Open Adoption Support » gifts

Any tips for a birthmom coming up on her placed son’s first birthday?

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 15:14:01 +0000

Any tips for a birthmom coming up on her placed sons first birthday? The adoptive family lives out of state so visiting is not an option at this time. I am sending some small gifts but it is heartbreaking not to be there for such a huge milestone. Any suggestions for how to process all of the emotions, how to be open and honest with his mom, how to get past the fact that I have missed his entire first year of life…etc.

Birth mom is not respecting our boundaries. Help!

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:38:48 +0000

I am an adoptive mother of one child, age 2. We have an open adoption with her birthmother but no contact with birthfather (his choice). We have for the past two years struggled to find a happy place in this relationship with our birthmother. We have had issues with gift giving, over staying her welcome, claiming we are not making her apart of our family and even her stating she should have no boundaries. We started out three months before our daughter was born with visits to her birthmom. It was a great time to get to know each other. After our daughter was born it was visits every 2-3months. After many uncomfortable situations and some not so nice emails from our birthmother we decided to only visit once every 6 months. It became too emotionally straining to see her more often. Now we are trying to find a happy place but she keeps stating that if she cannot see her daughter whenever she wants to and is allowed to give her gifts whenever she wants to then she does not want to be involved at all. We have even tried to go back to square one- writting letters back and forth, which only lasted two months then yet another letter from her stating we changed after her daughter was born and she does not feel like family, and wants to see her often and be totally involved in our lives like family is. We still send updates monthly with tons of pictures each time to keep our communication open. We do understand we opened up too much too soon with this young lady. She was invited to the baby shower, baptism and over to our house on several occasions. But after too many uncomfortable instances where she ignores the limits we have set, we want to pull back some. We want to have family occasions with out our birthmother there. She does not seem to get that and insists she is family and should be involved. We did not invite her to our daughters birthday party it was only godparents and grandparents, not our whole family. We did visit her on our daughters actual birthday to celebrate together, but that was not good enough. What do we do if we do not feel comfortable seeing her whenever she wants a visit? How do you get her to stop sending gifts in the mail every couple months? How do we find common ground again? We have on several occasions offered to meet and talk with a social worker and she will NOT do that. Please help!

How do I make our visits work in Foster to Adopt?

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:05:12 +0000

We are in the final stages of a Foster to Adopt placement adoption of our 6.5 year old son. It has been a long and drawn out court process for this little guy and he has had multiple moves. His first mother, unfortunately for her, was born affected with FAS. This has been the cause of her losing her two children and being unable to accept and understand both the process and the end result. During our last court proceeding regarding access for the Birth mother, M, the judge has decided that 2 yearly visits are adequate for her to have access to our boy. I wish that it hadn’t been court ordered, not because we wouldn’t have tried for an open relationship with her anyways, but because the dates are pretty well set in stone so that we cannot be flexible in accommodating the visits. Anyways, I digress… In all honestly, I am very aprehensive and fearful for this first visit. I don’t want to mess it up, I don’t want it to become confrontational and I surly don’t want it to be at all negative for our son. How do we set boundaries for M when I am not sure she understands what that means? Our son has transistioned on his own over the last year from calling her Mommy M to just calling her M and I don’t know how that will confuse him if she continues to just carry on and call herself his mom. I don’t know how to deal with what will I imagine to be a huge barrage of gift giving on this visit as well. During all of her last visits with him he would come home with a trunk load of presents. Should I be getting our social worker to request no gifts, limited gifts? I don’t know. I guess what I am mostly asking is anecdotes or ideas on how to make this first visit go smoothly and as painlessly as possible when she thinks that we ‘stole’ him. Which of course is not the case, we were just the last family placed with him before he was finally released from foster care placement to an adoptive placement opportunity. Is there anything I should be doing or giving her that might help? I thought maybe making her a photo album of the last 6 months (that’s how long its been since she has seen him). Sorry that this is such a long post. Maybe I am really just over thinking things….

Do you agree with the industry dictating how adoption is going to be handled on a personal level?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 May 2011 17:26:22 +0000

We live in Canada and open adoption is a relatively new concept here. The government has been slowly switching to the same process as the US. I’m wondering how people feel about the process and how open adoption is presented. Not sure how it is in the US, but I do know that here in Canada we had to become ‘certified’ in openness and were told that we could not adopt unless we agreed to open adoption. Social workers on both sides (birthfamily and adoptive family) educate their ‘clients’ and only offer open agreements. Which we do believe in and had no problem agreeing to, however, it doesn’t suit everyone. There were certain things that we didn’t want to agree to, such as gifts, as that wasn’t part of our first child’s adoption and were hoping to keep the openness as similar as possible, but we were told
we could no longer adopt a child unless we agreed to gifts. Even though we agreed to monthly visits, phone calls etc.. Shouldn’t people be able to find an adoption situation that fits everyone in the equation? Do you agree with the industry dictating how adoption is going to be handled on a personal level?

Do I need to make gifts even?

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:24:57 +0000

There is a discussion thread on another adoption forum about gifts from birth families. Namely, what to do if you don’t have any. Especially if you have two adopted children and one gets them routinely and the other gets none. Some adoptive parents have started to purchase gifts for the child who doesn’t normally receive any and say it was sent from the birth family in order to ease the upset that happens at every gift giving occasion.

Right now our children are too young to care about gifts, but our older child has already received several gifts from his birth family while our daughter has received none. I fear it may eventually become an issue.

