My daughter was placed with us at 2 months old. Her bmom was 40 when DD was born, and had hidden her pregnancy, and gave birth alone. She initially brought DD to the hospital with the intent of placing her through Safe Haven. Ultimately, she was connected with our agency and DD was placed in interim care with the agency while bmom received counseling and decided to make an open adoption plan, and she chose me and DH. We instantly loved bmom, she is a wonderful person. We have a fully disclosed adoption, but calls stopped quite early (I couldn’t call due to her privacy issues). I e-mailed with pictures and updates monthly, I’d sometimes get a 2 line response, most times nothing. There was sometimes talk of an amorphous visit at some future time. I would write heartfelt e-mails about our relationship, explaining my feelings and hopes for DD.
After being out of contact for about 9 months, Bmom e-mailed and said she had moved unexpectedly- in the same area though. As DD approached 2, bmom increased her responses to my e-mails, and said she was ready for a visit. She cancelled the first planned visit, but we did meet the next week, and she came to our house and spent the entire day. It was great. We talked about the hard stuff. She said she was ready for this to continue. And then she cancelled the next visit. And then the next. And now I haven’t heard from her.
I am so sad. My DD is only 2 now, but by her already emerging personality I imagine she will want a relationship with bmom. I also imagine she will ask hard questions, and I just don’t have the answers. Bmom has older children who have no idea DD exists. That makes me incredibly sad for DD, too.
So my question is how much do I push to keep this relationship? I fear if I don’t push at all, she will drop out of our lives completely. But as DD gets older, I don’t think it will sit right with her that bmom is, well, flaky. I guess part of me feels that is their relationship to work out then. But now, it is my job to keep those lines open so that DD will have the choice to decide when she is older. Does this ramble make any sense? I would love bparent and especially adoptee perspective on this.
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WOW. My guess is the birthmom will eventually come around and hopefully in time for your daughter to get really interested. My advice would be to gently keep her up-to-date and keep the window open for her to contact you when she’s ready.
I think one of the hardest things about “open” adoption is that both parties start out with great intentions and then emotions suddenly kick in and make things really, really hard. Sometimes one party is keen and ready and the other is not. Hopefully over time, a kind of easy understanding can be met.
My 2 cents based simply on my own opinion.
It sounds kind of like our situation, although we haven’t had a visit since DS was a few days old. His bmom just told me that maybe she’ll be up for a visit in a few years. I’m going to keep the contact going: a letter and photos every couple of months plus the general emails/facebook contact. i think she just needs time to get a grip on her own emotions about it. I kept saying that we are up for a visit whenever she is ready and I think know she knows that she can ask when it works for her. I think she expected us to run off with our son and never contact her again and I think finally she knows that we mean what we say. So my advice is keep being honest and maintain contact, not expect anything back and let her get back to you when she is ready.
I can only speak from my experience as a first mom to a baby boy that is almost 16 years old. We’re flaky because it hurts. It hurts to see our children grow up without us, it hurts to think about, talk about, it hurts to breathe some days. It hurts and although the pain gets less fierce after a decade & a half it is still the worst pain I’ve ever dealt with and continue to live with today.
I can only imagine that pain, and would not wish it on anyone. I do so wish she could talk to me about it. She has, literally, no one to talk to about it since no one in her life knows about our daughter. She can return to her therapist at the agency, but she doesn’t want to because she says she needed to move on.
On our visit, we were talking about this, and I again told her I could hear the hard stuff, the regret, the pain. I told her that I understand it may be difficult. to talk to me since, well, I have the kid and I am part of the pain At that point, she told me that while it was painful, that she just didn’t love DD like he loves the daughters she raised. She said she feels like DD is more of a niece to her. I don’t know if this is a defense mechanism, but it is how she says she feels.
and that makes sense, because she cancels the day of the visit. I think she tries to psych herself up for it, but in the end just can’t.
Thank you for reminding me of this. . . I know the pain is always there–but I forget that the intensity is too. We love our children’s first mothers more than anyone could ever understand and it is frustrating when they are always late for visits–which are usually at our house. Not just a few minutes late–but an hour or more (sometimes 3 hours) late. It feels like it is so disrespectful to us sometimes leaving a visit with one birthmom early to have another one show up 2 hours late when we could have spent more time with another one. We have talked about it and hopefully things will change. BUT yet, I do get that it is probably very painful even after 4 1/2 years to get together (something I forget because we see each other about every month or so.) My husband and I still have expectations, though. And being on time is one of them–unless there is a very very very good reason. (Trust me, we are very flexible, really.) It is difficult to express this yet still be sensitive to everyone’s feelings. In the end–it is about my children. The questions they ask like, why aren’t they here yet. When are they coming again. It is about respecting and loving them too.
We just had a very positive and emotionally intense visit with our daughter. It is so important to be able to share all your feelings with everyone involved in the adoption. But hearing it again from you–about the pain–really does help. Thanks!
If I could talk to your daughters first mom, I would try and encourage her to at least write letters, or even just ONE letter telling your/her daughter everything that she feels and stuff.
I am a first mom too, but I am the one who pushes for contact, not the other way around.
I can imagine wanting to just forget that I’m a first mom and live ‘normally’. Of course I will always love my son more than I can describe.
Sometimes though, I worry that my prescence in my sons life might be a bad thing, maybe your daughters first mom has fears about something like that??
My impression is that your daughters first mom, being that she is ‘older’ is well…afraid and likely isn’t sure how to ‘fit’ into her role.
Personally, I get the feeling that she will likely contact you again. Just so long as you keep a way for her to contact you, that’s the best thing you can do right now.
Our situation is similar – my son’s first mom hid her pregnancy and placed at the hospital with the social worker there. Social worker put her in touch with our agency and she chose our profile. We met her a few days later and had two other visits the first year. I haven’t heard from her in almost 2 years now.
I continue to send my monthly email updates and pictures – I wish that I could mail her some of his drawings, handprints, etc, but due to privacy concerns we only use email. I end many of my letters with a note telling her that we’d love to see whenever she is ready and that we really mean the door is always open no matter how much time has passed. We’ve moved and I’ve made sure to send her our new address, etc so that she always has current contact info.
I’m very sad for my son. I just hold out hope that one day she’ll be ready. I assume that a relationship with him is just too painful for her. And it makes it harder because she went through it alone so I don’t know if she is getting any support from anywhere or just burying all of those feelings deeper and deeper. I won’t be able to answer his questions and I think it will be a while before he understands that her inability to see him is not about him.
I know that if I don’t continue with my regular letters any hope of a relationship will dwindle and we’ll lose contact with her. Just hang in there. My letters have become a nice journal of his development that I’m happy to have.