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Originally Posted by blessedbybug
I've often wondered if we as those parenting through adoption project things on ourselves that have nothing to do with us. What a first/birth/natural/life/other mother decides to call herself really has nothing to do with me and my place as mother in the life of the child she chose to place in my family, does it? Just because she feels like she wants to be referred to in a specific way does not change who I am in the life of our child.
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You are right...and yet as it turns out I was justified in being concerned. My thinking was that all of the negativity surrounding adoption - and there is a lot of negativity out there - was somehow affecting how T felt about herself and about me. One of my biggest fears having an open adoption is that when DS is old enough to be rebellious, T might encourage that rather than siding with and supporting us as his parents. Knowing her as well as I do, I don't think that will happen - she's really a sensible person, and supports us wholeheartedly at the moment. But what if she did start to regret her decision? What if she got to a place where people convinced her she would have been a better parent and should have kept him? Would that affect how she interacts with DS later on?
When DH read her e-mail, his first question to me was, "She doesn't still have any legal rights here, does she?" So it had us both concerned along the same vein. As it turns out, T has been communicating with some first moms who are very bitter and resentful. Some are in "open adoptions" where the adoptive parents have cut off contact, so many of these women are distrustful of all adoptive families. Fortunately, T isn't easily influenced. But we did talk some things out. The label thing isn't a huge deal to me - I do have trouble with natural mom b/c of the other implications, but T understands that and is perfectly fine with first mom, and I'm transitioning over to that term just fine. It was the possible underlying issues that concerned me from the beginning, and it really just boiled down to communication.
It's appalling how much negative information on adoption is out there. I only hope the positive information is equally convincing.