But I hesitate to purchase gifts in the birth family’s name because at it’s root it is dishonest. (And before someone goes there: Yes, Santa Clause is also technically “dishonest,” but in a very different way.)

What do others do/feel about this issue?

His birthday is tomorrow. What should I get his birthmom?

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 21:39:57 +0000

I was wondering what is an appropriate and sensitive way to acknowledge our son’s birthmom on his birthday? I actually left this a bit late to ask as it’s his birthday tomorrow! I am probably going to send her an email to say that we’re thinking of her etc, but I’d appreciate any better advice or suggestions.

Thanks! I really value all the perspectives and suggestions here.

What about gifts from the adoptive family?

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:32:01 +0000

I’m not sure this is really the ‘right’ kind of question, but there is such an interesting range of advice and ideas here I hope I can ask it anyway! What are people’s thoughts on gifts (from my perspective that’s from the adoptive family to DS’s birth mom). I’ve been sending photo books for special occasions and I feel like it’s getting a bit old. Plus I send prints of the best photos during the year anyway, so there’s rarely anything new. Does anyone have ideas of other gifts? I don’t know his bmom well enough to think of more original ideas that she’d like. Thanks for your advice

How do I deal with overbearing grandparents?

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:14:16 +0000

Just wanted to get your thoughts on how others would handle this situation. For the past 4 years…been working with the bf and his very controlling/overly aggressive parents. The beginning of the adoption…well let’s just say we got off to a rough start. They threatened us, stalked us….and then we moved to a different state and I have been working with the bf…who is a sweetie…on taming the energy of his parents into something we can tolerate and hopefully carve out a relationship. We’ve come a LONG way. However…each visit, his parents do or say something that either crosses the boundaries we’ve been trying to set, or just out-right goes against a request we have made. For example….last year we had asked them to reduce the number of gifts and please only bring 1 gift to the visit because we didn’t want the visit to be about the gifts our daughter gets…we want it to be about their presence. So, their one gift was 1 big tote bag full of 15 presents. This year, they did respect that one wish and bring 1 small gift. However, at the end of the visit, his father got down on one knee and told our daughter that the next visit was going to be at our house. I nearly freaked out! Before I could say anything, his wife announced that they were planning on coming to our house this year, but their plans changed. Hello! No one had told us of their plans. And they didn’t ask, just told our 4 year-old daughter what they were going to do!! Keep in mind that we had set up a deal with the bf that we were NEVER to meet at our house because we DO NOT TRUST his parents (after all their previous stalking, etc.). And now that we live in a different state, we have been meeting half way at a playground or fun place where we can all play with our daughter and have a good time, Thankfully, my cousin was with me and jumped in and said, “I’ve got a better idea, you should meet at…”

Which is how we kinda left it. So, what do I do now? Should I contact the bf and remind him about our agreement to meet on neutral ground…or should I wait and see what they do as next year’s visit approaches? Keep in mind that our relationship is pretty fragile. They take things we say out of context pretty frequently and turn it into a battle.

How important is it to acknowledge Mother's Day, Birthmother's Day or other holidays?

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:23:46 +0000

How important is acknowledging Mother’s Day (or “Birthmother’s Day”) or really any traditional holiday?

I ask because I come from a family that has never made a big deal about most holidays. Birthdays celebrations and gifts are for children only. And even for children it tends to be small gatherings and a very small number of inexpensive gifts. On Mother’s Day I may remember at the last minute to call my mother. But then again, I may not. Even Christmas is pretty low-key. And gifts are only for the children in the family.

I do not personally receive a Mother’s Day card from anyone and do we do not do anything to celebrate it. Nor do I expect or want it.

My extended family is very close and we all get along very well with one another. We just have never bought into the commercial side of expressing our love and relationship. It dates back to a time when my parents were struggling financially and they just didn’t have the money for such things. Even once my father’s career took off, they still didn’t expand on the gift-giving and occasions. It’s more important to spend time together on a daily basis (or as often as possible for those who live away) than spend money on gifts a few times a year.

But I’ve been reading on various forums about all the things adoptive parents are doing to acknowledge their children’s birth mother and I wonder if we should be doing something.

How important are these things?

I’ve never discussed it specifically with my children’s birth mother, but in passing conversation we have talked about the things we do with our families at various times and milestones (she about her family and I about mine). So she does know we don’t make a deal out of the majority of holidays & celebrations that other honor. And she has never said that she wanted it, but now I’m wondering if we should do something. Although I frankly haven’t a clue what we could do that wouldn’t seem odd or forced. Especially as we’ve never done anything in the past.

Am I worrying about this needlessly? Or should we do something?

Is it ok to not save some things given by the birthparents?

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:00:17 +0000

Over the past fews months, our birthparents, especially our bm, have sent some things for our son that have seemed inappropriate or just weren’t in our taste. Are we required to save and/or use everything that they send? Some things have been broken religious artifacts, some have been clothing that we just don’t care for. For example, she sent size 5T clothing for our son and insisted we take pictures of him in it for her- we told her that, as a then 11 month old, he couldn’t wear it but that we would save it for later and send her a picture when he could fit into it. Truth be told, if I had a choice, I would never put him that style of clothing.

Another example: today, we received a cd of pictures of our son at birth and the first 9 months of his life before he came to live with us. Included was 20 pictures of his bm’s naked breasts. Yes, she was breastfeeding him in the pictures, but her breasts are fully visible. Our thought is to take out the photos we feel are inappropriate. I’m wondering, though, if this is considered “censoring” in OA and we should save and/or use everything?