This is written by a birth mom, Meagan.
I am SO thankful for open adoption and the family I’ve been able to build with the adoptive parents of my daughter.
I found out I was pregnant in April of 2018 and after careful consideration of all our options, TJ and I decided adoption would be the best course of action due to our financial situation not being the best at the time.
We wanted nothing more than to be parents but knew if we chose to parent her that we would all struggle and most likely have to live on welfare. That was not a life we wished for our daughter. We wanted her to have everything we couldn’t afford to provide for her.
It was VERY important for us that the adoption be an open one; we loved her so much already and wanted to be in her life as much as we could. TJ himself was adopted from a closed adoption and does not know his parents, so he is always stuck wondering what they are like and doesn’t know any of his family’s medical history, etc.
It has always been so important to us that we do everything we can to ensure our daughter has the best life she can, including knowing her parents and their medical histories. We want her to always know that we love her and chose adoption with her best interest in mind. We wanted to ensure that she’ll never grow up wondering and looking for answers – she’ll always have everything she needs.
We are very lucky that we found J and J (adoptive parents), the absolute perfect parents for our daughter. They had the means to give her everything we couldn’t, and increased the amount of love we already gave her. She now has four parents who love her unconditionally. To me, four is better than just two!
J and J were willing to have an open adoption and allow us to be in her life as much as we all wanted.
Throughout the pregnancy, they came to visit us almost every week or every other week. They came to doctor’s appointments with me, sonograms, etc. They even stayed at our apartment and watched our dog when I was unexpectedly hospitalized.
Once I had given birth, we called them and they drove down and stayed in a hospital room right next to ours so we could all be together with our new blessing from God. After the hospital we visited them and E (baby) every few weeks.
To this day, a year later, we still text almost daily and see each other often.
It’s always amazing to me that J and J shared with us that initially, when starting their adoption journey, they weren’t necessarily open to the idea of an open adoption. It really came down to the fact that they didn’t know enough about it.
After taking a class through the agency, they changed their minds, and here we are living one of the most beautiful open adoption stories and loving every minute of it.
I know it’s scary to think of having an open adoption when there are so many unknowns. But as long as everyone has the baby’s needs as their first priority, what’s the harm in it?
Learn more about open adoption here
Not a day goes by that I am not absolutely indebted to them for tying something new and scary and allowing themselves to take a risk. None of our lives would be the same without open adoption. There are just so many benefits to it and so many things our daughter is equipped with now to make her better off in the long run. She will never have to wonder what her birth parents are like, because we’ll always be right there for her to reach out to.