With my birthson’s birthday clicking approaching, I will be doing some posts regarding birthdays in open adoptions.

One of the things that birthmoms involved in open adoptions are typically able to do is give our birthchildren gifts at birthdays, Christmas, and other intervals throughout the years. It may seem like something small and un-important, but as mothers, it’s something we think about and are glad we are able to do for our children.

Charlie’s birthday, September 20th, is quickly approaching and I don’t have a gift in mind yet.

Typically for birthdays, I give him one sentimental gift and then a fun, playful gift. The sentimental gift for his first birthday was a small, blue new testament Bible with his name engraved on the outside. Then I wrote that it was to him from his birthmother and on his first birthday and wrote one of my favorite verses on the inside cover. It is something that I hope will mean a lot to him one day when he is older. Another year, the sentimental gift was the adoption book Never Never Will She Stop Loving You: The Adoption Love Story of Angel Annie. I wrote a special inscription in the front of the book. As Charlie gets older, the sentimental gifts for a boy get harder. For a girl, you could always give them a small piece of jewelry to hang on to or other keepsake items but with a boy as each year comes along, I find coming up with sentimental, meaningful gift items harder and harder.

For Christmas, I give Charlie and his sister each a Christmas ornament and then a more fun, age appropriate gift as well. I really like the ornament tradition. It’s something that they now know to look forward too and when they are grown up and leave home, they can take these ornaments with them and will already have some ornaments for their collection that increases over the years. A lot of times, I make the ornaments, and for two of the four years, I’ve incorporated pictures into the ornament so the ornament displayed a picture of me and Charlie from a visit during that year.

Regardless of what the gift is, it’s just nice to be able to spend birthdays and holidays with him and be able to give him his gifts in person. One of the positives of open adoption.