This is a very special episode of the IAG podcast - #100! I've invited my beautiful wife Tisha to join me to talk about our experiences after adopting 3 newborns over a 10 year period.
We've had so many wonderful conversations about adoption that have never been recorded, so we decided to sit down and share our thoughts and experiences about open adoption after having adopted 3 times.
By the way, after listening to this episode you should listen to episode 62 when Tisha was my guest on the show and we shared the TOP 10 THINGS WE'VE LEARNED THROUGH 3 INFANT ADOPTIONS.
First - let's define open adoption in case you don't know what we mean. At a very basic level, open adoption means having some contact, some interaction, some relationship with your child's birthmother or birth family. There are varying levels of openness. It won't be the same for every adoption.
Before Tisha and I adopted for the first time, we definitely did not understand what open adoption was and why our adoption agency was telling us that it was something we should accept. It took us some time and some gentle persuasion from our agency.
Now, after 3 infant adoption, we completely embrace open adoption.
We've learned that open adoption can be complicated in a family with more than one child, especially when there are varying degrees of contact with birth parents possible for each child.
The relationships we have with our kids birth families are all different - yet we try to treat all of them the same. They all know we are open to contact through texts, phone/video calls, visits, whatever.
We want them to know they are our family - and they do. Some prefer to limit contact to just social media or texts, some want more. We are OK with that as we continue to work at building our relationship with them.
In this episode, we share some of our personal stories explaining what our open adoptions look like and how we got to where we are now. We hope you'll be inspired and learn a lot from us.
