As Mother’s Day approached, I (Katie – CEO/Founder of Purl) tried unsuccessfully to get this blog post up. I struggled to organize my thoughts about my own insecurity with my own motherhood through adoption and how that related to my fears of open adoption. While it has been relatively easy for me to share my other mistakes in my adoption journey, this was one area that was especially hard for me. Maybe it was due to embarrassment, but after the 10th draft, here are my still scrambled thoughts… The mistake I’m discussing today centered around my own insecurity about the role of “Mother”, and how that impacted my adoption journey and even the early years of my child’s open adoption.
Mother’s Day and my difficulties becoming a mother
Mother’s Day had always been a hard holiday for me, as I know it is for so many people for so many different reasons. I had wanted to be a mom for a long time, but it took me a long time to find my person, and I was 37 when I got married. I knew I had endometriosis, so we immediately discussed both fertility treatments and adoption and decided we wanted to try and grow our family both ways. We decided to do one round of in vitro fertilization (“IVF”) since we felt my clock was ticking, then decided we would go full speed ahead into adoption if that one round wasn’t successful. We completed our first round of IVF a few weeks before Mother’s Day. It was unsuccessful and I was still reeling from how hard the process was on my body. I had been a mess emotionally during the process due to all the hormones, had gained so much weight, and had overstimulated during the process, which likely made me feel even worse than I would have. What began as an exciting experience when they had retrieved 17 eggs resulted in not one embryo making it past day 3. Afterwards, our doctor convinced us to try one more round of IVF (also unsuccessful), but I knew adoption was my next focus. I was excited about it, and I honestly didn’t view it as a second-best option. But I also didn’t know much about adoption besides my own extended family’s experiences, which all seemed positive. But that Mother Day was rough, and I left my church’s service before the sermon was done as I couldn’t bear to hear the pastor talk about mothers when I wasn’t yet one.
What we thought we wanted in adoption
When we first started the adoption process, my husband and I believed we wanted a “semi-open” adoption, which is typically described as a sharing of at least some sharing of information between the the birth parents and the adoptive parents, typically with pictures and letter updates for the course of the child’s life to the age they turn 18. It usually involves meeting the expectant parent(s) around the birth and before they sign consents to the adoption, but it typically does not include visits post-placement. Even that level of openness was a little difficult for my extended family to understand at the time, as all of them had seen closed adoptions in their international and even domestic adoption experiences. I believed I wanted my child’s birth parents to know their child was happy and safe, and I was happy to provide letters and updates as desired. I was cautious about visits (also stemming from my fear of open adoption), but told the Adoption Professionals we worked with that I was open to considering them. I believed that an adoption would stay the way it was described in the summary, I didn’t fathom that an expectant mother might change what she wanted as far as openness over time.
I was very scared of a “co-parenting” type of situation, which was erroneously how I viewed very open adoptions. So we were cautious not to present to expectant moms that seemed like they wanted a very open adoption. I believe I even said a phrase I hear often from prospective adoptive parents, “open adoption seems like it would be confusing for the child”, and “I’m just nervous about it feeling like co-parenting.” And I definitely was opposed to using a term like “Mama ___” or some other reference to “mother” when speaking about my child’s birth parents.
Our own adoption journey started to change my view
As I’ve talked about previously, our adoption journey was quick, but full of high highs, and low lows. We got chosen by an expectant mother within a few days of being certified to adopt, but after a tumultuous two month match, that adoption disrupted after we spent a few days in the hospital with a baby boy. We had gotten very close to the expectant mother during the match and we expected that openness would likely continue in some manner, but had also seen a lifestyle and behaviors that scared us, making me have even more fears about open adoption than it had been when we begun the process. I’ll save our own adoption journey of our daughter for her to share when she’d like, I’ll just say that it was unclear what post-adoption contact would be like at the time of my child’s birth, and I was admittedly uneducated, unprepared and fearful about how to actually do open adoption.
During those first few years as a mom, I loved my role as mother, and loved my child with all my heart. But with the benefit of hindsight, I believe I was insecure of my role and fearful of making sure I was always seen as “Mom”. I think this factored into how I viewed openness. When our adoption opened up a bit more organically, I still guarded my role as mother and continued to so for those first few years. I was still cautious about sharing our last name, our address, or any identifying information about us, even though she had trusted us to raise her daughter and she had never done anything to make it seem like she didn’t respect us as her parents. She had trusted us to make all the tough parenting choices, yet I was the one that was still scared about sharing really any access to HER CHILD with her. I had learned firsthand that this was not co-parenting by any stretch of the imagination, the decisions and the hard work of mom all came down to me. I was the one getting up in the middle of the night, doing breathing treatments with her for her asthma, making decisions about sleeping, eating, vaccinating, where would she go to school. No amount of openness was going to change that this hard role of mom was mine – a role that I cherished. So why was I still afraid of open adoption?
