[BestLight]

For those in open adoptions, I'm curious:

How and when did your bmother/bfather know "these are the parents for my baby"? What was it about you that grabbed them?

And what were your thoughts the first time you met bmother/bfather? Was it "love at first sight" or did it take some warming up?

[LisaCA]

not sure how many they looked at-never asked. I think bmom and i have very similar temperments-both control freaks, kind of cranky, pretty certain we're right, lol, a wee bit assertive, etc. when I read her personality profile I said "hey, that's me!" and she said the same. plus I look kind of like her mom. add to that the fact that I'm a vegetarian and her family was vegetarian for a long time I think made us attracted to each other, lol. I think they were also attracted to my profession. The primary reason, however was that dh and I are AA and they're AA looking for an aa family to raise their child.

and when I met them they (the entire family), they gave me a big hug. it was just like meeting long lost relatives. Or in a very sick way it was falling in love with ourselves .

[Kimmisue]

Our son's bmom said she just kept coming back to our profile for some reason. She wasn't really sure why but she did say that she liked us because we were just "normal" people. (I don't think she knew what other word to use). She liked that we were more homebodies and not people who traveled the world. She wanted her son to have a stable childhood without too much extravagance. She said we seemed more "down to earth". I will say that we pretty much knew at our first meeting that this was it and that she would go through with it. She just recently wrote to me and told me that she knew the moment she met me that I was to be Brady's mom. She said it was just a mother to mother instinct. I'm not really sure what it was about her that grabbed us. I guess it was because our first meeting was very comfortable, kind of like getting together with an old friend. We of course were learning all about her, but it was just that comfortable.


I will be honest and say that we've had SUCH a good relationship with "M" that I worry it we will be able to have that same kind of relationship with the next bmom.
We'll see!

Good luck to you!
Kim

[sissyminsky]

Our son's bmom chose us because I am a teacher. Her first son's amom was also a teacher. She really wanted education to be key in her children's lives. There were other reasons too, but she really emphasized how important that was to her.

Sissy

[gigigeorge]

A. told us that she picked us because she liked the fact that I was already a stay at home wife and would be a stay at home mom. She felt if someone had a career they might resent staying at home which was the most important thing for her. Initially though when she received her stack of profiles she sorted them into people who looked like serial killers and those that didn't... but she was young... Interesting thing was A. asked her mom to go through the profiles and pick who she liked, and also asked the birthdad to do the same, when they all sat down a couple days later to talk about it they realized that they had all picked us. Just kind interesting...

As for meeting her, even on the phone before we actually met her there was just a connection, she reminds me a lot of my little sisters, I think that's part of the reason there was that instant connection.

Hope that helps !

Oh and Kim, we are exactly the same... I keep thinking what if we don't like the new bmom the same???

gina.

[StorkWatcher]

We never got to ask this question directly to our bmom, but our caseworker said she liked the fact that we had horses and lived in the country. I don't know if it had any part, but the bdad has my husband's height and hair color (my eye color) and bmom has my height/build/hair color (husband's eye color). That made us feel like God was really searching us out for each other.

I remember another couple w/ our agency who was chosen because someone in their extended family had the same name as one of the bmom's family member. And another had a photo in their scrapbook that had a chicken in it - - the bmom had grown up around chickens.

It can be for the wildest things! I fully believe you and the bparent(s) are guided by God to each other for some special reason, even if you'll never really know for sure like we do.

[AdrienneG]

I actually babysat the biological mom when she was little. She said she chose us because she knew that her child would be raised with a lot of love, and that we are loving people who would take care of him well. She also picked us because we are family and she would know where her biological child is always.

[alwaysus]

Our sons birthmother is my husbands sister, so she knew first hand how we were raising our other kids and liked it. Plus, she wanted the kids to stay in the family.

[gigigeorge]

I think it can also be so arbitrary, one bmom I heard of picked aparents because they were big into rock climbing something she had always wanted to try but never got the chance. She felt that they would give her baby the chance to do a lot of things that she was never able to... sometimes you just don't know... lol

gina.

