How Do You Deal With Your OA?

I'm running out of the office now, but I promise to come back with a better answer to this. Hopefully someone else will respond as well. But the short answer is this: It's not easy for me to have visits with my daughter. But I truly believe in my heart that it's what is best for her. She's really starting to understand who I am, and I have faith that that will be something that is important for her as she grows up. But it IS hard. ((((hugs))))

Hi. I am adoptive mom. I hope you don't mind me answering. I hoped you'd get more reponses but since you didn't I thought I'd tell you my experience. I think it is very hard for my son's first mom to see him calling me mom. It is hard when he is going through a clingy phase and he doens't want to hug her and runs to me saying, "I want my mom!" It is hard when she sees the pictures of us doing all the things I know she would like to be doing with him. On the other hand, our son has called her up on the phone (he's 3) to say he loves her. She is able to see that he is happy and well-cared for and very very loved. Since out adoption is very open, she has been to our house, seen his new big boy bed, given him a bath, taken him to the park and spent all 3 of his birthdays so far with him. My hope is that when our son is an adult he will have an equally close and loving relationship with both of us, but in different ways. And that neither one of us will feel threatened by the "other mother." Best to you in whatever you decide. but please take your time and don't let anybody pressure you into choosing adoption. I feel that we have a wonderful successful Open Adoption but it would be wrong of me to minimize the pain my son's first mom has experienced.

Hi.... I placed in 1986. I was supposed to receive pictures and update letters. The adoptive parents never kept their promise. Please remember there are no guarantees in adoption.... Some aparents do keep their promises tho. Because I would have given anything to receive those pictures and updates, I have this fantasy that OA is amazing. And on some level I try to be the adoptive mom to my last daughterS birthmom that I wish my first daughters amom had been to me. Strange. As an adoptive mom, I update facebook and myspace and have phone calls. But we don't live near her birthparents. Would love to have visits tho.... Hopefully that will happen. But I do wonder sometimes if OA is really hard. I wish I knew first hand.... I know closed adoption is like death. It's a horrible thing to not know if your daughter is dead or alive... It's a horrible thing to not know what your own child looks like! It is excruciatingly painful.

I placed my birthdaughter for adoption in 1995. She is almost fifteen years old. I have never regretted my decision and I know that it was the best choice that I could have made. We have had a fully disclosed, completely open adoption since the very beginning. Although I believe I made the right choice, it hasn't always been easy. In the hospital, when P was born, I didn't do anything to take care of her. I didn't change her diaper, didn't bathe her, didn't take her temp, and only fed her part of one bottle. I just couldn't handle taking care of her. I did cuddle and hold her almost the entire time we were in the hospital. It was really hard for me to see the adoptive parents caring for her. I really appreciated that the nurses brought them to another room for the new parents education stuff. As P got older, her parents sent a lot of letters and pictures. I appreciated them so much. We also had visits several times each year and phone calls whenever one of us called the other. I was always very nervous before each visit and sad afterwards. I always gave myself two or three days to prepare for and recover from each visit. The visits got MUCH easier as P got older. When she was born, she was "My baby." As she got older, she became her own person. As she developed into her own person, it was less painful to see her. P's parents are amazing. They have always been great about letting us hang out in whatever way we needed to. P feels comfortable asking me questions and I feel that my role as "birthmother" is respected. Hmmm...I feel like I am rambling. I guess I would say that the first year was filled with an almost crippling grief. I worked really hard to heal. Years 2-9 got easier and easier. When P was ten, I took a couple steps backward. I don't know what that was about, but I missed her like crazy and worked hard to deal with my recurrent grief. When P was thirteen, I got married and then got pregnant. S was born when P was fourteen. When S was born, I had to re-process everything again. I am realizing that I didn't know what I was giving up when I placed P for adoption. Parenting S has brought that up. I have felt some loss because I will never know what P would have been like if I had parented her. However, if I hadn't placed P, I wouldn't have S. I try not to second guess myself... On the positive side, I have a great relationship with P. She is a super cool kid and I really enjoy knowing her. She would not be the person that she is if I hadn't placed her for adoption. She has two fantastic parents and so many opportunities that I would not have been able to give her. I was able to go to college and have some amazing experiences. I met someone and was able to just pick up and move 3000 miles-just because I wanted to. I got to enjoy the freedom of being a young adult... Now, I am trying to figure out the best way for my daughter and my birthdaughter to relate to each other. It's new territory...We will make it work though.

I guess I really did ramble and didn't really answer your question...I will try again. When P was first born, it was really hard to see her parents doing the things that I wished I could be doing. As she got older, it got easier, but it was still really hard to see her calling them "Mom" and "Dad" and running to them for comfort when she got hurt. It was amazingly cool, though, when her barbie doll told my barbie doll that the baby barbie "loves her birthgrandma and wants the birthgrandma to hold her right now." It was also amazing to hear my three year old birthdaughter ask if I remembered when she was a little tiny baby and lived in my tummy. I was so happy that her parents talked to her honestly about adoption. Now, it is completely normal to see her with her parents. I feel like I placed a baby for adoption, but the young woman that baby is becoming is not mine to be parenting. We don't have a mother/daughter relationship anymore (and haven't since she was an infant.) We have something else.

Thank you so much for all the responses. I'm still so confused and scared. I feel like I'm dragging my feet on deciding for all the wrong [selfish] reasons. :confused:

It's not selfish to take a long time deciding on whether adoption is right for you--if you place your child, it's going to have a huge impact on you, and life-long consequences. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily the wrong decision, but by all means take your time with this decision. I haven't had a hard time watching my son Cricket treat his aparents like parents; for me, it's been nice to see how bonded to them and happy he is. But visits are still really hard.