I always did more by way of updating and contact than was required under our contact agreement, but I admittedly still didn’t let my internal walls down initially. I was always careful to just call her by her name, rather than “confusing” my daughter with what type of “mom” she might be. I think I was holding on to this mom title for myself out of my own insecurity. Initially, we did not put pictures up of our child’s birth family in our home, and I’m not sure I’d shown her pictures of her with her birth mother until much later than I would care to admit. The openness of our adoption at first was just between myself and my child’s birth mother, and not between her and my child. I think I told myself this was enough because I was gaining more information about her that I could share with my child. Deep down I think I was scared that by letting her in too much, letting her have the direct contact, I might somehow undermine my own role of mom. When I began to feel my child’s desire to know her birth mother more and more directly, I felt myself change completely. Seeing firsthand my child’s confusion about the reality of adoption is what ultimately helped my walls came down. I saw myself then yearn for more open relationship for my child, so she could get the answers to real-time questions about herself and her biological family. I was excited then that my child could hear for herself that she is loved by her birth family, rather than just relying upon me sharing that with her. It led to an adoption that is much more open than I expected at the time we presented to her, yet it always ebbs and flows over time.
Adoption is confusing for a child, not open adoption…
The reality is that open adoption isn’t confusing for a child, adoption is confusing for a child! It is just a hard topic and something every adoptee is likely to struggle with in some way during their childhood, whether it is big or small. You as their parent need to give them space and time to process that confusion, and make sure they know they can feel those conflicting feelings around their adoption, even if it may hurt your feelings and your own role as mom. If you’re insecure, if you’re afraid to talk about their birth family or to allow contact, they will absolutely know it and may then keep those feelings to themselves instead. So start when they are young, start practicing weaving in the information you know about their birth family a young age, so it is not so awkward for you when they are old enough to understand. Whether it is an open adoption or not, they may need and get to process those feelings while having contact with their birth family, or you may just be giving them space to process the little information they have due to a closed adoption. It isn’t easy to sit in that discomfort, but it is possible, but you may have to break through your own insecurities to do what is best for your child. Know too, that open adoption isn’t always easy, and at times it might stir up sadness in your child, but please don’t just stop at the first sign of that, your child may just need to process the difficulties of adoption.
How I feel now about open adoption
Today, my feelings on open adoption are very different than they were during my own adoption journey. I have a lot of regrets about my early feelings and fears, and I am now adamant that I believe some level of open adoption is what best for the child. It isn’t always possible, and it isn’t always wanted by the birth parents, so there are ways that you can create some level of openness for your child even without direct contact. Even if that is just giving space to talk about what their birth family might be like, discussing who they might get their physical characteristics from, praying for them in your nightly prayers, looking through the baby book or adoption book you created with the information you have on their birth family and adoption story or planting a flower or tree for them on your child’s or birth parent’s birthday. If your adoption is closed, but you do know any information about your child’s birth family, share it with your child at age appropriate times, don’t be afraid to talk about your child’s birth family. This will give them the comfort to talk to you about how they are feeling, and not just shut it inside to protect you or what they think you will feel about those conversations.
Open adoption may make other people uncomfortable, even when you no longer are
I know this can be a hard topic to grasp for those that haven’t experienced it directly, and the people in your life that you care about or care about you may not understand it. But just know that I was once very scared of open adoption, and my views changed dramatically over the course of my own adoption journey and early years of parenting. But I also understand the fear prospective adoptive parents may have, because I had it too. But I can tell you now that letting your child’s birth family in does not undermine your role as mom. There is room for both of you. There is enough love for both of you. You supporting your child through an open adoption is the best thing you can do. You creating openness even where you don’t have it is better for your child. Once again you need to center your child, rather than center your own feelings. And you may need to block out other people’s views about what is best for your child, especially people not as familiar with adoption.
At my daughters’ Mother’s Day chapel service this past week, the school invited all the mothers and grandmothers to attend and listen to their children sing songs they had practiced. There was also a short sermon where the Chaplain said that “Mother” is also a verb and what it really means is “to do something you may not want to do [get up in the middle of the night, clean up a poopy diaper, etc.] because of the love you have for your child.” Even if you aren’t yet in a space to want to do open adoption, know that it may be something you may feel differently about in the future and something you may need to embrace due to the love you have for your child. I promise that it is not as scary as it may feel now, and it will make sense when you’ve opened that door!
If you feel like you have fears about open adoption and need more education in your domestic infant adoption journey we hope that you will consider the support of an adoption advisor like Purl. If you’re interested in scheduling a free consultation, click here.
