Adoption Picnic

This weekend we went on a special picnic.  Our kids are adopted, you see, and this is the first time we’ve had an organized picnic with all of the maternal birth family.  We’ve seen them all from time to time at various events where our paths have crossed over the years.  We’ve never made it a secret that our children were adopted, nor have we kept it a secret who this birth family is. 

Adoption is very dear to my heart.  We have adoptions of various kinds in our family.  My brother is adopted with a closed adoption, as they all were, years ago.  He has now adopted his step-children.  We have two adopted children in an open adoption. (Same birth mother) Ours isn’t a wide open adoption, we've exchanged letters and pictures and a few visits, but not very much.  I was thinking today that they have behaved perfectly as a birth family, just the right amount of contact. We couldn’t have had a better experience.

It isn’t easy giving a baby up for adoption. It has to be on of the hardest thing a young woman can ever do. Those that think teen moms are making life easier for themselves are wrong. I’m sure they think about that baby they’ve given away.  The openness of letters and pictures must help, as they can see how they change as they grow.  I really admire those young women who can give up something so much a part of themselves to someone else, knowing they no longer will have control over that life. I know these things. My daughter had a baby while still in high school. She made the decision to keep her baby.  We encouraged her to look into adoption, remembering what her birthmother had done for us. There were many people who have said to us “how can you even THINK of giving that precious life to someone else”.  I can think of it because, that is how I received two of my children.  I can think of it, because I believe children need a two parent home.  I can think of it, because there are couples out there wanting a baby of their very own.  I love my grandson.  I love to have him in my house.  I love him enough to know he and his mother needed to live with us, because he needed a stable home, even if it wasn’t parents.  I love him enough that if my daughter had decided to give him up for adoption, I would have let him go.

I hope we too, have made the experience a good one for the birth family.  I’ve never felt threatened by the kids' birth family or my kids knowing just who that “other family” is.  All kids at sometime or another are going to express the wish that we aren’t their parents, and that we never had been.  That happens to most parents, adoptive or not.  We’ve had these children since they were a few days old and what we have given them no one else can take away.  

Here is a link about an adoption story.  It also tells her story about searching for her birth parents.  In it is something everyone touched by adoption can enjoy.   http://growup318.com/igrewinhertummy/