Guest Writing on Adoption

Today I am a guest writer (I have always wanted to say that) on "We Are Grafted In" writing about adoption and raising an adopted child.  Go check it out!  If you are visiting from there, welcome.

In a lot of ways raising an adopted child is just like raising any child.  Same love for them, same passion to see them grow to be wonderful, productive members of society.  I have the same prayer for Isabelle to be a godly woman and I did for Jake to be a godly man.  But on the other hand it is different, because our family was created different and no matter what kind of adoption you have other people are involved in creating your family. Whether your adoption is totally open like ours or totally closed those other people are part of your child's life and your life forever.  I have found that in helping Isabelle come to terms with her adoption I had to learn to view family different.  To embrace people outside of my biological connections and allow God to define my family.

And isn't that true of so many things in life?  In order to understand them we need to let God define them.  Who I am, who I should be, what I should do.  It would be easy to just follow the accepted traditions or current societal attitudes that answer those questions but when we let God define us, answer those questions and lead us through life we experience things beyond expectations, beyond what we could have ever known.

If John and I were too afraid of birth parents and the potential challenges of raising an adopted child to adopt we would have missed raising an amazing daughter, would have missed a relationship with Sam and Lauren and little Scarlet, would have missed the love we have for them all and the opportunity to understand how much God can love us as we experience how much we love a child and her birth family as if they were part of us.

Are you letting God define you?

the big sister

Isabelle's new little sister is a little over a week old and we got to have our first visit with her the other day.  Isabelle was so excited she got a little crazy but not so crazy that she didn't forget to memorialize the moment.  She pulled out my camera and took a picture of Scarlet all dressed up and ready for church.  I love that you can see her in the corner taking the picture.

Their first picture together.  She is loving being a big sister.

Sibling Love

On Thursday morning in Japan (Wednesday night in the US) Isabelle will become a big sister.  Isabelle's birthmother, Lauren, will be induced and give birth to her second child and become a mother for the first time.  We are SO excited and can't wait to meet baby Scarlet via skype!

This weekend I came across an open adoption forum and was reading through it.  I was reminded as I read the questions of new parents of those early years in our relationship where we were tip toeing around each other working to develop our relationship and understand this thing called open adoption that we had all gotten ourselves into.  I was encouraged by one post about siblings.  A birthmom described our almost exact situation, kids 6 years apart who are now 18 and 24, one adopted and one she parented.  She said they refer to each other as brother and sister, are both honor role students who love music (Isabelle is smart and very musical as I am sure Scarlet will be) and got along great.  That is my dream for Isabelle and her sister.

I love the open relationship Lauren and I have developed over the years.  As I read posts from new adoptive parents who were concerned about various little details of the open relationship I remembered those years when you don't know what the relationship will turn into, you don't know if you can trust the birthparents and you don't know how it will all affect your child.  And most concerning at all you don't know your child yet but after 9 months together it seems like they do.  You are full of so much fear.  None of the questions I read were really about the situation being described but seemed to really be about fear.  And in those early years one of the things you are afraid to do is ask the birthmother how she is feeling about the situation or making any comments about the adoption.  So you just keep going forward alone into the unknown.

Luckily Lauren and I are past that.  So after my first congratulatory email about her pregnancy my second one was about my fear.  What will Isabelle think about this child?  What kind of relationship will they have?  Will she feel hurt that they are parenting Scarlet but not her?  How will this baby change their relationship with Isabelle?  Will they still love her as much?  Have time for her?  Be excited about what is happening in her life?  And how should we explain this to Isabelle?

It took a while for Lauren to answer my email because over at their house they were asking themselves the same questions and were coming up with the same lack of responses.  Together we came to the conclusion that while we may not know exactly what we are getting ourselves into we can all agree that we love Isabelle and will do our best to help her understand and feel loved through the process. 

We decided to refer to Scarlet as Isabelle's sister since they really are full biological siblings and encourage their relationship as Isabelle will be as much a part of Scarlet's life as she is of Sam and Lauren's.  And I have decided to view her like another precious neice to shower with love and attention.  I have joked that while Isabelle is over here getting mad at us and wanting to go live with Sam and Lauren, Scarlet will be over there getting mad and wanting to come live with us.  The grass is always greener on the otherside after all.

What I realized as I read some of the fears of other adoptive mom's on the web site is that we all struggle with this thing called, "normal".  We get attached to what we think a family should be and should look like and somehow we forget that isn't something in our DNA but is something culturally defined.  And while we certainly live in a culture that emphasizes one type of family, Isabelle and Scarlet will grow up a family with open adoption and this will be their normal.  Yes there will be questions about why they are different but those same questions can come from any family with something different.  People whose kids are raised in divorced families, blended families, single parent families, they are all going to get the same question we will get, "why isn't our family like my friend's family?"  Actually I remember Jake questioning why we weren't divorced like his cousins parents.  As I said, the grass is always greener on the other side.

So here we sit on the edge of our seats waiting for the next chapter in our open adoption confident it will be another wonderful adventure.

