When I started the process to adopt, I was pretty sure I wanted it to be an open adoption. I knew that my future child would get a lot out of knowing his or her birthparents and I hoped that this knowledge would also help them feel secure and loved in their place as an adopted person. I also held the belief that by seeing and knowing my adopted child’s birthparents I would feel less afraid of the unknown things that could stand in the way of being a mom to my child. There would be no invisible, magically perfect person to live up to, or for my child to create fantasies about, just a real human being. At the time it seemed like the best way to go about adoption for everyone involved.

Now that I am an adoptive mom to three beautiful little people, I have an added new perspective. I still think open adoption was the best choice I could have made, but now I am better aware of exactly why. This is not to say that openness does not have it’s difficulties, it does, but I see other pluses that I could not have anticipated before I welcomed my children home.

Before adoption I saw openness as a way to firmly ground the image of my child’s first mother. She would not be a magical imagined mom who would allow all the things “meany me mom” would not. She would be real, flaws and all, to my child.

The thing I did not consider before, is that I have had the chance to really know and appreciate my children’s birthparents as people. I see things that I like about them, that has nothing to do with adoption or a connection to my child. I have come to care about them as friends and not just as a link my child has to his or her heritage.

Before adoption I was told openness was the best thing I could do. I admit I was not always really sure, but I did want to be open because if it was the “best” I could do, then I would not want less for my future child.

Now I understand the being open is no walk in the park. It takes a ton of emotional work, but parenting is just that hard no matter how your child comes to you. I am sure that if we had not pursued openness I would have learned a lot less about how doing what is best for your child sometimes means putting aside what is best for yourself.

Tempting as looking for a closed adoption might have been to my subconscious notion that as a parent I needed to be the center of my child’s world, openness has taught me a lot more about how these children are truly the center of my world.

If we give birth to a child we might have expectations already set about their favoring mom or having a talent just like dad. Adopting a child does not include all those pre-imagined similarities we can judge our children’s progress upon. We might feel frustrated because there is only so much additional molding you can do with someone who has already got a pattern in motion.

Today I appreciate all the many ways I truly can influence and mold my children, and I also understand all the positive ways they will “take after” the blue print their birthparents set in motion. While I know nothing is set in stone, I can be the direction for my kids that I hope to be. I can also benefit from being able to look at one of my children’s birthparents and see parts of my child reflected back. My kids profit from seeing these things too, and in the long run I think it helps them feel confident enough to enjoy the ways that they are also like my husband and myself.

Open adoption, although complex and challenging, I still think it was the best choice for our family.