Adoption Blog

When we first began this journey, I thought very little about our child’s birth parents.

Immediately upon entering the “adoption world” of websites, books, conferences and conversations we were confronted with the question of having an open adoption or not. I don’t think that I had really given this relationship any deep thought. In the beginning, I guess I had imagined our child appearing out of thin air like a gift from God or finding a perfectly bundled baby in a basket on our porch.

When I did think about it, I felt threatened by our some-day birth parents. I didn’t even know who these people would be yet and I was already afraid of them. But we didn’t dare say that out loud. So, when people would ask us about birth parents we always responded indifferently with something along the lines “Yeah, we’re not sure how we’ll handle that yet.” or on our really holy days “Yes, we’re praying about that.”

I just didn’t want to say the words. That I wanted our children all to myself. That I couldn’t imagine seeing our child’s birth mother hold our baby in her arms when we were the parents. That they have given their child up  and now he or she is mine, all mine.

That. We. Are. Just. Too. Selfish. That we don’t even want to consider the options and research what might be best for our child.

Ugh. My stomach is churning just writing that.

The reality was that I had a lot of fears that I didn’t want to admit to and so did Chris.

If our child’s first mom is too close, she may decide I’m not a good mother

…and regret her decision

…or try to control how we parent

Our child may love her more.

She may try to get her child back.

She may hurt our child to punish us (if she isn’t able to get the baby back).

These were just a few of our {very real} fears.

I’m sure by now, you can see where this is going; We’re over it. Those fears, while very common, are almost all myths. The fears that aren’t myths are highly unlikely scenarios.

I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking “highly unlikely” = possible. Yes, it’s true that the scenarios above that are highly unlikely are, therefor, possible. In fact, I know a family who has experience with one of these scenarios. But, every child (adopted or not) is at risk for the highly unlikely but possible scenarios of life. And every parent worries about these highly unlikely possibilities and accepts them as part of parenthood. In other words, you’re probably not going to decide not to have children out of fear they could be kidnapped or terminally ill. (I said probably) So, these mostly-mythical-but-sometimes-possible thoughts regarding a relationship between a first mom or dad and their child are reasonable fears that adoptive parents accept as part of the deal. This was my most recent realization, thanks to the book Dear Birthmother.

But, in the last couple of years I had a much more in depth realization based in personal experience that has really helped me piece all of this together. That realization came in the form of my own family- the one I always knew and the one I finally met six years ago.

Read We Didn’t Dare Say It Out Loud Part II here.