Doing a great thing

Last night, I found myself watching a show about open domestic adoption.  You follow the prospective parents and the expectant mother through all the emotions and events that occur leading up to the birth and subsequent adoption or mind-changing by the birth mom.  Now my initial thoughts as this is playing out, and it looks like the birth mom might change her mind at the hospital while the prospective parents are caring for a newborn who may not be theirs while nursing wounds from several previous miscarriages is.....that's why we didn't do that.  I could never handle that kind of stress.  (Of course, we wanted a child that otherwise would have no home and there are people from here to eternity lined up to adopt white infants so it wasn't really a serious decision.)

But in this show, the birthmother sticks to her guns and does go through with her adoption plan.  They show her on the phone, baby in one hand, phone in the other, giving the lawyer the go ahead to file her relinquishment papers so the boy's parents can take him and go home.  In this open adoption, she will remain a part of their lives through letters, calls and visits.  She is invited to the baby boy's christening.

In international adoption, the birth parents are usually out of the picture.  The children have  perhaps been in orphanages for months, even years.  The laws of many countries don't allow parents to make adoption plans.  They must remain anonymous and abandon their children.  Sometimes this appears to be done out of love, when they are left where someone is sure to find and care for them.  Sometimes it doesn't appear to be out of love.  We don't have to worry about a birth parent wanting them back- there's no way they could find them.  

So, it's easy to forget sometimes that our child's story didn't begin in an orphanage.  In our case, our daughter spent about 4 or 5 days with her birth family before her life in institutions began.  She surely doesn't remember, but no matter how much we try to ignore the fact, those days happened.  And the idea of an open adoption, where you know the who, why, where, and all that of your child's birth parents really seems attractive.  I would love for Anju to know who her birth family is- to know the circumstances under which she was relinquished.  If they saw the advertisements asking for info about her in the newspaper before she was declared an orphan and ached to cry out, "that's my baby" but kept silent.  If they truly wish they could have kept her.  If they didn't.  

I saw the pain the birth mother went through.  Having delivered two children myself, I can't imagine what it would be like to make the decision that this little person you created is better off with another family and let them go.  When people tell me what a great thing we're doing, I want to say that it was the birth parent who did the great thing in giving Anju a chance at a wonderful life instead of the burdens of whatever circumstances (poverty, inability or no desire to have a girl, unable to provide medical care for her sb, unwanted pregnancy, abusive father, who knows) played into their decision.

I think of Anju's birth family often- maybe even every day- and pray for them.  I encourage other adoptive families to do the same.  It's the closest thing to closure we'll ever have.