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Originally Posted By mimi

Hi. We'd love to hear from anyone who's adopted an older child (a non-infant), and maintains ongoing openess w/ the birthFamily. would be great to hear from birthFamilies who have placed their child for adoption, and maintain a lifetime open relationship.

We're the parents of 2 great kids, Julia 6 and Ben 2. Both joined our family as newborns in very open adoptions. The kids know and love their birthMoms, and we love having them in all our lives forever. Our open adoptions are beautiful, and we'd love for all our adoptions to be the same, if possible.

Our hope is to adopt a child (or children) under age 6. We are following our hearts this time out, hoping to adopt that older child (non-infant) who might be waiting for a family like ours, and whose family wants an ongoing lifelong open relationship. We know that if we adopted another newborn, we'd be pretty much guaranteed of openess. An older child + infant open adoption would be great, but agencies have told us they are so very rare. Our county/state (california) isn't very optimistic either, saying that only about 5% of all their older child adoptions have any level of openess.

For now, we're being stubborn... would really appreciate any input at all. Thanks, and Take Care~ Cheryl and Al, aegan@jetlink.net