[Nicksbride]

Hi everyone. I just discovered the forum today and so far, love it! I am a first time mommy. DH and I adopted our beautiful baby girl at birth. She is 4 months old now.

As the thread title suggests, I am looking for some advice / suggestions on establishing healthy boundaries with DD's b-mom. I'll try to keep this post brief - feel free to ask any questions if I need to fill in gaps.....

B-mom just turned 17. She's a very sweet girl, just tends to make bad decisions. Our openness agreement says for the first year I will send pictures once a month, phone calls once a month and visits quarterly. After year 1, pictures and phone calls quarterly, visits every 6 months. She also wants to be included in special occassions. DH and I also have a relationship with DDs b-great grandma - this is our choice; we love her as if she was our own grandma!

So far, phone calls have been about every 2 weeks, visits each month. I'm feeling totally overwhelmed by it. Watching b-mom and hearing her talk, I don't think she has dealt with any of her emotions regarding her choice to place the baby. She has a lot of friends with babies and she is the only one who chose adoption - I think she feels left out if that makes any sense.

I'm sorry; I feel like I'm jumping around. As I said, ask any questions needed to fill in the holes.....

I want to get things in line with our agreement. It doesn't have to be a rigid schedule, just less frequent than it is now. DH and I are in a very busy season of our lives. DD has been a difficult baby - awful reflux and colic until about the last couple of weeks. Looking back, I'm now positive I dealt with PAD during DDs difficult weeks (I SAH most of the time, hubby works a lot of hours - second shift so he missed the worst of the colic....).

B-mom has been let down by most of the adults in her life. I certainly don't want to be added to that list, but at the same time, cannot be responsible for her happiness.

Oh, and in the past, we've had a communication gap between us and b-mom, meaning I say one thing and she hears something else......example: our last visit, b-mom wanted to postpone for another week. I told her we needed to get together as planned because we had a very busy month ahead of us and it would be a few weeks before we could get together again (b-mom doesn't drive so it's up to us to go to her - an hour round trip). She told her grandma that we were trying to let her down easy and we didn't want her to see the baby anymore.

If any of this makes sense, I would appreciate any advice you have to offer....

Blessings,
Nicksbride