Saturday, January 21, 2012

Open Adoption

Danny & I attended our first adoption training today. It was a bit long (9-3) but we learned more about adoption and now have some decisions to pray and think about. The theme of this training was openness of today’s adoptions and what it means to us as potential adoptive parents. I’ll admit Danny & I were afraid of the aspect of open adoption when we first began this process. We assumed the worse could happen and had fears of the birth mother or father being a crazed maniac and kidnapping our child if she or he knew anything about us (maybe we watch too much TV).  We now feel a little more at ease with the idea of a somewhat open adoption after hearing an actual birth mother’s story and the assurance she feels when she receives updates periodically of her child growing and being loved by the family she chose for him. We also heard from 3 adoptive families and each one of them has a different degree of openness. While I don’t expect us to become BFF’s with our child’s birth parent, I am more at ease  with open adoption now that I’ve heard from real people who are living proof that it is doable and not so scary.

Not so side note: One of the adoptive families we heard from today began their adoption in Guatemala a few years ago. Their son was a few months old when they began and unfortunately Guatemala’s government changed its adoption policies leaving the US unable to adopt from Guatemala. While their case was grandfathered in, this couple (4 1/2 years later) has not been able to bring their son home due to the large number of court cases in the new, but flawed, system. This child has lived his whole life in an orphanage while his parents live here in the US anxiously waiting for the day they can bring him home. It broke our hearts to hear this, firstly because no child should be away from their family that long and secondly because Guatemalan’s hold a special place in my and Danny’s hearts (Danny and my parents have been on mission trips there and have formed relationships and a love for the people). They have since adopted another little boy from the US but are still holding hope for their first child to be reunited with them. Please pray for this family as they continue the long journey of bringing their precious boy home.

Monday is my next appointment with our social worker. This will be the first time I’ve had an individual interview with her (Danny’s is Tuesday). My interview will be at our house so she gets to meet the kids. Gage and Cady have wanted to meet her, so I’m sure this will be a good experience for them.

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