I love birthmothers! -Heather, Adoptive Mom

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I love birthmothers! My husband and I are lucky enough to have adopted two beautiful daughters and
we cherish their birthmoms T & M.

Greg and I have been married for 18 years and started our adoption journey a decade ago. Our first
adoption miracle was being chosen by T to parent her daughter Eliana, who is 3. Our second adoption
miracle was being chosen by M to parent her daughter Lynlee, who is almost 2.

I am often asked how open adoption works in our family, and what it is like to have contact with our
daughters’ birth families.

This question surprises me anew every time, because of how much we would miss by not having a
relationship with T & M. In my opinion, open adoption is the best scenario for all members of the
adoption triad: child, birthparents, and adoptive parents.

I cannot speak for the birthparents in our lives, but I know unequivocally that openness is best for my
daughters as well as for my husband and me. My daughters are blessed to have relationships with their
birthmoms where we see them regularly, text, talk on the phone, and stay connected through social
media.

What does openness look like for our family? We talk about T & M practically every day, and pray for
them, and think about them. We tell our daughters their birth stories (which they love to hear). We
have pictures of T & M in the girls’ bedrooms and in our family portrait gallery. One picture of M hangs
above Lynlee’s changing table, and almost every time I change her diaper she tells me, “Lynlee loves
M.” Ellie talks about T all the time and will often ask to text her (which is really her dictating sentences
to me, or dictating to herself as she types random letters). Ellie told me just the other day, “T loves me.
She is my best friend!”

We honor our birthmoms and the choices they made that led them to choose us to parent their babies.

Adoption is the most selfless act I have ever personally witnessed.

I am a trained economist, and it has always been difficult for me to wrap my head around a cost-benefit
analysis for adoption. In economic terms, decisions are made when the benefits outweigh the costs.
The difficulty for me was that I recognize that adoption has a positive net benefit overall (in that the
benefits are greater than the costs incurred), but it seemed like an unequal transaction.

I viewed it from the perspective that birthmoms pay a heavy, life altering price, and adoptive parents
pay the state to facilitate the adoption, and then adoptive parents get the benefit.

Until I realized that our birthmoms chose to pay that price, because they chose life and a family for
their beautiful daughters. They gave that gift to their daughters, and even though Greg and I reap the
blessings of that gift, we are taken out of the equation.

The cost is paid by birthmoms, and the benefit is reaped by the children. The adoption cost-benefit
analysis is about the gift of life from T to Ellie, and the gift of life from M to Lynlee.

I reverence and honor that gift with all of my heart.

For more about our family, please visit our blog at: http://tendermercies1.blogspot.com/

Or check out our adoption profile at: https://itsaboutlove.org/ial/profiles/27354129/ourMessage.jsf