We're All in it Together

Planning summer childcare has been like organizing a 3 ring circus.  We ended up with a big wall calendar in Isabelle's room so each night before she goes to bed she can cross of the current day and see who she will be with the next day.  It has greatly improved her stress level.  I think she was in constant panic of being left alone before the calendar.

Of course you make a plan and immediately your sitters go on vacation.  So Jake and my sister-in-law were both gone last week.  As I was in search of replacement sitters I was talking with Isabelle's birth mother about when we could see them during their visit since I would be working.  On a whim I asked if she wanted to take Isabelle one of the afternoons I needed a sitter for, Isabelle was in VBS in the mornings.  She said they could take 2 of the days.  We were all very excited and a little nervous but it went great.
It is hard to explain how blessed we feel to have Sam and Lauren as birth parents.  They are loving both to Isabelle and to us.  We are a team in some ways as Isabelle grows up.  We all have shared goals to see her grow up to be a godly woman, to help her understand how blessed she is to have both parents and birth parents who love her and want the very best for her life.

Now they are going to be parents again this fall and we are so excited.  We are re-defining family as this child will be a full sister to Isabelle.  While technically I will not be related at all you won't be able to stop me and everyone else in my family from loving up this baby as if she was another niece. 

Today we broke another barrier in our adoption adventure by attending Lauren's family and friend baby shower.  Some family had never seen Isabelle while others hadn't seen her since she was only a few weeks old.  They have all followed along with pictures but it isn't the same as a real live visit.  The last time we met Lauren's family nobody knew how this was all going to work out but 6 years later we all know this is going to work out just fine.  We are all family brought together by Isabelle and for better or worse we are all in it together.

With Lauren's Family

Isabelle showing the gift she chose for her sister.

More Family

Birthparent Questions and Answers

So as a follow up to my Q&A about open adoption I asked Lauren if she wanted to do one from her perspective.  She was excited to participate and you can read her Open Adoption post HERE. 

It is so wonderful to share this experience with Sam and Lauren.

Maybe someday when Isabelle has grown up we can publish a book of our amazing shared adoption experience.

questions and answers about open adoption

I get alot of questions about Isabelle's open adoption and recently a friend sent someone to my blog that was doing an open adoption and had questions so I thought maybe a nice organized post with all the information would be helpful for others who might stop by as well.  I am also inserting pictures from our recent trip to the zoo while they were home from Texas.

The basics:  We met Sam and Lauren 5 weeks before Isabelle was born.  At the time Lauren was still in high school and they were not ready to be parents.  Today 5 years later they are married and living in El Paso where Sam is stationed with the US Army.  We adore them and they have very much become part of our extended family.

Why did we choose open adoption?

To be honest when we decided to adopt I was not thinking open adoption.  I was thinking that I have one biological child I don't share and I wanted our adoption to be as much like that as possible.  As a result we chose the agency we worked with based on 3 criteria; one it was a christian organization, two it was close to our home and three, most important, they did foster care to adoption which meant we would be able to bring the baby home from the hospital as foster parents before the adoption was finalized rather than having to wait the typical 3 months most agencies had before placement because the birthmother can change her mind during that period.  I wanted this baby right away, like if I had given birth.  It is a riskier place to be knowing we could loose the child during those first few months but the agency we worked with, New Life Family Services, only does fos adopt with birthmothers they feel very confident will not change their minds.

So there we are looking to adopt a child that we will pretend is just like our biological child and carry on with our lives.  As part of our home study the agency had us reading books about raising adopted children and about open adoption which were both eye opening and exciting books.  They helped me realize I would need to be aware of the unique emotional needs my adopted child would have.  It then became so clear that I would want the support of the birthparents in this journey.  They are the only ones who can really explain the decision to her and reassure her of the love she will need from them.  Having emersed myself in raising my son the best way I could for his unique personality I knew I would give nothing less to our next child.

Is your adoption totally open?

Totally.  We share pictures, notes, visits, met each others family, facebook.  They are like members of our family.  Sort of like an Aunt or Uncle.  Or like godparents.

What was it like when you met them?

It was scary and exciting.  We met with our social workers, we each had our own, at the agency.  We just shared about ourselves.  They knew a little more about us than we knew about them because of the profile they had read in choosing us.  We hit it off right away.  They were so much like John and me.  We talked, shared stories, asked questions.  They were honest with us and we were honest with them.  At first I wasn't sure how much to share.  I remember Sam telling us where he worked and it was only a couple miles from our house.  I started to say something but stopped myself because I wasn't sure I was supposed to tell them where we lived.  We still didn't know exactly where this was all going.  However, the third time we met them, a few days before Isabelle was born, we had them over to the house for pizza and to show them the beautiful pink room which we had spent practically every spare moment working on since meeting them.

Were you there when Isabelle was born?

