Tomorrow is a big day in our house. It’s the day the social workers come for the final home visit. After 30 months and a lot of angst and worry if the judge would ever rule us a forever family – this adoption is finally on its way to being permanently legal.

When I last posted about our adoption process we were hoping for the original documents to be filed in the court. They weren’t.

If they couldn’t be found, we’d have to either sign them all over again with the original Independent Adoption Worker (IAW) or start the adoption over from the beginning with a new IAW.

I was expecting... more

Yesterday I felt a flicker of hope. Last night it flamed a bit and I tried to douse it, tried to put it out. I shouldn’t hope things will be smoother than not in our adoption journey. After 30 months of rough and tumble, I should know better. I really should.

If it can take six months or two days, my process will take one year – but I will have hoped for the two days. You see how this works? We are the Murphy’s Law of adoption: If it can go wrong, it will.

The latest drama has been missing paperwork – the original placement paperwork that my son’s birth mom, Jimmy and I signed over two years ago. My son’s adoption can’t finalize until that is found, or until we sign new ones... more

Craig was born on the first day of winter in 2003. A small earthquake on the California coast, about a hundred miles away, heralded his pending arrival. Jimmy and I stood next to my son’s birth mom as she labored and delivered.

I snipped his umbilical cord.

Craig’s birth mom asked to see him and the nurse took him over to her. She took in the features of his sweet face and bundled body and said, “Okay, now take him to his parents.”

We were lead to the hospital nursery. The nurse walked ahead of us. Jimmy and I paused in the hallway, delaying our arrival. I looked at him and he at me, and then we cried. Huge gulping sobs shook me. Until then, I never knew happiness... more

Note: This is the first post in a multi-blogger series with social worker and open adoption blogger Ellen Rardin.

Disbelief. I pressed the phone closer to my ear and said, “Say that again?” The repeated words were the same but I still didn’t understand them. Well, I knew what they meant, but I wasn’t sure why it applied to us.

The lady on the phone said, "Technically, it's considered kidnapping when you take a child out of the county. Which is what you did with Craig when you... more

In the first two installments of this blog, I wrote about a problem I sometimes see in open adoptions: open adoptions that aren't really open but consist of on going correspondence between the birth parent and adoptive parents, correspondence that the adopted child has no knowledge of while it's ongoing.

I think I have made it clear that this is a big mistake. It is calculated to breed distrust between the parent, birth parent and adopted person. It simply defeats the purpose of open adoption.

So why do adoptive parents do this?

It's the snowball effect. Many adoptive parents... more

At least,thats what I hear from many newbies and from the general public. How many myths, misunderstandings or not quite right assumptions do you hear on a daily basis? It's amazing but understandable, since many people who hold these beliefs have limited experience with open adoption relationships. Here's my quick list:

Myth: Open adoption is "co-parenting". Most people are familiar with divorce and custodial arrangements that often don't work well for minor children. They think open adoption must have much the same flavor,two sets of parents who fight, argue and contest endlessly over a child.

The reality: Birthparents make a voluntary decision to place a child for adoption... more