Does anyone else have an open Guat Adoption?: Guatemala Adoptive Families Adoption Group Discussion Topic

Find Adoption Services

Find Agencies by Country

Guatemala Adoptive Families

Does anyone else have an open Guat Adoption?

Posted by GuateMaMa to Guatemala Adoptive Families on Dec 22, 2011 at 6:41pm | 5 Comments | Post a reply

We opened both of our adoptions when our kids were babies. We’ve been back to Guatemala a few times and have met both Birth Moms.

Regular communication is hard because of language barriers, low literacy, limited access to computers, etc.

I guess I am just wondering if anyone has any experience/ advice for me. My kids are young elementary school age.

Thanks!

Replies

I don’t have any personal experience with that, but I am a member of a Yahoo Group where finding Guatemalan birthparents and initial & ongoing contact with birthparents is the topic of discussion all the time. The name of the Yahool group is GuatemalaBirthfamilies. It should be pretty easy to search in Yahoo Groups, but let me know if you can’t find it.

Posted by MargBar11 on Dec 22, 2011 at 6:47pm

We did a birthfamily search and have on-going contact, through our searcher. We have not yet been back to visit (due to financial circumstances). Our son is now 5 (have had contact since he was a year or so old).

Are you a member of the Yahoo group for folks with birthfamily contact? If not, it’s a great source of advice. It’s a huge group. See: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GuatemalaBirthfamilies/

Posted by sjbj on Dec 22, 2011 at 6:49pm

Wow. Thanks. I had no idea about the Yahoo group but I’ll head over there right away.

We made a trip to Guatemala this past summer with our 5 year old. It wasn’t as expensive as I thought it would be and 5 sure seemed like a good age for the trip. My daughter fell in love with the country and has spent the first half of kindergarten telling everyone how lucky she is because she has a “birf mudder” AND a “regular mudder” too.

I just wish I could do a better job staying in touch with Birth Mom. She’s an amazing woman and I know she would like to hear more from me…

Posted by GuateMaMa on Dec 22, 2011 at 7:24pm

How did you do the birth mother search? I was thinking about asking my Guatemala lawyer if he still had contact with her, and if he would make the contact, but didn’t know if that was against the rules.

Posted by MBKA on Mar 21, 2012 at 6:56am

If you are still interested in making contact with your child’s birth mother and doing a birthfamily search I would recommend joining the Guatemalabirthfamilies yahoo group mentioned above. Folks on that list will share information about how they found people to locate birth mothers for them. I would recommend AGAINST trying to use your lawyer.

There are many stories of lawyers either refusing to search or telling adoptive families that birth mothers do not want contact, when in fact families later find out that they did, or of lawyers accepting documents from adoptive families but never delivering them.

Please note: I am posting on my own behalf and not on behalf of the Guatemalan Family Network.

Kathy

Posted by Guatemala Family Network on May 16, 2012 at 7:31pm