our daughters birthmother/family.
This situation is something I feared blogging about. I really didn't think it would happen to us and our daughter and her birthfamily, but it has.
I don't post this with the intention to scare anyone reading this that is thinking of adopting, are in the process and or are already placed with a child/baby. Please understand I write from my heart here, I don't do that often, but I had a dream and feeling this would happen and it has. I really hope this turns around to be a fully open adoption again one day, but if not, I will grieve our loss and move on in due time.
Not every adoption is the same, but I still share my story for those of you that know adoption can be WONDERFUL and yet you can sit silent with fears that can fill you through out the many parts of the day with "what if's".
I feared for the last few months that I might have said something 3 days before our daughters 1st birthday party that offended her birthmother so much that she didn't come to her party. No, that didn't really cause the issue of us not having spoke to her or met up in person with her since.
Issues beyond our control as Adoptive Parents to J run along the line of it being too hard for her birthmother to see J in person at this point in time in her life. I am sad that this is happening to her, but sad for everyone involved, including two birthsiblings she has that we won't see for a long time to come or ever, if I may be so blunt. We only live 20 min away from her bithmothers place right now, but we have decided we will totally respect her decision to not see her now or even maybe in the long long future.
I will never pretend to know what a birthmother goes through when she relinquishes the parental rights of her child/baby. I will never know the emotions she had in her heart each time she saw J in person. Well, now I do know that it was way too painful for her. Thus she has chosen to back away from the contact.
After getting off the phone with the mutual friend L that we have between us and the birthmother, I felt like my heart was slowly sinking into a depressive state of beating. Almost an ache I was not familiar with, like a sob was ready to come out. Luckily my wonderful hubby just stood in front of me and opened his arms up wide and gave me a hug and said we are ok, we are going to make it through this and we know we have to respect her decision to have no contact at this point in time in J's life.
With heavy hearts I say I was warned by our social worker that this might happen. We were prepped by the sworker that we might have a beautiful monthly or so contact with her, but in many cases the contact ceases after only 1 year of contact. This is just the opposite of having gone into an adoption with fully closed intentions from both parties and later, maybe years later that adoption contact slowly opens up and a longtime relationship is established with those parties involved. We are on the road from Very open to nearly VERY closed.
I have pictures and letters for 2 different updates that I will send along with Christmas gifts for both her sistersibling and brothersibling and a gift for J's birthmother. I bough these things with intention of seeing them in person soon, but now I know We won't. We do have pictures we show Julia ever day of her siblings and her tummy mommy (birthmother) and of her birthgrandma also). I will always leave them up on her wall until she is ready to remove them.
J's tummy mommy gave us one of the most precious gifts in our lives and I will always relay that to her in the letters. I hope she knows we think of her and her children every day while we all go through life in the next days, weeks and years.
With a heavy heart and tears welling up.... I say to you to not look at this as a negative post, but more of a bump in the road of the adoption process. I feel maybe one day we all will reunite and I won't give up that feeling either.
our hearts will mend, our minds will soon return to a state of total enjoyment of watching our daughter blossom into a beautiful toddler, girl and teen and so on.
Off to write that letter for her 15 month update to send to her birthfamily.
If you ever have questions about open domestic adoption, feel free to post here or contact me through my blog email.
As I put our daughter in her crib tonight, I told her I love her and everyone else does too! I know that is not a lie!
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5 comments:
I'm so sorry. What a difficult development.
I hope that she has some good support around her and will be able to re-enter your lives in the future.
Hang in there.
Ours was a closed adoption from the beginning so I never had to worry about the pulling away or lessening of contact.
Like you I can't imagine what the birthmother must go through, but on that same note, I can imagine how difficult it would be to watch that child grow up in a different family when I have her siblings in my care.
J. has probably started to act/look like her daughter did at that age and it must be very difficult.
As long as J knows that she was born BECAUSE people loved her, she will grateful and well adjusted.
I'm sorry to hear that. I often wonder if our son's birthmother will pull away. She seemed to want lots of info at first, but because she is young, I wonder if she will come to a point where she wants to move on with her life. I hope that soon she will find some peace and be able to see J again.
We had a similar situation. Ours was a "semi-closed" adoption from the start, but we always had birthmom's phone number, and a few months in we gave her our # too. She kept losing it and we were almost always the ones to initiate contact. Then she wanted to meet when Olivia was about 10 months old. We were excited. We set up four different meetings, all of which fell through at the last minute because birthmom couldn't make it. And then her phone was disconnected. So now we have no contact at all. It's sad, but we continue to send photos to birthgrandma in the hope that birthmom eventually calls us again.
I'm so sorry. I know this is nothing like you want it to be. I too hope she has some good support and perhaps a good therapist. It sounds like she's dealing with a lot. Any chance of maintaining contact with some other family members?
I think it's good to keep sending her updates and letting her know you're still thinking of her.
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