This morning I received a Facebook Friend Request from my children’s birthmother. It was completely unexpected and through me for a loop! Before I respond, I wanted to ask for the collective wisdom of others.
Both of our children share the same birthmother. Our son was born in September 2008 and we were present for his birth. When he was six months old, she contacted us to ask us to adopt a second baby. Our daughter was born in October 2009.
It has been an open adoption from the start. First facilitated by the agency and then quickly through direct contact with all of our information exchanged. My husband and I, although US citizens, live in Switzerland. She actually picked us partially for that reason. She didn’t want “too much” contact. But we have always exchanged e-mails and telephone calls (via Skype). In addition, I set up a photo blog, which we post photos and stories at least once per week. Plus we send packets of photos to her and her mother four times per year.
But we actually hadn’t heard from her in about two months, even though I have sent a few e-mails asking how she is doing and giving her little stories about how the children are. And now, out of the blue, she sends a Facebook Friends Request.
I hesitate for a couple of reasons. Number one, I am an active Facebook user with a smaller number of friends that are my family and close friends. My status updates are a mixture of what is happening on a daily basis in our lives, what is happening around the world and bits about being an expat living abroad. Occasionally I may vent a bit about the frustrations of dealing with people or the less fun parts about being a stay at home mother to two children under two. Nothing bad, but quite personal. A much higher level of personal than we have shared in the past. It would be a big jump in our relationship, not a gradually increase.
On the other hand, I feel it very important to maintain that contact for my children’s sake. On those occasions when we have traveled to the United States, we have always made an effort to see her, although it hasn’t always worked out. (Generally she has backed out of seeing us.) But we have seen her a couple of times and I want that to continue as much as we are able.
So, do others have contact via social media with the other members of the Adoption Triad? How is it working? What do you recommend?
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My son’s (adoptive) mom and I facebook chat occasionally. She friended me and while I had some reservations about accepting her request I’m glad I did. I sometimes feel intrusive when I call because I know I’ll inevitably be interrupting something and she’ll feel obligated to talk to me even though she’s busy. If she’s on facebook it’s an indicator she’s free to chat. Also since there’s a time difference phone calls can be hard to make happen sometimes (by the time I’m home from class they’re in bed etc) so we can see whats going on with each other and comment on statuses. Of course the merits of facebook friending your child’s other mother (or anyone really) depends on the individual circumstances of your relationship with that other person. If having someone as a facebook friend is going to stress you out about what you can and cant say/do in that venue it may not be for you.
Of course there is always the option of saying “hey i got your request I just wanted to let you know that I sometimes use my status to vent about things including the less fun parts about staying home with the kids etc I dont want to upset you so I thought we should talk about if its a good idea to be facebook friends.”
It sounds to me like you are a bit afraid of what the birhmom will think of your comments about being a mother. EVERY mother has those moments where they are tired and stressed and just need to vent about it! That makes you human and I wouldn’t worry about it. I personally like to hear about the not so pretty stuff going on in my daughter’s parents’ lives. Nothing is perfect all the time and for them to just tell me the sunshine and roses part makes our relationship feel a little fake honestly. I’m raising my oldest daughter and most of my friends have kids so I can totally relate to those hard moments! You can talk to her about it, but I think you may be worrying about it a bit too much, everything is going to be okay!
We do. She’s human. I’m human. Learning those little bits of life have actually strengthened our relationship in various ways.
We do FB with her other family, something which I’m thankful for. I’m in for whatever extra links we can get, and FB has opened up at least one other bio aunt connection and I hope for more!
As far as her other mom seeing my updates, I’m not worried in the slightest, but we have a VERY open relationship and have always been extremely honest with each other. I actually think it’s nice to have the extra throughout-the-day type of connection and love it! When I posted just yesterday that “WHY does my girl keep flipping off the couch???” and her birth mom wrote back “*bio brother* and I were both couch gymnasts when we were her age! Blame Mama *her name*” I couldn’t help but be glad (and smile!).
We do- with 3 out of 4 first parents, plus an aunt, and I agree with what folks have already written– that it adds an another way to normalize the relationship and not make it “other”, as can easily happen in our society. Recently my oldest son’s first mom friended me- and we hadn’t heard from her in almost 3 years! (Had not responded to emails, etc) Needless to say, I am thrilled. I am guessing that perhaps it feels like a safer way for her to communicate? And hopefully it will be an in to more real life contact.
