[cmsherwood]

Hi, first I guess I should introduce myself then I have a few questions that I've had.

I live in AZ my husband and I have two beautiful adopted girls ours oldest is 2 and a half and our second is just about 6 and a half months. (We actually just finalized this past Tuesday - whew! finalization is always a wonderful day ) Both adoptions were sort of through LDSFS and are supposed to be "open", which for us was letters and pictures periodically. This brings me to my question.

Our oldest daughters birth mom has changed her phone number and moved with no forwarding address, so I have no way to contact her. Has anyone else had this sort of thing happen? I have heard, (isn't it wonderful that usually the people that have never had ANYTHING to do with adoption and really don't know anything about it usually have all the good facts?! - I am new so yes that was sarcasm) that this is very common and that more times that not the Bmoms do in a sense disappear once they feel secure and I guess comforted with the placement. I'm really not stressing about this I just want to know if what I heard is true or not I guess.

[mom2GRLC]

I don't know if that generalization is true or not.

But I do know that it is common for there to be times when there is lots of contact and times when there isn't.

I wouldn't give up on her yet. If you have no addess to send it to you might write the letters and put them in a box. When she does make contact with you again you could send her those letters.

Another option would be to see if LDS social services can act as a go between. Maybe you could send the letters to them instead of her and when she is ready to pick them up she can do so, that way you don't have to keep tabs on where she is and where to send the stuff each time.

You might also consider opening a webiste just for your contact with her and putting your daughters updates and pictures on there so she will always have access to them whenever she wants, and you can update them as frequently as you want. That way no matter where she is she will always have access to your updates and your e-mail address.

The website idea works really well for me because we have 3 different sets of birthfamilies we have to update as well as all of mine and my husbands family (since we are military). It's so much easier to put all the updates and pictures in one place for everyone to see rather than mailing a bunch of different letters off and having to pay to print off a bunch of pictures for each family. This way they can choose which pictures they like adn want copies of and print them off themselves.

[HelloImKara]

Im in AZ as well!! Congrats on the finalization of your adoption. I think the previous post had great ideas in keeping in touch with birthmoms. I wish you the best of luck!

[ticchick]

This is coming from an birth mother's viewpoint, but I would agree with waiting for her to contact you if she wants more contact. You are not 'required' to track her down are you? If not I would just wait and see. It could be that the open adoption thing was too much for her. I know for me I had to have a closed adoption- to know too much about my child would have made it impossible for me to move on. As it was I had to move out of state because I didn't know if my son's adoptive parents were in the same state and everywhere I went I would see little red headed boys and wonder.

I imagine some women think they want open and then realize it just keeps reopening the wound, and if she feels assured that you are a wonderful family that may be all she needed.