You need to educate yourself.  What do open adoptions look like in the real world?  Read books.  Talk to other adoptive families, etc.

Truthfully, I think it comes down to how secure you are as an adoptive mother.  If you know who you are and who the bio mom is (meaning the roles you will play), open adoption can be great.  You have to accept that no matter what type of adoption you’ll have, your child will always have two moms and two dads. 

We chose to embrace that.  Open adoption has been an amazing blessing in our lives!

If you’d like to learn more, here’s my blog:  http://whitesugarbrownsugar.blogspot.com/

Thank you for the responses.

I don’t know that I can really say what it is about open adoptions that we are not comfortable with. I know that people have them all the time and they are successful. But then all it takes is one family having issues with their’s to scare us off.

We are certainly going to consider all the options. And we will pray hard about the right decision for us. And we will continue to ask others for their experiences so that we can have an educated opinion on the matter.

Thanks again for responding. Everything said is taken in and considered!

Blakesnewface, I run an Open Adoption Support site where people can ask anonymous questions about their particular situations and get encouragement and advice from all members of the adoption constellation. Adoptive parents and birth parents in various kinds of open adoptions (semi-open, fully open, foster-to-adopt) will respond. It’s a good way to see some common issues and also to get feedback from people who have been there done that.

Anyone can ask a question. They are submitted without any identifying information and I post them to the group. Browsing the questions, too, can be enlightening. The biggest issues I see from people on the board is that many want a more open adoption than their children’s other parents do (that’s true of both birth parents AND adoptive parents) and also people struggle with boundaries. That’s why good communication is important and also finding mentors, which is why a site like this is so great. We have a fully open adoption and my friends whose kids are older have been SO IMPORTANT to me as we’ve grown. So it’s great your reaching out here at the start of your journey!!

There are a handful of good books about open adoption but most of them are dated. Fortunately a very recent book is now out called Making Room In Our Hearts by Micky Duxbury and it is excellent. You might want to check it out—it is very encouraging and not all rainbows & lollipops like some of the earlier books can be.

Good luck to you!

Dawn

I just posted about open adoption this morning!
See my blog : http://lovemadeourfamily.wordpress.com

We have two domestically adopted children and both adoptions are open, including twice a year visits. Our favorite saying has become “we can’t believe how normal this all seems” - we know from the outside it must look weird since we hear the questions we get from friends and relatives but for us, it has been really normal. We’ve established some “ground rules” that help us keep our boundaries which has been helpful for us. I’d be happy to share more thoughts with you on the pros and cons if you want to send me an email. Good luck with your journey.