Emotions of an Open Adoption

I am dealing with a slew of emotions at the moment. Excitement is pulsating through me as I await Junior's adoption finalization, day by day. We have seven days left of this phase of our journey then we begin the rest of our lives. At the same time I acknowledge the bitter sweetness experienced by Junior's biological mother as Mike and I become Junior's legal parents. She is supportive of the adoption and our roles as parents, but there is still that sense of loss for her, the might have been that will never be. She will always be his biological mother, but now I am Mom. Her pain might be similar to the emptiness I have experienced the last few years, touched with a twinge of jealousy as she watches another woman raise her son. She decided to trust us to raise her son when she made her decision to relinquish her parental rights. Relinquishing also gave her the opportunity for an open adoption. 

Our adoption is a rather open adoption which is a rarity in a foster care adoption. Typically there is some contact between the foster-adopt family and the biological family, but letters are exchanged through secured PO boxes or emails and visits are once or twice a year. We have an agreement for one exchange of photos a year and four visits, but we expect more contact than that. Even though the adoption has not been finalized, we have maintained contact with his biological mother including some supervised visits. We have open contact with his sister, grandmother, aunts and cousins. It has been beneficial for Junior for us to integrate his biological family into our family - sharing holidays together, spending time together, building memories. He is so excited to have my sisters and parents meet more of his relatives later this month to celebrate his adoption. 

With our great joy of adoption, I am supporting my best friend through in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments. She and her husband have tried for several years now to conceive and this is their first IVF cycle. I have supported her every step of the way - the joy, the disappointment, and the anxiety that comes with each test, each procedure, each step of this very scientific method of creating a baby, hopefully. Now we wait for a positive pregnancy test. We are praying for joyful news when the time comes, but I will be her support should this cycle fail and her dreams are dashed once again. Due to her treatment cycle and doctor appointments and our schedules, she has not met Junior in the year he has been with us. Yes, I want my best friend to meet my son, one of the joys of my life, my sunshine. If the IVF cycle fails, I will hesitate and confirm with her she is ready to meet my sunshine while she mourns her loss as encountering my joy during her sorrow may be too much to deal with, especially since she has a surge of hormones racing through her worn out body magnifying each emotion; I pray this will not be the case. I want her to meet my son in her full joy, knowing she has a little one on the way so we can enjoy motherhood together.


Joy, loss, excitement, sorrow - all swirling around to create our mosaic - Open Adoption. It is one of those many lessons that adoption teaches families, emotions are messy, there are no right or wrong emotions to feel when adopting.





Our adoption process:
2010

• July 2010 - first call to DSHS about becoming foster-adopt parents
• October 2010 - began foster care classes
• December 2010 - finished foster care classes and began paperwork

2011

• January 2011 - began fingerprints and background check process
• February 2011 - had fingerprints redone
• March 2011 - fingerprints lost in system then finally found, completed paperwork
• April 2011 - background checks completed/passed and foster licensor retires
• May 2011 - a different licensor re-assigned; first home study review with licensor
• June 2011 - second interview with licensor
• July 2011 - counselor talks with licensor, home study on hold while licensor is on vacation
• September 2011 - licensed foster parents; and begin adoption home study
• December 2011 - adoption home study approved!

2012

• January 2012 - try registering with adoption websites, begin struggle with state
• February 2012 - forced by state to transfer case to private agency in order to adopt; our regional DCFS office will not place foster children in our home or work with us because we want to adopt
• March 2012 - begin adoption home study process all over again with Bethany Christian Services
• May 2012 - begin home study interviews and inspection
• June 2012 - fingerprinted twice, complete home study interviews
• July 2012 - adoption home study complete and foster license transferred to private agency
• August 2012 - we learn about Junior in another region of the state, plan is adoption
• August 18, 2012 - first foster placement - Junior moves in
• November 2012 - state changes plan from adoption to concurrent adoption and reunification

2013

• March 2013 - biological mother agrees to relinquish her parental rights
• April 2013 - biological father's parental rights terminated; biological mother's relinquishment signed
• May 2013 - biological mother's relinquishment filed with court and rights terminated; Open Adoption Agreement between us and biological mother filed with court; post-placement report sent to adoption lawyer and DCFS
• June 2013 - Junior becomes legally free; adoption paperwork processed
• July 2013 - we sign adoption papers and court date assigned for finalization
• August 2013 - state signs adoption papers and sends them to our lawyer
• August 23, 2013 - adoption finalized!!!!!!

