Open Adoption Blogger hosts The Open Adoption Roundtable.  Which is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It’s designed to be a showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community.

How did you talk to your extended family about open adoption prior to adopting/placing? How did they respond? For those with non-receptive family members, were you able to have more successful discussions with them post-adoption?

While we were beginning our journey on the path of adoption to family, we started talking to our own families of what we were hoping to do.  That being continuing a relationship with our future child/children’s family as part of our family.

Becoming grandparents was one thing, but sharing and have many different sets of grandparents might have been another thing.  We shared some of the literature that had been recommended to us.  We sent it ahead prior to a trip giving them some time to read and have questions for us during our visit.

Both of our parents knew families that had adopted and these children now adults did not have any connection to their birth families.  And so we were needing to share with our own families as we embarked on our path to parenthood what this would be like from what we were learning and the families we were meeting along the way.  Our parents supported our decision but like us they were learning as we went.

For us seeing other families and becoming part of a community of families built through open adoption helped us to ‘get it’ and what it would mean for our future children.

When our first daughter was born, like us C had some education through her pregnancy of what an open adoption would be and we all had a similar vision of what we wanted after the baby was born.  It was her parents and family that we had to share what this open adoption relationship would be like and how they would be grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.  Early on I think they weren’t too sure if we would follow through (they never said) but we were from CA they lived in MN and had only met us the week the baby was born.   So it was through our actions early on and our continued family interactions now that our realtionship developed into the family relationship it is today.

When our second daughter was born S had already met our other daughter and knew from us what our relationship with C was.  She too along with us had a similar vision of what we wanted after the baby was born.  We shared with her dad and grandmother that they would be the grandparent and great grandparent of S’s baby girl but also for our first daughter.  They knew this was the right way for them to extend their family too!

My mom told me in the last year or two how she now really understands why we reached out for the relationships we have with each of our daughter’s birth families.  During her visits with us she has met some of their birth family and could see our girls’ interactions with them.  She knows that we are all family and that for our girls there is never too much love for them.

We were lucky in that no one was dead against wanting us to adopt and for us to  have continued relationships with our child/children’s birth family in an open adoption.  I think some of their  early skepticism was based on what they may have read or heard or seen on television.  Like us not knowing any other families who were living in open adoptions made it hard to realize at first.

Our girls are now 6-1/2 and 4-1/2 years old.  We know how blessed we are to have had our families expand so seamlessly.  Along with how we have become family we are witnessing our girls develop independent relationships with their birth families and that makes us truly very happy for all of us!

You can read others responses to this writing prompt at Open Adoption Bloggers.