First off, our open adoption was agreed upon by us and K. We are the ones who decided what would work best for each of us. We certainly asked for advice from others including family and case workers but it was the three of us who would be living the open adoption so we wanted to make sure it would work for all of us.
We were fine with an open adoption so we let K take the lead on what she wanted/needed. She told us that she wasn’t exactly sure what all she wanted but she knew she wanted it to be open. We know all about each other and our families. We know each others last names and where we all live. Besides knowing that information, here is what we all originally came up with for the openness we would have…emails with updates, pictures and openness to future visits. We also were fine communicating through phone calls and texts. Contact, especially emails were everyday at first, then every couple of days, then once a week and eventually once a month. We let K tell us how often she needed updates and we did our best to make that happen.
That was our original open adoption plan but recently things have changed a bit. K no longer needs emails from us, she just checks out our family blog when she wants an update. We have asked her if we can still send her emails, cards and/or presents. She likes that idea. ;) We all are still able to contact each other if we want or need to but it is not a monthly thing anymore.
We all have a lot of love and respect for each other but there have been a few bumps along the way. Our relationship with K has not been a perfect one but that is because it is a real relationship and real relationships aren’t perfect because people aren’t perfect. We feel that K and her family are our extended family and with all family relationships there are times you don’t see eye to eye but you talk through things and get past it. We have found that the #1 thing you need to have in a successful open adoption is communication. Because of the high and sensitive emotions involved in an open adoption everyone has to be able to share their feelings and not let them get bottled up. It took us all a couple of times of bottling up our perspective feelings before we learned this lesson. ;)
We love having an open adoption because we feel that it benefits everyone involved, especially our daughter. It is great to be able to tell Katie not only her birth mum’s name but personal things about her as well. K made a scrapbook for Katie that has pictures of her and her family growing up. It is awesome to be able to see those pictures and see what physical traits Katie gets from her. Kim also made a scrapbook for Katie that tells the story of how she came to be in our family. She loves to look at it.
We are very proud that Katie is adopted and it is something we freely talk about with anyone who wants to know. We talk to Katie about her being adopted as well and we have done so since her birth. Obviously she doesn’t understand totally what adoption means but we feel that it is important for her to hear the terms of adoption from an early age. How we talk to her about it now is very casually and simple. We also talk about it in an excited voice because we want her to understand that it is a joyful thing and nothing to be ashamed about. Adoption is about love and we tell her how much K loves her. We feel it is important to have a picture of K in Katie’s room. We want her to know her face, know who she is and to be proud to have her as her birth mum. We know that we are proud to have her as “our” birth mum!
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| This is the quilt that K's mum made for Katie and the koala bear they gave her at placement. We had the photographer take this special photo of Katie that was in honor of her birth family. We enlarged this photo and gave it to K. |
For the first birth mum’s day following placement Kim made a beautiful book for K with pictures of just K and her family with Katie. It was a way to honor her as Katie’s 1st mum and the family that she came from and will always be a part of. K really loved it. ;)
Here is a video that Kim made K in honor of Katie’s 1st birthday.