[billysmommy]

My children's first mom picked us for the very reason we thought we would have a long wait - our religions. DH and I are of different faiths, and she told us that she felt that if we could work together on that, that we could work together on anything.

[SchmennaLeigh]

There was no "one reason" I picked my child's parents. It ranged from everything to the fact that they had other children to the way they interacted with one another. (And everything in between, outside the lines and so on!)

[teegrainca]

Our bmother told us that she chose us for a bunch of reasons:

1 - We all look enough alike that the baby could biologically be ours.
2 - Our religion/faith.
3 - We live near bmother housing so we can really get to bond with her and the baby before the birth.

As it turns out, she and I have a ton in common... common outlooks on life, love and raising children, so I think for both of us, the more we get to know eachother the more sense her decision to choose us makes.

-Karen

[lisa in venice]

In adotion #2:

we were biracial
we were married several years
we were parenting a child already
Thought our picture was funny
We were willing to maintain contact
We were willing to meet (I was surprised taht other couples were not)

In adoption #3
We were Biracial
We were urban
We had other chidlren
We wanted fully open with frequent casual contact
We were local
We have VERY similar personalities and family histories (our moms even had the same job)
We have the same twisted sense of humor and similar values
We also went into the situation KNOWING that whether or not an adoption happened that we would be life long friends. We just had so much in common.

In adoption #4
Unfortunately no one esle was in the running

lisa

[blessedbybug]

Bug's first mom was given 15 files from the counselor to begin with. Her and her father looked through them and separately they each picked us and only us. It is still overwhelming to think of it.

K said many things about why she picked us. First, she liked my smile in our main picture of our profile. It still shocks me because at the time, I was at my heaviest weight EVER in my life and on stress leave. I think I look exhausted.

She picked us for three of the reasons our agency said we might wait longer than other families.

1) We were older (DH was 49, I was 35) and she wanted people with life experience (her words... she was 29 and already parenting 2 kids).

2) We lived in a rural area. She didn't want to worry about running into us at the mall in the city. She did not want to unprepared for a visit.

3) We were pastors. Although she has no religious upbringing and God was not a part of her life, she said she thought we might show compassion to her and that, Bug would be a part of something bigger, to be supported in her life by a large group of people. She wished she had that for herself.

Another thing she told us that I still cling to is the fact that she appreciated how much of the "hard stuff" of our life we shared in our homestudy and story. Her life has been SO hard and amazingly, although I don't want to share details online, we share a tragic loss that happened the same way. She just felt like we weren't trying to be perfect, that we were real. That means so much to us because we worried that no one would pick us because of some of the things that had happened to us. But she did... and we don't have words to express how much we love her.

Amazingly, tomorrow is two years from the night she picked us. Wow...

[mom2justynsarah]

Originally Posted by BestLight

For those in open adoptions, I'm curious:

How and when did your bmother/bfather know "these are the parents for my baby"? What was it about you that grabbed them?

And what were your thoughts the first time you met bmother/bfather? Was it "love at first sight" or did it take some warming up?

There were a few things that our daughter's birthmom was looking for. An important criteria was that the adoptive parents lived far away from her. (we live in S. Florida and she lives in California.) She wanted to make sure there was no chance of us running into eachother.

Another thing she liked (as well as her other 3 children) was that we already had a child. They liked the idea of giving my son the opportunity to become a "big brother."

In addition, she wanted an infertile couple. We had gone through numerous infertility treatments before conceiving our son through IVF. We had never been able to get pregnant again.

Another thing that caught her eye was the fact that my husband is also adopted. She felt there was a positive connection with an adoptive parent also being an adoptee.

Lastly, she thought we looked happy. She wanted her child to be with a family that was happy.

My first thought when I saw Dee (12 hours after giving birth) was that she was tiny & her nose was swollen! LOL!

We warmed up pretty quick. Lots of hugs, staring at each other, smiling, hugs etc (same with bdad and siblings).