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I'm another birthparent in an open adoption. I have a few things that I would like to say.
First, I live over 3000 miles away from my birthdaughter and her family. I am still able to see her a couple times a year. She has also asked her parents if she can come to visit me sometime and they are talking about making a family vacation out of the trip. Someday. Anyway, the distance has not caused us to lose touch with each other or stop communicating. We probably talk on the phone, e-mail or write about once a month.
Second, I am the birthparent of their older child. When they were trying to adopt a second time, I asked them what kind of openness they were hoping for. They told me that before they adopted the first time, all they cared about was getting a baby. They didn't really have any strong preferences about how much openness they had. The baby was the important part. The second time, they knew how great an open adoption could work out and they told me they weren't willing to accept anything less for their second child. They didn't want to have one child with an involved birthparent and the other without one. They even said that if they felt a match wouldn't work out well (meaning they would have their second baby but not have a good relationship with the second birthparents) they did not want to adopt that child. I was shocked when they told me that. Openness is truly so important to them now that they would rather only have one child with an open adoption than two children with only one that is open.
So, the story continues with the family being chosen by another pair of birthparents. Although their relationship with that set of birthparents isn't the same as their relationship with me, both relationships are open, respectful and healthy. Both of the children know about adoption and birthparents. The two situations are definately not the same, but they are both working well.
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