more slowly.

We have, all of us, learned a lot more about openness in adoption. Some things were good, others not so much. But we’ve learned more since that first day by just jumping in and living.

This is part of the Open Adoption Bloggers Roundtable.

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It’s designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don’t need to be listed at Open Adoption Bloggers to participate or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you’re thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table. The prompts are meant to be starting points–please feel free to adapt or expand on them.