Thank you so much for your support

You all are so sweet to post and give us support through this all. Thank you!

I want to tell everyone that we are feeling so much better after a few days of rehashing the idea of a huge change in the communication/lack of/ with J's birthmother. We respect her wishes and are moving forward. We will always tell J about her birthmother and siblings and other birthrelatives. We have pictures on her nursery wall and always thank her tummy mommy for giving us the gift of a beautiful daughter and we will always tell J of that great gift and love her tummy mommy has for her.

Life throws us curves all the time and we will always try to look on the sunny side of things even if they seem to hurt so much. I will keep telling myself that we didn't do anything wrong to bring this decision about, heck we went out of our way in many cases to make that contact.

I have J's 1 year pictures and letter ready to go, pictures from 1 year to current and started a letter. I do have Christmas Presents for J's birthsiblings and do plan on boxing them up and sending them to them in a few days. If anything comes back returned, we will keep them here, but send the letters and pictures onto the agency to hold for her tummy mommy when she is ready to receive them. The agency will understand this. I am sure they have several situations that they hold letters and pictures for future contact.

In time of this happening, there is a local Adoption support group tomorrow night so this is great timing for the need of support and understanding from the local peers having adopted and or going through.

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!

do you ever laugh at your kids when they are full of it?

Julia started twirling around and around while in the living room now. So much so that she gets dizzy and falls on her butt and then laughs. This Cracks me up. I wish I could catch it on video, but she does it when I am furthest (or farthest if you are grammar police) from my camera and she always stops when I do reach it and try to start the recording. Ha. I'll beat her to the punch eventually. I am not really laughing AT HER, but laughing in joy that she is learning things so quickly and having fun doing it.

We had to ask my sister and her family to watch their words. "Oh Sh*t" is a phrase we have thought we heard Julia saying in the last few days. Well, yes, she did say it clear as a bell the other night when DH was putting her in the car. Yikes. We really have to watch what we say now.

7 Teeth are in and the 4 molars are really making her drool gobs again.

I added her to my 2009 vision and dental benefits. Not much more per month so I thought it was worth it just in case. Blindness runs in her birthmothers family so we are being cautious.

I really want to go to the Zoo Wild Lights soon. We couldn't go last weekend due to the exposure to mono and strep. Thankfully no signs here of either icky sickness.

I am working on another letter to send to Julia's birthmother for her 15 month update (27th). Amazing how fast things are flying by since we have last talked and seen her birthmother. This brings on a new subject I want to talk about how contact can change in an open adoption.

We have come to realize that we can't control the amount of contact with have with Julia's birthmother. We accept that if we try to make contact with her, it might be months before we hear from her again. That is just how it works. Last we talked with her was right before J's birthday party. Even longer since we have seen her. We want her to see her, but if she is not ready or wants more time between contact, we just have to accept it to be on her time line. Yes, I get scared that we might not ever see her and J's birth siblings again, but I will never stop sending her letters. I'll send them to her home unless they come back as undeliverable. Then I will just send them to our agency and ask them to hold onto them until we talk to her or when she calls them. I want her to know we are here for her, but we don't want her to feel as though we are barging in on her life or trying to judge her. I will convey this in my next letter to her. I want her to feel that she can call us any day or night and we are glad to set up times to come see them and take them to the park or zoo. I know it might be uncomfortable for her, but she says it is great to see all of us when we do get together. I miss them.