my heart breaks to say we are now in a closed adoption non-relationship with

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!

newest words and things you do to make you look 20 years old

Julia, my sweetie, you are growing up way too fast, but I won't complain about that since I waited for these moments for over 9 years.

You love the puzzle you got for your 1st birthday. It has a cow, cat, mouse, dog, bird, sheep and fish in a fish bowl puzzle slots. Tonight we were playing with this trying to get you to put the pieces of the puzzle back together and you took out the Mouse and I said "Oh that the Mouse" and you immediately looked at me and then Daddy and said the word Mouse! Loud and clear. So I pointed to the picture of the mouse as we put the puzzle piece back and asked you what this animal was and you looked up and said Mouse again. WOOOOHOOOO. I can't believe how quickly you are picking up the words and know their meanings now too. We played with this puzzle for about 20 minutes before you were distracted by the next toy. LOL

Newest words: Mouse, ouch, clearly saying Sadie now. Bath (which you start running to the bathroom and open the shower curtain to get to view the bathtub, the girl loves her baths), sit, down, (Ill think of some more later). I need to keep these words on a running list. Seems you develop new words every day or so now. Amazing.

You climbed up onto the computer chair and then proceeded to stand up on it too. I had to coax you down with a nice gentle, "Julia please sit" comment. You did sit, but immediately stood up and did this over and over while pushing the buttons on the keyboard. Do I need to find you your own desk and keyboard now too? It is hard enough to fight over the desktop with Daddy needing to do homework for college and our laptop being on the fritz right now. Yes, Santa is wonderful, but I just don't think he has a laptop for your use or a desktop computer either. Maybe in a few years, ok sweetie?

I called the mutual friend of your tummy mommy and left a message asking to have your birthmother H call us back. I did this on Wednesday. I hope they call tomorrow. I so want to hear from H and hope to invite her over for a holiday dinner here for just her immediate family and DH, you and I.

J, you turned 14 months old on the 27th. My gosh girl, you are growing so much. At home I weighed you and you were 23 lbs. I had a hard time getting you into your size 18 month gap pants the other day. I have a feeling you will be in 24month / 2T outfits sooner than I expected. Ugh, I didn't do shopping for that size for a winter season. I did get you some 24 months items for Spring/Summer. Dang. Gotta hit the shops soon for you then. Grow baby Grow. Thrive and Thrive some more. I love you.

p.s. FYI.......I use the term Tummy Mommy in agreement with J's birthmother. This is one of the things she said was comfortable hearing her being called when J gets old enough. I don't use it to be disrespected to J's birthmother.