No, although I know that sometimes happens.  Lauren had lots of support between her family, Sam, her social worker and friends.  We got several phone calls throughout the day letting us know how the labor was progressing.  When she was finally born we got permission to call Sam directly so he could tell us all about her.  I wrote about my feelings the day Isabelle was born here.

What if they changed their mind? Aren't you afraid they will take her?

No. While the news loves to cover those kind of stories the odds of that actually happening are minimal. And with a legal adoption they cannot have her back even if they want to. Adoptions that are over turned happen because the adoption was not legal. All the paperwork was not filed properly. That is a big part of the security of using an agency that has done lots of adoptions. All the I's were dotted and the T's were crossed. She is ours forever.

Does Isabelle go stay with them? What are the rules?

No. Open adoption isn't like shared custody where they get her every other weekend. Before she was born we got together with our social workers and agreed on various details such as regular visits, pictures, notes, etc. This helped to put parameters around what we would be doing in those early years when we were getting to know each other. Today as Sam and Lauren have gotten older and their lives have led them to new things and to a move outside the state it would be impossible to keep up the regular visit schedule that we originally created, however, our relationship has developed in a way that allows us to continue to be part of each others lives even long distance. 

What does Isabelle know about her adoption?
 
At 5 Isabelle has surprised us all with her understanding of what has transpired in her life.  I blogged here about her expressing a desire to go live with Lauren after realizing what it meant to be born from someone.  She had known for several years, because of pictures, that she grew in Lauren's tummy but had never asked questions or given any sign of really understanding what that meant until recently.  I encourage her to talk to me about it and try to answer her questions as best I can looking for what she needs at this young age.  She is currenly into referring to them as "birth parents" and I can tell is rolling all that is meant by that around in her mind. 
 

John and I attended a panel discussion on raising adopted children a couple years ago before Isabelle started putting this all together.  My biggest take away was that the most obvious question will not be your child's first question and the things you think are so obvious they don't need to be explained aren't necessarily so.

 

And just like the obvious questions for Isabelle aren't going to be the ones I think of, I bet there are lots more questions I didn't think to answer in this post about open adoption.  Feel free to comment your question about open adoption and I will try to answer.

open adoption

Our wonderful daughter Isabelle is adopted. We have an open adoption with her birthparents, Sam and Lauren. We have become so comfortable with the relationship that I sometimes forget that other people find it odd and will mention them in casual conversation. They have become such a comfortable part of our lives, I can't imagine not knowing them.

I did not initially intend to pursue an open adoption but through the process we were encouraged to do some reading on open adoption by the agency we were working with, New Life Family Services. As we worked through the adoption process and began to think about adopting and raising an adopted child we began to see the benefits of open adoption and decided to pursue a completely open adoption, share all information, pictures, visits, etc. (I don't really know what "etc" would be, facebook maybe?) I don't think we could have anticipated how wonderful and fulfilling it would be to have them in our lives and how much we would come to love them not just as Isabelle's birth parents but as members of our family.

(As a side note, open adoption is not like shared custody where they get her every other weekend, they didn't divorce her. We are 100% her parents and make all the decisions regarding her. It is more like how I really love my sister or brother's kids but know they aren't mine, they are like an aunt and uncle.)

We first met Sam and Lauren shortly before Isabelle was born. We met at the New Life offices with our respective social workers present to facilitate the meeting. We hit it off immediately. One of my favorite stories from that meeting is telling them the name we had chosen. I will never forget the look on Sam's face as he shifted positions and lit up as he shared why the name Isabelle was so profoundly special to him. I think we all knew at that moment that this was going to work out just fine. 5 weeks later we brought Isabelle home from the hospital and began developing a relationship with them as I sent pictures almost daily those first few weeks and then began regular visits.

Their future roll in her life will include being available to answer questions I could never answer about her conception and birth, about their decision to let us raise her, to assure her that she was always loved and wanted, to give her a sense of identity, a sense of security in her existence. A big job to be sure. Most adopted children at some point struggle with a sense of abandonment. No matter how much I love her and try to explain their decision she will need to hear it from them.

Right now Sam and Lauren's roll is to be the fun friends that come for occasional visits and are excited to watch Isabelle perform, will sit and play with her, want to photograph her and in general allow her to be the center of attention while they are around. Something I am sure she would like to see alot more of around here.

Today we had a fun visit with Lauren (Sam is back in Iraq but did phone while she was here). Isabelle was her very usual self dancing, singing and showing off. She was the emotional girl she is every day here and would run into her room and slam her door when we didn't do as she told us to. Lauren gets to see the "real" Isabelle. I told her it is a good sign of how comfortable Isabelle is with her. And Isabelle, who does change clothing regularly through the day, got naked for probably the 3rd of 4th time in as many visits. We agreed to see if the next visit we could keep her clothes on. When we stopped talking to her because she wouldn't get dressed we got another stomp to her room and door slam. We couldn't help but laugh and Lauren apologize for the dramatic behavior, although she insisted it wasn't from her!

Over the years we have gotten some great pictures of the visits:

The first visit after she was born.






Today's visit