Recently I shared that I completed a successful birthmother search for my adopted daughter. Since posting that blog I’ve received questions regarding how to do the search and which searcher to use.

Regardless of which country you are searching in to find your child’s birthmother* take the time to ask yourself a few questions before you begin a birthmother search. By doing this you will perhaps prevent heartbreak and stress up the road.

1. Why are you doing the search? Has your child asked you to search for her birthmother or have you taken the initiative? Are you just curious or is this a serious enterprise?

2. Are you going to tell your child about the search only if it is successful of if it is a failure as well?

3. What knowledge do you want to gain from this search? Personal information? Medical information? Continued contact? 

4. Finding a birthmother will be emotionally and possibly physically traumatic for the birthmother, particularly if the adoption was intentionally closed. As the person who has initiated the search, you are setting off a chain of events that cannot be reversed. Can you handle the responsibilities that will accompany this birthmother search?

5. Searches in some countries, like Guatemala for example, can be dangerous for the searcher. Are you ready for the responsibility of paying someone to do something dangerous?

Our Guestblogger is Melissa Nilsen who resides in Minneapolis with her husband and two-year old daughter. She writes articles on open adoption and blogs about being a birthmother and mom. Check out her personal blog or read her articles on Tapestry Books on-line.

(Read part I here)

I recently went away for the weekend with a girlfriend and we called home to talk to our children as much as we talked to each other. I miss my daughter when I’m not with her and I watch her like a hawk when we’re together. If you’re a mother or are close to a mother, you know this routine. It’s hard to be away from your baby, especially a brand new infant.

As we established on Monday, open-adoption seems the clear choice for birthparents. When a birthchild is first born, he feels very much like the birthparent’s real child. How can a birthmother be expected to sever all ties and walk away? But birthparents are not the only people to consider in the adoption triad.

Many adoptive parents worry, and rightly so, about the practicality of open adoption. They wonder: What if I don’t like my baby’s birthmom? What if the birthmom doesn’t like us? What if she doesn’t like the way we parent? What if she changes her mind? What if she violates our boundaries?

As a mother of two years, it is hard for me to imagine looking at my beautiful child as she sleeps, feeling all that overwhelming love that a parent feels for her child, and imagining someone else out there who feels the same way about her. How, I’ve often asked myself, would I handle a woman coming to see my daughter with the same kind of love and anticipation with which I seek out my own child?

Would I be able to “share?”

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees in open-adoption. An open-adoption is dependent on the personalities of each person involved and is, therefore, subject to a million different possible influences. In other words: some go better than others. Even though my open-adoption was a tremendous success, I cannot promise that any other open-adoption will be successful.

But my birthdaughter’s mother Sandy and I have come up with these few rules, guidelines and factors that are consistent with successful open-adoption.

1. Open-adoption is not co-parenting. The adoptive parents are the parents. No part of the open-adoption relationship should undermine the adoptive parents’ roles as parents.

2. There must be mutual trust in the open-adoption relationship. Before entering into an open-adoption, the birthmother and the adoptive parents need to feel enough trust for each other. The birthmother must be able to trust that the adoptive parents will honor their promises to involve her; and the adoptive parents must be able to trust that the birthmother will not change her mind.

3. If there is not full trust, adoptive parents cannot bond appropriately with their new child. If a birthmother is unreliable and is wavering in her decision to place her baby, adoptive parent end-up in constant fear that their adoption might fall through and as a result, they hold back emotionally, afraid to fall in love with a baby they may lose.

My name is Melissa Nilsen. I am a mother and a writer in Minneapolis. After seven years in an open adoption relationship, my husband and I had our first daughter. Our daughter has loved getting to know her biological half-sister as she has grown up. I write articles on adoption and blog about being a mother and a birthmother. Check out my blog at: www.birthmomguide.blogspot.com  Also see articles by me at Tapestry Books on-line.

1999

When I was a senior in high school, I got pregnant. My boyfriend and I had a tumultuous relationship. But despite our instability, I planned for nearly eight months to parent with him.

Then in July, when I was seven-and-a-half months pregnant, my boyfriend and I got into yet another fight. It was a Friday and we were discussing our plans for the weekend. He wanted to go out to a party; I wanted to stay home and watch a movie.

As our disagreement became an all-too-common spat, I suddenly stopped. My interest in fighting just drained out of me. I was finished. But I didn’t feel cold or empty; angry or scared. In fact, I felt suddenly full. At that moment, I didn’t care if I spent this Friday night or any Friday night with him again. It was in that moment I saw my future with him.

Today's guest blogger is Patricia Dischler, the author of "Because I Loved You: A Birthmother's View of Open Adoption", a speaker, child care professional and birthmother. Read more from Patricia here.

"You're picture is in his room," his mother wrote. As usual, the questions I was too afraid to ask were the ones she sensed and answered before they were even asked. My son's adoptive mother wrote to me in her very first letter about how she had placed my photo in his room, and had placed the gifts I sent him home with from the hospital on a special shelf.

Each year, as the letters came, she told me of how they talked with Joe about me. In the beginning, it was simply telling him my name. As he grew, the questions became more detailed, and her answers followed. By the time he was 5 I had married and had just had a baby girl, his sister. I sent them the photo, but without instructions. And the reply was as I knew it would be, "We put her picture next to yours in his room, Joe is very excited to have a baby sister!"