2/26/2010

Just rambling...

I think that no matter what type of adoption you pursue to add a child to your family, you end up with a deep connection to your child's birth parents. I'm guessing that even when you don't know who your child's birthparents are you still feel a connection with them because of the part they played in making your child who they are.

It's pretty obvious with our adoption with Allie, we did meet her birth mom (T). Even though we've only met T twice, we feel a great deal of love and admiration for her. T gave us the most precious gift that a person could give us. She entrusted us with the precious miracle that she carried with her for over 9 months...the child that we dreamt of for so long.

We hope that someday Allie and T are able to have some type of relationship so that Allie can see what an amazing person she is. Until that point, it's hard for Cory and me to know what we should do to keep some type of connection. In most open adoptions, the birthparents and the adoptive parents complete a contact agreement either before or after the baby is born. In this contact agreement, everyone decides on the level of contact that feels comfortable for everyone involved. Unfortunately, one wasn't ever completed in our adoption.

We want, more than anything, for T to be able to see pictures of Allie (and even see her) if she wants, however we also want to give her time to heal. We know that T is going through a great deal of pain and healing that we could never fathom. For the first Birth Mother's Day (the Sunday before Mother's Day) after Allie was born, I started a scrapbook for T of Allie and we sent that to her. Last year at Christmas, we sent her a package with pictures, more scrapbook pages, and a willow tree angel in it. We know (from her social worker at CHS) that she never opened that package because it was too difficult for her. We haven't sent anything since that time. Now we have the rest of her first year scrapbook completed as well as her Christmas present from this year that we have been delaying sending.

It's so hard! How do we send something that I know will cause pain?! How can we not send her pictures as Allie grows up??? We are conflicted...our hope is that even if T doesn't look/open these things we send to her now, that someday she will look at them and cherish the pictures and they might help her and her family find peace in her choices.

1 comments:

Tammy said...

This is interesting about the birth mom being too overwhelmed to look at photos. I have wondered this about birth families - whether or not it would be difficult to look at the face of the child you gave birth to when you may not ever see this child again. It would be hard for me too. The pain may never go away but someday she will find peace and comfort in looking at the pictures. She knows her daughter is being well taken care of without looking at pictures - at least she has that peace.