[elledarcy]

I need to know if I am overreacting and being too panicky about some of the things that are happening in the early stages of our new open adoption. I am a first time mom (and amom, obviously) so all this is new to me and I'm not sure if I'm blowing things out of proportion.

My DH and I adopted our DD at birth and she is now three months old. We agreed to do monthly visits with for the first six months after placement, which we have been doing. The first two visits were great, but our DD's baptism and the last visit have brought up some issues.

When DD was born, all three of us -- me, my DH, and bmom (named J) -- agreed that our DD would have the first name E (which we chose) and the middle name L (which her bmom liked). We thought this was a nice way to honor both families. This is also the name J chose to place on her birth certificate. We also agreed that J would go by her first name unless she/we/E thought of something better down the road.

For E's baptism, her birthmom wrote her a nice little note in a card and signed it "Love, Mom." I was kind of hurt because she had previously told me that she did not feel comfortable having E call her "Mom" and I agreed that I would like to be called "Mom."

Our DD's bgrandma also attended and also wrote a nice little note, but mentioned in it that some members of the birthfamily do not call E by her first name, they call her by her middle name (the name her bmom would have given her had she chose to parent), L. This fact also came up on our last visit a few times and I responded by saying, "why would they call her L?" J said, "because that was the name I was going to give her... I tell them her name is E, but they don't listen to me."

The final thing that came up was my sister-in-law telling me that she heard that DD's bdad had been invited to the baptism. I told her that we had never met him, so we couldn't invite him, but she assured me that she had talked to J at the party who told her that she asked him to come, but he didn't want to. We have asked her not to contact bdad with specific information about us as we would like to maintain some privacy. We told her that if he was also interested in being open with us, he could contact the agency and we could all meet to discuss that option.

I am concerned because it feels like bmom is not respecting the fact that we are E's parents. She (or at least her family) wants to call her by the name she likes, and she wants to invite bdad to our events, and she wants to be called “Mom.” I know it's early yet and I know this is extremely difficult for her, but I am starting to think that if she cannot respect these simple limits that we probably won't be able to have the kind of open relationship we all wanted.

DH and I think the best thing to do is to talk to her about our concerns at our next visit. We feel like it will be best to tell her how we feel and set some boundaries. But, I also don't want to hurt her feelings or be like, "we're E’s parents, not you!" But I feel like if we don't say something now then the whole relationship is just going to sour over time.

Am I overreacting? Should we talk to her or just let it go and hope things get better?