As Mother’s Day approached, I (Katie – CEO/Founder of Purl) tried unsuccessfully to get this blog post up. I struggled to organize my thoughts about my own insecurity with my own motherhood through adoption and how that related to my fears of open adoption. While it has been relatively easy for me to share my other mistakes in my adoption journey, this was one area that was especially hard for me. Maybe it was due to embarrassment, but after the 10th draft, here are my still scrambled thoughts… The mistake I’m discussing today centered around my own insecurity about the role of “Mother”, and how that impacted my adoption journey and even the early years of my child’s open adoption.
Mother’s Day and my difficulties becoming a mother
Mother’s Day had always been a hard holiday for me, as I know it is for so many people for so many different reasons. I had wanted to be a mom for a long time, but it took me a long time to find my person, and I was 37 when I got married. I knew I had endometriosis, so we immediately discussed both fertility treatments and adoption and decided we wanted to try and grow our family both ways. We decided to do one round of in vitro fertilization (“IVF”) since we felt my clock was ticking, then decided we would go full speed ahead into adoption if that one round wasn’t successful. We completed our first round of IVF a few weeks before Mother’s Day. It was unsuccessful and I was still reeling from how hard the process was on my body. I had been a mess emotionally during the process due to all the hormones, had gained so much weight, and had overstimulated during the process, which likely made me feel even worse than I would have. What began as an exciting experience when they had retrieved 17 eggs resulted in not one embryo making it past day 3. Afterwards, our doctor convinced us to try one more round of IVF (also unsuccessful), but I knew adoption was my next focus. I was excited about it, and I honestly didn’t view it as a second-best option. But I also didn’t know much about adoption besides my own extended family’s experiences, which all seemed positive. But that Mother Day was rough, and I left my church’s service before the sermon was done as I couldn’t bear to hear the pastor talk about mothers when I wasn’t yet one.
What we thought we wanted in adoption
When we first started the adoption process, my husband and I believed we wanted a “semi-open” adoption, which is typically described as a sharing of at least some sharing of information between the the birth parents and the adoptive parents, typically with pictures and letter updates for the course of the child’s life to the age they turn 18. It usually involves meeting the expectant parent(s) around the birth and before they sign consents to the adoption, but it typically does not include visits post-placement. Even that level of openness was a little difficult for my extended family to understand at the time, as all of them had seen closed adoptions in their international and even domestic adoption experiences. I believed I wanted my child’s birth parents to know their child was happy and safe, and I was happy to provide letters and updates as desired. I was cautious about visits (also stemming from my fear of open adoption), but told the Adoption Professionals we worked with that I was open to considering them. I believed that an adoption would stay the way it was described in the summary, I didn’t fathom that an expectant mother might change what she wanted as far as openness over time.
I was very scared of a “co-parenting” type of situation, which was erroneously how I viewed very open adoptions. So we were cautious not to present to expectant moms that seemed like they wanted a very open adoption. I believe I even said a phrase I hear often from prospective adoptive parents, “open adoption seems like it would be confusing for the child”, and “I’m just nervous about it feeling like co-parenting.” And I definitely was opposed to using a term like “Mama ___” or some other reference to “mother” when speaking about my child’s birth parents.
Our own adoption journey started to change my view
As I’ve talked about previously, our adoption journey was quick, but full of high highs, and low lows. We got chosen by an expectant mother within a few days of being certified to adopt, but after a tumultuous two month match, that adoption disrupted after we spent a few days in the hospital with a baby boy. We had gotten very close to the expectant mother during the match and we expected that openness would likely continue in some manner, but had also seen a lifestyle and behaviors that scared us, making me have even more fears about open adoption than it had been when we begun the process. I’ll save our own adoption journey of our daughter for her to share when she’d like, I’ll just say that it was unclear what post-adoption contact would be like at the time of my child’s birth, and I was admittedly uneducated, unprepared and fearful about how to actually do open adoption.
During those first few years as a mom, I loved my role as mother, and loved my child with all my heart. But with the benefit of hindsight, I believe I was insecure of my role and fearful of making sure I was always seen as “Mom”. I think this factored into how I viewed openness. When our adoption opened up a bit more organically, I still guarded my role as mother and continued to so for those first few years. I was still cautious about sharing our last name, our address, or any identifying information about us, even though she had trusted us to raise her daughter and she had never done anything to make it seem like she didn’t respect us as her parents. She had trusted us to make all the tough parenting choices, yet I was the one that was still scared about sharing really any access to HER CHILD with her. I had learned firsthand that this was not co-parenting by any stretch of the imagination, the decisions and the hard work of mom all came down to me. I was the one getting up in the middle of the night, doing breathing treatments with her for her asthma, making decisions about sleeping, eating, vaccinating, where would she go to school. No amount of openness was going to change that this hard role of mom was mine – a role that I cherished. So why was I still afraid of open adoption?
