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I have raised my five year old daughter since she was sixteen months old. She does not know her biological mother. My husband has had full legal custody of her since she was six months old and has had her in his care since birth. Her biomom moved to another state in 1999. I adopted her last year after the biomoms rights were terminated for having no contact. the biomom had agreed to sign over her rights, but then kept 'losing" the papers. She has since hadtwo more kids that we know about. We keep in contactwith her biomoms half-sister, but noone else in the family has expressed an interest to see her ever(nor are they stable enugh to). i had a son seven months ago, and it was difficult trying to explain about her not being in my tummy like her brother was. She was only 3-4 when I was pregnant. Should we try again now that she is a little older to talk about her being adopted, or should we wait until she is a little older?
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I have a similar situation. My DS is 8 now, and he understands that he came out of his Birthmother's tummy and not mine. I had a pregnancy when he was around your DD's age, so that was a natural opener when he asked questions about it, but we'd talked to him about it before that as well. I think it's important to talk about it so the children know the truth and don't feel like it's something that should be hidden or shouldn't be discussed. One way to open the subject might be to start looking through photos. Baby pictures of your biological child might be a good place to start, and your DD might ask questions about her own birth that would give you an opening to explain it to her.
My situation is a little different in that my DS did have very sporadic contact with his Birthmother until he was about 4 (we had to explain who she was each time because he couldn't remember her), so he has some very vague memories of her. As he gets older he thinks about it more, and sometimes he brings it up out of the blue: "Mommy, I came out of someone else's tummy, not yours, right?" I try to answer all his questions as honestly and positively as I can, but I know he still has some confused feelings about it. That is the hardest part, not being sure how much to say. He has asked me, "Why didn't she keep being my mom?" I wish I could tell him that his mom wasn't able to take care of him, but loved him so much that she chose me to be his mom instead. At this point I've told him that she wasn't able to take care of him like a Mommy does, and that's one of the reasons God brought us together as a family, so he would have me to take care of him. I'm not sure what I'll say when that is not a good enough answer anymore. I think I can honestly say that she does love him, regardless of the poor choices she made. I think I can honestly say that she wasn't able to take care of him. But how to explain that she had another child shortly after she left him behind? This is the hard part, and I ache for DS knowing that these are the thoughts he'll be struggling with as he gets older.
I actually had fantasies for awhile about having some sort of semi-open arrangement with the Birthmother or her family so he could at least have some sort of relationship with his relatives, and maybe not have so many questions to wonder about, but through some bad experiences I've learned that they will never do anything but undermine me as his parent and all the positive feelings we're trying to instill in him. I keep email contact with one sister who seems to respect our wishes, but I'm too afraid of the Birthmother or other family members getting involved to set up any visits. We do keep pictures of the Birthmother (that DS, at this point, does not want to look at), and of all DS's cousins, aunts, and uncles (that he does like to look at). He doesn't say very much about it, though, and I wonder what goes on in his little head. I get angry for him sometimes that these are things he has to deal with. I hope that by always being open and willing to talk about it that he will come to me if he has questions or just wants to talk about his other family.
Do you visit with the sister you keep in contact with? I read on these forums all the wonderful stories about open adoptions, and although I know the dynamics in stepparent & family adoptions are somewhat different, I so wish my DS could know all his cousins and his aunt. I am just terrified that we would go to see them one day, and find out that the Birthmother or other family members insisted on coming along. At the same time, I'm not sure it's appropriate to put her sister in the position of refusing contact to the rest of her family (not that they've been too interested before, but you never know...).
Okay, I could ramble on forever! I hope this helped you somehow.
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