[tldowen]

My DD is 6 1/2 and has always known that she is adopted. I have always tried very hard to be positive and open about it. I want her to feel like she can talk to me about anything. Her birth mother was young (just started college) and her parents really didn't give her much of a choice about the matter. I was told that they told her that they would not help or support her if she kept the baby. She chose us from several families. We wrote her letters and gave her pictures of us. However, she did not want to actually meet us nor keep it touch. I think they were not telling her younger sisters that she was even pregnant. We were not given her last name even though we eventually found out what it was because the hospital was not very discreet. She gave us a picture of her, a video of a sonogram and gave my DD a Keepsake box with a poem engraved in it. My DD keeps this box in her room with her picture inside. Every now and then she will want to take it out and look at it and talk about it. The other day she told some kids at school that she was adopted. Which was just fine. But then, she wanted to take her birthmom picture to school. I just didn't feel right about that. I tried to explain that that was something special and personal and that not everyone in the family had even seen it. Out of respect for her birthmom, I just didn't think that was the thing to do. She did live in our area at one time and now lives in the next state a couple of hours away. (DD doesn't know this) I told her that she could tell them all about how pretty she was and how she had her big blue eyes. When I told her that, she went into hysterics about wanting to see her mother, wanting to go live with her mother, missing her mother. Why can't we find her now? ( This is unusual behavior) I don't know if just not getting her way about the picture instigated all of this, and then she worked herself up into a frenzy.(Which she has done about other things before) I feel like she feels abandoned. I didn't want her feel this way. I am having a hard time remembering that I didn't do anything wrong. I feel guilty for some reason. I want to fix things and make it go away and I can't do that either. Anyway, she wanted to look at pictures of the day she was born and it was me and her daddy holding her in the hospital and after that she was her old self again as if nothing ever happened. Of course for me, I still felt bad the next day. I worry that she is harboring these bad feeling inside or that I haven't done everything possible to make this as easy on her as I can. Any advice??