There is actually 2 things I would do differently.
The first thing is I would allow myself to grieve more and not just try to move on with my life. By the time my daughter was a year old I no longer talked about her. I tried to cover up that I ever had her. I assumed this was how you are supposed to deal with adoption. 17 years ago there was no example of how to be a birthmom. Adoption has changed so much in this short time.
The second would be to write to my daughter and her adoptive parents more when she was younger. I always assumed that writing my daughter was for my benefit and not for her. I really didn’t think she would need more for anything. I now found out that she really needed to know about me and she needed to know that she was wanted and loved. I gave her up because I loved her and wanted her to have more than I could have at the time. I wish I could have gotten to know her better when she was little.
I think this is one thing agencies really need to do — educate expectant families about the whys of open adoption for the kids. Adoptive parents often get some kind of training (we did) but expectant parents rarely do (my daughter’s mom didn’t get anything). Now she knows how much she matters to her daughter but I don’t think she realized that at the beginning.
I was so worried about how I would respond to contact with the first family – what if they want too much? how can I set my boundaries? what if they try to tell me what to do? etc..
I never considered the flip side. That not hearing from first mom for 7 months (going on
would be hard. I never considered that seeing pictures of her spending time with other children would be hard (she babysits a lot and posts photos on her facebook). As a positive I’m pleasantly surprised that I yearn for her to be in his life – I don’t think I really expected that.
All of our support groups and agency seminars were focused on the benefits of contact and debunking all of those fears and mysteries. I wish someone had told me to prepare for actually wanting that contact, but not getting it. I just really didn’t expect to want it as much as I do.
hmm…my smiley face is supposed to be – the number eight followed by a close parenthesis.
I hope Evie’s birthmom reads this somehow. She has said she wants to write letters but we haven’t received any yet and I am longing to have some put away for Evie to read to her when she starts to understand things.
Thank you for this. I think it’s somewhat “easy” to forget when they’re little that everything we do is for our kids. Right now, it’s easy to feel like any relationship that we have with DD’s first mom is for her and for us, but all of those memories and experiences are for the little girl we all love.
[...] Jeannette looks back and wishes she had better understood how much she had to offer her daughter in those early years. [...]