Infertility and Choices

I recently met with my best friend whom I have not seen in nearly a year. Between our adoption paperwork last year and her and her husband's infertility testings last year, we both were dealing with a lot. When Mike and I were blessed with Junior later in the year, they backed off even from phone calls as it was difficult to for them to be happy for us while they continued to struggle with their empty arms. We knew this would happen as we had discussed this scenario before we were matched with Junior. Roles would have been reversed had she given birth before we received an adoptive placement. I am still infertile, but we now have a child in our family; adoption does not negate my infertility, it is an alternative for growing our family. They are still infertile and are pursuing IVF in hopes of a child. After spending several hours catching up with my best friend, one thing she said stuck with me, she said that while they have been trying fertility treatments for two years, she and her husband have been trying to conceive for four years and it has taken its emotional toll. This statement got me thinking about her journey and about my journey.

Mike and I have had years, almost decades, of emotions regarding my fertility and other health issues. I actually found out at age 15 (20 years ago), a year before meeting Mike, that I would not be birthing children. At the time, I readily accepted adoption as my only path to motherhood. I was okay with this decision for years. After we were married for 10 years and were looking at adoption options, I also explored surrogacy, but realized we would have to go through adoption even in this case since we would be using a surrogate with at least donated egg, possibly donated embryo. Regardless of our path to parenthood, our choices were: adoption or childlessness. That does not really seem like options, but thinking more about it, I realize most people do not even think about how they are going to form their family. They have sex, the woman gets pregnant, carries a health baby to term and they raise the child. That is supposed to be the standard, no-thought process. We actually had to think about how we wanted to become parents, so did my best friend and her husband. They discussed fertility treatments and adoption. They already tried IUI and are moving on to IVF. Even with IVF there are a variety of choices which the non-infertile person is not aware even exist. With adoption we have choices of: foster-adopt, domestic infant or international. We started an international adoption process but moved to foster-adopt. Even with foster-adopt, we had to choose a private agency (see A Side Step in Our Journey for previous blog post), but our choices were limited due to our location and desired age of child.

Now there are some choices we did not get to make about our child - name, age and past experiences. For many parents, picking a name for their child before birth is a wonderful thing. Since we were adopting an older child, we knew our child would come with a name; we would work with our child should he/she desires to change his/her name at the time of adoption, but the child would already be named upon arrival. As for age, we only knew our child would be over age 5, then age 8, then we moved it to age 10 and older. And past experiences, we would have no idea until we were matched.

In ways infertile couples have more choices for family planning than fertile couples, but these choices are thrust upon us because we cannot achieve parenthood in the traditional way. Since we are forced to make various choices on our path to parenthood, it elicits a variety of emotions along the way. A common emotion during these choices is anger - anger due to frustration from having to make the choices, anger at our failed bodies, anger at having to expose our lives including finances to adoption workers or infertility clinic employees, anger due to exhaustion of going through the process(es) we chose, anger at other people's ability to get pregnant or adopt quicker. So often we feel alone when we need the greatest support, we feel we are either forgotten or misunderstood by our loved ones. Our fertile family and friends may not understand our decisions or about infertility so they may avoid us or say very crass things including identifying the cause (blame) of our infertility (see Creating A Family Blog: Playing Blame Game Infertility) which only causes us more pain and anger. My best friend and I are open about our infertility and our choices with others - her fertility treatments and me adoption - so we can let other infertile couples know they are not alone; we are not alone. When we started our adoption journey, I did not expect to become so knowledgeable about the various ways to adopt, fertility treatment, surrogacy and everything else related to infertility. I am in no way an expert, but I know way more than I knew existed before we started this journey. With my friend going through IVF I am learning more about the choices she faces. Maybe, some day, by talking openly about our struggles and choices, when the next generation faces infertility, it will not be the shameful, lonely, anger-filled dark place it still remains for many of us. Hopefully each of us dealing with infertility, couples and individuals, can find peace with the decisions we have made along the way.