[_LeAnn_]

I need advice from bmom's. I'm an amom whose daughter will be 2 years old in Nov. My husband and I have had her since she was born (I was even in the room with bmom delivered). Since then bmom has seen her a handful of times with the times between visits getting longer and longer. We have no legal/binding OA agreement. I email updates and both bparents have access to pictures of DD online.

Lately, I feel like there needs to be more contact. Am I being weird? too pushy? It's been over six months since bmom saw her and well over a year since bdad saw her (the two are no longer a couple).

I'm worried that my daughter may blame me for not pushing for more contact.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[SchmennaLeigh]

Have you asked her why so much time has passed? We can all sit here and create reasons but if you haven't actually said, "What's going on with the length of time between visits," to her, then you're wasting even more time between visits. Send a heartfelt email tonight. You will have put the ball in her court at that point and she will be responsible for replying honestly.

[melalex]

I am a birth mother considering an open adoption. I think you need to discuss with your daughter's birth mother why there has been so much time between visits & if she has a sincere interest in being part of her daughter's life. Especially if the child knows that this is her birth mother, it is not good for the child to have this person in & out of her life with no consistency. I do not believe that you are asking too much. The birth mother & you simply need to discuss your concerns & birth mother needs to decide if & how much she truly wants to be in this child's life.

[Emberbit]

The daughter that I placed for adoption is 18 months old. Her parents live less than an hour drive away from me so visits are easy to arrange. I've only gone more than 8 weeks without a visit once. Want to know what happened?

I waited for R's mom to suggest a visit because I didn't want to intrude or seem pushy. They always say I'm not pushy and that it's okay to want to visit and to just call but I don't want to be a bother to them. R's mom was waiting for me to suggest a visit because even though she wanted an open adoption, she knew that visits were hard for me and she didn't want to seem pushy or make things more difficult by wanting visits more often than I did.

We talked and got it mostly sorted out. We now share a google calendar where she marks free days that would be okay to visit and I pick one of them and send her an email. It works for us.

And I've been told by someone who has been doing this open adption thing much longer than I have that the early years are for the a-parents and b-parents to get to know each other. I'm fairly confident that R at a little over a year old did not notice that I was gone for 14 weeks instead of 6-8 weeks. An older child with a calendar might see that as inconsistant but not a baby. That's why we have to work these thigns out now.

I guess I'm trying to say that if you're waiting for her to ask for a visit, maybe she's waiting for you to invite her or indicate that another visit is open for discussion. You can't know unless you ask. And I think as a group, b-parents are very afraid of upsetting or offending our child's a-parents.