Always with the hard questions! I must have answered the second part of your question three times before I settled on what I’m posting, and I’m still not happy with the answer.

What surprised me most about adopting… That’s a really tough one. I think I was prepared for it to take significantly longer than it did to develop a relationship and feel entirely comfortable with Dictator’s birthparents, so it was surprising to find that within a few weeks, they felt like old friends and that within a few months, they felt like family. I am still surprised by how many people have negative opinions about adoption (or about our adoption and related choices), but then again, there are jerks everywhere, so I shouldn’t let people surprise me…

The one thing I’d tell people who are on the fence about open adoption? Don’t do it. If you’ve done the research and talked to people involved in all sides of open adoption and you’re still on the fence, do. not. do. it.

Does that sound harsh?

What I mean is, if you’re anything less than wholly accepting of the idea that an open adoption means contact between your family and your child’s birthparents, then open adoption is not for you. Scratch that – it’s more than acceptance; it’s about actually desiring ongoing contact with your child’s birthparents. If the “open” part of an open adoption is just something you’ll just “deal” with in order to have a baby, think long and hard before entering that arrangement.

Of course, this is the same thing I would say someone who was on the fence about having a baby at all – don’t do it until you’re sure. Someone on Tumblr once shared this analogy: Having a baby is like having a giant face tattoo; you’d better be 100% sure that you’re ready to live with it for the rest of your life. Same goes for open adoption; not only are you inviting a child into your home, but also his birthmother (at least) or birth families (if you’re lucky). You’d better be sure you’re willing to live with those extra people and the ramifications of having them in your life before you invite them into it.

BUT – if you’re on the fence and you’ve yet to do research or talk to people involved in open adoptions, make sure you take those steps first, because ultimately, open adoption? So worth it.

Today is the last day of National Adoption Awareness Month – Ask me anything! Or read what I’ve already written about adoption.

Hi! Thanks for the follow!

Let me first say that you need support. If only a few people know about your pregnancy and adoption plan, make sure that those people are the kind that will support you throughout the entire process. It’s hard, which I’m sure you know already, and I don’t think it’s healthy to go it alone or with people who are not supportive of your choices.

My advice from an openness perspective is this: Know what you want, know your motivations for what you want, ask for it, and find people who feel the same way.

I highly recommend finding an agency or a lawyer who understands what you want and who supports open adoption, one that is willing to show you multiple files so that you can find prospective adoptive parents who you can see yourself building a lifelong relationship with.

Then once you’ve found them, get to know them.

Ask questions.

Find out what they want in an open adoption.

Basically – date.

If you find that open adoption means different things to each of you, walk away. If you don’t think you could spend the rest of your life with these people in it, walk away. Don’t feel obligated to go with the first people you meet, but don’t string them along if you’re not sure, either. The right adoptive family for you and your baby exists; you just have to find them.

Once you’ve established your level of contact and the placement is complete, reach out, but respect boundaries. This isn’t a one-way street in any regard, so make sure they respect your boundaries, too. Treat each other well; you’re in this together and for the long haul, and the way you treat each other will determine how good your relationship is for the rest of your lives.

Good luck.

It’s National Adoption Awareness Month. Ask me anything!

Lucky you… I’m guessing by the grammar that it’s one person, and I think I know who this particular douchebag is. I honestly don’t know why I keep answering her questions, except that they usually make her look more like an asshat than they make me feel bad, so… Is that particularly small of me? Probably. Do I care? Not much. (Maybe I’m the douchebag.)

Thank you for your kind words. It would kind of horrify me to think that people actually felt that I thought I was better than anyone for having adopted (I don’t much care about the opinion of one asshat anon).

If we did adopt again, yes, we would absolutely seek the same level of contact. It would devastate me to adopt another child and have him wonder why his birthparents are less involved than his sister’s, because no matter how well we manage it, that’s going to affect his self-worth. It just will.

This is actually the main reason we’re unlikely to adopt again – we recognize that we have an exceptional relationship with Dictator’s birthparents, and I don’t believe that we’d ever find that again. Could we insist on it? Sure, but who wants to fight for a relationship when one party isn’t interested in it? I can’t imagine how exhausting that would be, and how unnatural it would feel for everyone involved.

This does make me curious about those who have adopted multiple children (or adoptees with multiple siblings) – do your children all have similar contact with their birthparents? If not, how does this affect your kids (does it affect your kids)? How do you deal with their feelings about that?

It’s National Adoption Awareness Month. Ask me anything!

If you can’t tell already, I’m kind of an open book!

Like a lot of people, I always knew I wanted children, but I never gave much thought to how they would come into my life. Had I loved a man who could produce kids, I’d probably have gotten knocked up a few times by now; but I didn’t. I love a man who knew from a very early age that it was extraordinarily unlikely that he would ever have biological children, so when we were ready to have kids, we had a few options: the usual invasive procedures, donor sperm or adoption.

I had a very hard time considering donor sperm, even though the Husband was perfectly fine with it. I wanted a child that was equally “ours” – either biologically 100% us or biologically 0% us. I think I was afraid that the Husband might feel disconnected from a child that wasn’t “his” if we went with donor sperm and my eggs. (I’ve since realized how stupid that fear was, and we were actually reconsidering donor insemination shortly before we got the call that Dictator’s birthparents wanted to meet us.)

We were never interested in IVF. There was no guarantee that it would work and we didn’t want to spend that kind of money on procedures that might be fruitless. Besides, biological children just weren’t that important to us.

But adoption – adoption sounded perfect to us. It’s relatively inexpensive where we live, the wait times didn’t turn us off completely, and while we were waiting, we weren’t going to be constantly schlepping to the doctor’s office, dealing with hormones, etc. Adoption didn’t address my desire to be pregnant, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t about bearing children; it was about raising them.

I talk about this a little bit here, but I think that because we always knew that the Husband wasn’t likely to produce kids, we had a head start on considering other options; it wasn’t a giant shocker one day after trying for ages to conceive. We’d had a long time to consider how we would start our family (we were 18 when we started dating, and he shared with me early on that he couldn’t have kids), so I think we’d kind of made our decision well before we really had to.  

It’s National Adoption Awareness Month. Ask me anything!

Then we’ll add it to all the other things we’re bound to screw up in this fake-it-till-you-make-it role of parenthood, because let’s face it - we haven’t got a bloody clue whether we’re doing anything right. 

That said, we believe that having a relationship with her birthparents will ultimately be healthier for Dictator than simply knowing she’s adopted but not knowing where she came from. We’re doing what we think is best for her, and if that screws her up in the end, we’ll pay the therapy bills. 

But I don’t think this is what she’ll be talking to her therapist about (we’ll give her much more fodder for that, I’m sure!), because this is just her reality. This is her family, and although it’s different from “traditional” families, I’m really not sure what’s traditional anymore.

By the way, there’s nothing fake about me, so go easy on phrases like “real parents”, okay? 

It’s National Adoption Awareness Month. Ask me anything!