I always did more by way of updating and contact than was required under our contact agreement, but I admittedly still didn’t let my internal walls down initially. I was always careful to just call her by her name, rather than “confusing” my daughter with what type of “mom” she might be. I think I was holding on to this mom title for myself out of my own insecurity. Initially, we did not put pictures up of our child’s birth family in our home, and I’m not sure I’d shown her pictures of her with her birth mother until much later than I would care to admit. The openness of our adoption at first was just between myself and my child’s birth mother, and not between her and my child. I think I told myself this was enough because I was gaining more information about her that I could share with my child. Deep down I think I was scared that by letting her in too much, letting her have the direct contact, I might somehow undermine my own role of mom. When I began to feel my child’s desire to know her birth mother more and more directly, I felt myself change completely. Seeing firsthand my child’s confusion about the reality of adoption is what ultimately helped my walls came down. I saw myself then yearn for more open relationship for my child, so she could get the answers to real-time questions about herself and her biological family. I was excited then that my child could hear for herself that she is loved by her birth family, rather than just relying upon me sharing that with her. It led to an adoption that is much more open than I expected at the time we presented to her, yet it always ebbs and flows over time.
Adoption is confusing for a child, not open adoption…
The reality is that open adoption isn’t confusing for a child, adoption is confusing for a child! It is just a hard topic and something every adoptee is likely to struggle with in some way during their childhood, whether it is big or small. You as their parent need to give them space and time to process that confusion, and make sure they know they can feel those conflicting feelings around their adoption, even if it may hurt your feelings and your own role as mom. If you’re insecure, if you’re afraid to talk about their birth family or to allow contact, they will absolutely know it and may then keep those feelings to themselves instead. So start when they are young, start practicing weaving in the information you know about their birth family a young age, so it is not so awkward for you when they are old enough to understand. Whether it is an open adoption or not, they may need and get to process those feelings while having contact with their birth family, or you may just be giving them space to process the little information they have due to a closed adoption. It isn’t easy to sit in that discomfort, but it is possible, but you may have to break through your own insecurities to do what is best for your child. Know too, that open adoption isn’t always easy, and at times it might stir up sadness in your child, but please don’t just stop at the first sign of that, your child may just need to process the difficulties of adoption.
How I feel now about open adoption
Today, my feelings on open adoption are very different than they were during my own adoption journey. I have a lot of regrets about my early feelings and fears, and I am now adamant that I believe some level of open adoption is what best for the child. It isn’t always possible, and it isn’t always wanted by the birth parents, so there are ways that you can create some level of openness for your child even without direct contact. Even if that is just giving space to talk about what their birth family might be like, discussing who they might get their physical characteristics from, praying for them in your nightly prayers, looking through the baby book or adoption book you created with the information you have on their birth family and adoption story or planting a flower or tree for them on your child’s or birth parent’s birthday. If your adoption is closed, but you do know any information about your child’s birth family, share it with your child at age appropriate times, don’t be afraid to talk about your child’s birth family. This will give them the comfort to talk to you about how they are feeling, and not just shut it inside to protect you or what they think you will feel about those conversations.
Open adoption may make other people uncomfortable, even when you no longer are
I know this can be a hard topic to grasp for those that haven’t experienced it directly, and the people in your life that you care about or care about you may not understand it. But just know that I was once very scared of open adoption, and my views changed dramatically over the course of my own adoption journey and early years of parenting. But I also understand the fear prospective adoptive parents may have, because I had it too. But I can tell you now that letting your child’s birth family in does not undermine your role as mom. There is room for both of you. There is enough love for both of you. You supporting your child through an open adoption is the best thing you can do. You creating openness even where you don’t have it is better for your child. Once again you need to center your child, rather than center your own feelings. And you may need to block out other people’s views about what is best for your child, especially people not as familiar with adoption.
At my daughters’ Mother’s Day chapel service this past week, the school invited all the mothers and grandmothers to attend and listen to their children sing songs they had practiced. There was also a short sermon where the Chaplain said that “Mother” is also a verb and what it really means is “to do something you may not want to do [get up in the middle of the night, clean up a poopy diaper, etc.] because of the love you have for your child.” Even if you aren’t yet in a space to want to do open adoption, know that it may be something you may feel differently about in the future and something you may need to embrace due to the love you have for your child. I promise that it is not as scary as it may feel now, and it will make sense when you’ve opened that door!
If you feel like you have fears about open adoption and need more education in your domestic infant adoption journey we hope that you will consider the support of an adoption advisor like Purl. If you’re interested in scheduling a free consultation, click here.
