If you read the title, you might be thinking I am really confused. How in the world can choosing an open adoption relationship be a way that adoptive parents retain power and control? Most people feel that adoptive parents are actually surrendering so much of their control when they allow birthparents into their lives on a daily basis. I admit at times I feel like I have less control over my life than I might if birthfamily were not so intensely involved, but then I heard something crazy, on a t.v. show, and I began to look a bit closer at my motivations... more

Do you allow yourself to express and experience the emotions you are feeling as a birthmother or do you try and hold them all inside?

There have been times in my life since becoming a birthmother when things are very overwhelming emotionally and sometimes instead of allowing myself to experience what I was feeling, I’d push it away. I would tell myself to be strong, thinking that crying and the other emotions I would be feeling pertaining to adoption were signs of weakness or perhaps even signs that I made the wrong decision. So, I’d hold all those emotions... more

When I tell people that I am a birthmother or when I am talking with women who are pregnant and considering adoption, one of the most common questions I hear is, “Do you regret placing your child for adoption?”

On the surface, you’d probably think that this question has a simple yes or no answer. But it doesn’t! In fact, the answer is pretty complicated. I’m sure the answer and thinking process regarding regrets different from birthmother to birthmother, but here is how I look at it….

Do I regret that I did the best thing for Charlie at... more

Do you ever have days where you do not want to even think about adoption at all? Are there days when you just want to run and hide from the adoption world? I’m guessing some of you have probably felt this way before.

I sometimes feel this way. It’s especially hard for me since so much of life is wrapped up in my involvement in the adoption community so it’s not like I can easily escape it. Especially when I am writing about it daily! All of my “work” (some pays, some doesn’t) revolves around adoption. I sometimes try to keep it “professional”... more

I have always said that for me personally the first year of being a birthmother was the hardest and that with the exception of some of the bigger days, such as Christmas, birthdays, and Mother’s Day, that being a birthmother in the years after the first year is not as difficult as that first year.

Recently however, a fellow birthmother and friend made a very good point that I have been pondering over lately.

Does it really get easier or do we just learn how to cope better?

Ya, know that is a really good question and I am... more

Sometimes when I think of Charlie and I am missing him, I am especially missing the little baby newborn version of him that I spent three days with in the hospital, not the wild, rambunctious almost six year old he has become today.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t love who he is today because I do. (Lots and lots!) But those three days in the hospital, he felt like he was all “mine.” I hadn’t signed the relinquishment papers yet and I was his mother; just his mother, without the “birth” part in front of it. But then, I signed those papers and gave a... more

Jenna’s recent wedding series in the Birth/First Parent Blog and the recent marathon of wedding related television shows on the Style Network have the subject of weddings on my brain. I’m not thinking of my own wedding (although it was lovely) but I’m thinking of a wedding that will take place one day far, far in the future. I’m thinking of the day that Charlie will be all grown up and will stand before his friends, family, and God and vow his love and devotion to a beautiful bride.

I’ve... more

In this short series on interfamily adoptions, I shared with you the story of one birthmother whose parents adopted her daughter. Today, I’d like to share the story of two sisters; one sister adopted the other sister’s baby. I recently had the opportunity to ask the birthmother in this interfamily adoption a few questions.

There are eight years between sisters M and A with A. being the... more

Right now some people would probably term our middle child’s “open adoption” as officially closed, I however do not see it that way. We have closed nothing, and we remain continually open to all the possibilities of open adoption, just as we have from the first. Our own input into the relationship is all we ever had, and continue to have control over.

Our family made the commitment to our child’s birthfamily to remain assessable for them, and we remain available.... more

No I am not a birthparent. I never found myself facing the difficult decision of placing a child with another family for adoption, but I have found myself on the side of adoption loss, and unfortunatly more than once in my life. For me there was no decision afforded me, no choice in the matter, so I really do empathize with birthparents who have relinquished feeling like they had no control, I really do.

You see I am a birthfamily member, an Aunt to several children of my middle brother, all placed in closed adoptions. As awful as it is... more