We do, with extended family – my oldest daughters aunt, grandmother and great grandmother are facebook friends and my youngest daughters dad.
I will admit that it threw me for a loop because Lexi’s family friended me first. And I will say that I have had pangs of, “Should I post this knowing they might read it?” But I also have those pangs about other relationships in my life (like my sister, or my aunt, etc). So I feel like it just comes with the territory of mixing friends / family in social media.
In general though, I don’t post a lot I wouldn’t want everyone to see on facebook. And I think that having our first famillies on facebook has made it easier to stay in touch.
We “facebook” both of our children’s first moms. We are also “friends” with some of our son’s extended family by birth (grandparents, 2nd cousins, aunt) and some of his birthmother’s friends. Both are very important to us and I feel the more I know about them the better. Our daughter’s birthmom is more private. . . but we are friends with her and one of her friends. We do most of our emails through facebook just because it is easy. Posting pictures is great because then everyone gets to see them. Jada’s birthmom originally wanted a closed adoption so we are thrilled that things have changed. (We kind of weaseled our way into her life and I seriously could not imagine our life without her!) If I sensor anything. . . it’s not because of them. It’s because I just don’t think that the world needs to know everything. My mom always told me if you don’t want anyone to know, don’t write it down (or in 2010–don’t post it on facebook.) They certainly don’t censor anything because of us! You can set your profile to show only certain things to certain people if that’s what you would feel more comfortable doing.
We started out on myspace with Jakob’s first mom–so I really love facebook now. I think it’s all a comfort level. We have really open adoptions so it seems very natural for us. Honestly–phone calls are nearly impossible with a 4 year old and a 19 month old anyway–so we probably communicate more through facebook than we would if we were calling.
Jack’s birth mom just got a Facebook account a few weeks ago. We’re friends. I like having the ability to share the pictures. I thought I’d worry more than I actually do about sharing status messages and all that. Although, I do worry when I read *her* status messages. (She’s going through a hard time right now.) It’s just another way to keep in touch. At least, that’s how I feel about it.
I would have considered it at first but, now after 3 months of the birthmother wiping me out emotionally via her emails about how she can’t live any longer without her son (and 1 suicide attempt) and emails from the birthfather (who left her the day they placed their son) telling me I should be even more compassionate toward them for what they are going through, I’m very glad that I didn’t open that door. I was worried about what she might post on the website I set up so they could get updates and photos about our son. But when I set up permissions so that she couldn’t comment, she cried discrimination
I am facebook friends with my son’s birthmom. So far it’s been good. I haven’t heard directly from her in over a year, but I can still get a sense of what’s going on in her life and feel connected. Currently, it feels like our only lifeline so I value it.
I’m pretty careful about what I post in general so I don’t feel that I censor anything just for her. And she works in a daycare, so she knows first hand that not every day is great with a little one. In addition to seeing some venting from me she also sees how proud of him I am and how completely enamored I am with him.
I also get to see a bit of who she really is. She hid her pregnancy from her family so we’ve never met any of them. Through facebook I’ve been able to see pictures of them get a sense of who they are. That’s been priceless.
Yes we do and it works great. She gets to learn a few more personal details that we haven’t shared, not because we were hiding it just because it hadn’t come up. My daughter is about to turn 2 so we’ve been at this as long as you have.
And there is a new feature to facebook, which I use often now, where you can block a certain person(s) from viewing a status update. It’s the little padlock next to the share button. But if she’s like most birthmoms she’ll probably appreciate learning that you are just a normal mom who has bad days. We’ve been facebook friends for almost a year now and it has gotten easier to just be myself on it.
Facebook is literally the only way I get to know about my son(as a first mom) other than actual visits.
Sure, there has been times when I have felt angry at my sons adoptive mom for seemingly making fun of him in certain developmental stages. She says the exact same things in my very presence too though, so it’s not like a big shock or anything…I know she doesn’t really mean anything in a bad way.
I wish that she would interact with me in a more personal way(besides visits, which are very brief) but I will take what I can get. I know that for her(adoptive mom) it is just easier to do.
Once I subtly(accidently through a blog I deleted) offered a critisim about the fact that she was posting quite a few more pictures of her daughter by birth than of my son(adopted by her) and she has since done a better job of being ‘equal’ in the picture posting stuff. Not that I expected her too, honestly I never thought she would learn that I thought that way, but she did.
Social sites like Facebook are not perfect but they are improving things that you are worried about.
For example, if you don’t want your current friends to be able to see that you added someone that some(or all)of them might not approve of, you can edit your privacy to make sure they don’t see that update. To be completely honest with you, I heistate to add people based on the fact that I use Facebook to see pictures of my son and learn about him. Less than a dozen people on my friends list can even see any pictures I have of him and I only have 13 people on that list.
I plan to remove some of those people based personal interaction in reguards to how they see me as a first mom. I know that’s harsh, but it’s just the way I feel I have to be.
Facebook is not just a toy for me, it’s something more important because it’s the only way I can know about my son or even set up visits.
We had and still some what have a great relationship with the birth mother. However, I deactivated my FB account due to her posting comments on my pictures of the babies, saying things like “My baby girl is beautiful.” It really has upset me, because she claims to be their mother still, and emotionally I’m having problems with her comments on FB. I have also read her status updates and she says, “I going to visit my babies today.” I love the birth mother to death, but I’m having a hard time with the fact she believes she is their mother of my babies. My family is pretty upset that I deactivated my FB account, because that is how we keep them updated and how they get to see recent pictures of the babies. Any advice on this matter on how to deal with her comments would help me out so much! Thanks!!
Amanda, I appreciate that this is stressful for you. I’ll admit that I was taken aback the first time I saw a similar comment on a myspace pic when we were first in our open adoption. But you know, my daughter IS her first mom’s baby and that doesn’t make her any less MY baby. It took some getting used to but now I’m used to it. Sometimes we still have those jarring moments (our daughter is 6.5 now) and my husband and I check in with each other and help each other process our feeling about it. Usually we’re experiencing some kind of knee-jerk entitlement issue and when we reframe it for each other, we can get to a better place to make decisions. For me, I usually think, “If my mom or mother-in-law was doing this, would it bother me?” And if the answer is no, I can see that my issue isn’t with what she’s doing, it’s that I’m feeling insecure and that’s about ME and not necessarily about my daughter’s first mom’s behavior, you know? But if the answer is yes, it would bother me if my mom or mother-in-law did that, then I know it’s something we need to talk about.
Now if you really and truly cannot handle having your facebook space be an adoption space, too, you can create a very private account and make yourself not searchable and simply friend your family. (It’s how my family keeps in touch, too, they’d be very mad if I ever deleted my account!) But I also encourage you to think about WHY this issue is bothering you and whether or not what lies at the root of it should be something you make her issue as well or something you can resolve personally.
Dawn thanks so much for the advice! You are right I really need to find the root of these feelings. After reading your reply, I believe I know exactly what the real problem is. It’s the fact that I am not able to carry a child of my own, and after adopting I thought I had finally had the chance to love and raise a child that will one day call me mommy. However, I guess I will never truly be their only mother. I guess that’s what hurts the most.
{{{Hugs to you}}} Amanda! It takes a strong woman to confront that hurt.
Amanda,
I am an adoptive mom and my son’s bmom also calls him her son (which he is). This bothered me at first too. I think I thought that having two mom’s would make my being a Mommy less special. But I realized. . . IT TOTALLY DOESN’T MATTER! My son is now 4 yeard old and calls me Mommy and calls his bmom “[firstname] Mommy”. And it is SO clear that I am him regular mommy and it could not be more special. It is like your parents told you when you were kids, There is Enough Love to Go Around.
Having two mommies does not dilute the specialness of being a mommy. Just like having two Grandma’s does not make you love each Grandma less.
Hang in there and work through your feelings. After awhile it won’t bother you at all anymore. It will seem very natural. ANd then you can be proud of yourself too.
Amanda, May I gently offer that I sought the opinion of SEVERAL family therapists/psychiatrists about these sorts of issues (bmom/bgrandmother calling my daughter ‘their daughter’ and such) and can I tell you that TO A PERSON every one of them said that it was WAY out of line and a terribly disrespecting of boundaries for them to do that? At first, I thought I was the problem, as it kinda looks like some have suggested is the case with you. In fact, Amanda, your feelings are very appropriate. And ‘entitlement’ as used in the vernacular of adoptive language concerns feeling that this is YOUR child, not a ‘community’s child’. Not ok for people to disrespect the child’s reality in order to make themselves feel better and your feelings are valid…please follow what YOU already feel in your heart is right because you are. (It really bothers me that your feelings are not being validated here and you are being told to work thru them, let time pass, and you’ll be ‘better’ and ‘right’ if you change how you feel. You are already right.)