Adoption Questions and Help Needed

my bestie was adopted, and she moved heaven and earth to find her birth family. it's not that her life was awful (although it certainly wasn't great) but she had a need to know, and that's just something that can't be rationalized.
and she did it. her birth mother was 15, and her baby was forcibly taken from her at the moment of birth by the state officials against her will. those were harsher times.
they were thrilled when she found them, and they all stay in touch. it's a rough, rough bunch, and it's a toss-up what would have been 'best', but the ultimate best is that my beloved gal has the knowledge she felt she needed, and is healthy and happy.
khairete
S.

I was adopted in 1970 in a truly anonymous situation with no way to track parents. My parents always told me I was adopted, so there was never a shock. Of course I'm curious about my bio parents, but it has never gnawed at me too badly. If anything, it was probably harder on my bio mom, being an adult and going through that ordeal and wondering where her baby went, so if that's the case, I wish she knew I had a good life with my adoptive parents and now have three kids of my own, and I was never upset that she was not ready to raise me. I'm thankful for my good health and the fact that I was born!

Apparently my uncle got a girlfriend pregnant when he was a teen - the baby boy was given up for adoption and no one in our family knew about it.
Years later the boy grew up, married , had a family of his own - and made contact with my uncles kids (8 of them, uncle had passed away by then).
It was an interesting reunion - but he took one look at that bunch, said "Thank Goodness I was adopted!" and has gone back to his life a very happy man.
He's never made any further contact with them and does not return any calls if they try to contact him.
Sometimes an adoption is a fortuitous escape from a very dysfunctional situation.

My story is one of the good ones ... almost a fairy tale.

A few years ago my mom got a phone call from a woman. She said, "I think you're my aunt." She was able to find my mom because my mom's name appeared on the sale of her parents house, the house where my aunt had been living when she gave birth.

My mom gave this woman (my cousin) my aunts address, and she wrote a very nice letter, including pictures. She told my aunt about her adoptive parents and family and thanked my aunt for giving her life. It was a beautiful letter. They have since visited each other several times, and we are all facebook friends. I am really looking forward to meeting her this summer.

It must be a scary step to take ... to contact the birth parents or the child who was placed. I can only imagine there would be a fear of rejection. But there are many happy stories, too.

My situation doesn't really fit your question but I wanted to share. My sister got pregnant when she was young and I was he coach when she was born. My sister didn't want to hold or touch her. Five days after my daughter was born , my sister was in a drive by shooting and was still living without utilities turned on. A couple of days later my sister tried to sell her to me (gross). Finally at 10 days old she asked me to take her. Bio dad wasn't in the picture although I ultimately had to get his signature for adoption.

I brought her home without even consulting my husband and he has been the best dad ever.

It took a little bit to obtain guardianship before adoption. But crappy sister would show up and say "give me my fu€<|ng baby" and I had to before papers were signed. She was trying to win back the ghost bio dad.

I told her when she was two that she didn't come from my tummy, she came from my sister's tummy. This was accepted and she has always been great. She has never met the bio dad, I hear he has six other children. My daughter has met my sister a couple of times but wasn't really thrilled.

She has always said she had a great life and wouldn't change it. We never tried to have children because she was our kiddo...I couldn't care if she was birthed by Minnie Mouse. In her case her birth parents were a train wreck and I kept so much from her.

I am not the adopted person but the person who adopted a person. We received our son at five weeks old. He does know that he is adopted and is fine with it. When he was little he asked once if he had any other parents and we told him that he did and that they loved so much but felt that they could not give him what he needed and placed him for adoption.

If my son ever wanted to know who his birth parents were, I would have stood by him and supported him in his search.

The only time that it bothered him a bit was when his wife's sister placed her son into an adoptive family. He probably felt a little resentment in not knowing his parents but worked through his feelings and is okay. The adoption is an open one and she gets updates. Ours was a sealed one. My only issue with an open adoption is the fact that it is a scab on a wound that never seems to heal and it gets bumped off every so often when an update is received. The sister has had some emotional moments since the birth of that son. There was also a lot of inner family turmoil between her mom and her two sisters about who would care for the child (the two sisters have issues becoming pregnant and either one would have cared for the baby).

I hope I have given you another point of view on adoption. I as the adoptive mother would have fought tooth and nail to keep my child. I was the one who stayed up all night long, cared for and loved this baby and lost a job over him. There was no amount of money that could be received or given to give him back. She may have given him life but I had given him my heart. He will be 43 this year.

the other S.

My best friend growing up was adopted and finally found her birth parents after many years. The mother was not married to the father, but they lived in the same town and she brought her over to meet the father. She wound up actually being closer to the birth father after all the meetings and they even took a trip together. She met all of her half siblings and it was all good.
She felt much more complete and felt like she did the right thing by meeting all of them.

My husband was adopted, and has never had the desire to meet his birth parents. In those days, no info was provided so it would be very difficult for him to trace anyone anyway. He feels very strongly that his parents are his parents - that is, his adoptive parents are the only parents he has or needs. Many years ago, his mother begged and cajoled someone in the records office to give her the names of the birth parents, and while they were not allowed to do so, one person quietly turned away to grab her coffee with her finger on the line showing the birth mother's name. So we do have that info but he has never acted on it. The story his parents were told was that his birth mother was an older mom with her own children who got pregnant during an extramarital affair. But that's all we know.

He does have some curiosity about ethnic and medical info, but not enough to do anything in the way of a search. He may do one of those DNA tests, although our adult son just did one and when the results come in, we'll be able to do some guessing if there's anything there that doesn't jive with my background. But that's as far as it's gone.

We adopted 3 children nearly 11 years ago. We purposely chose closed adoption. We do have the birth mother and birth father names, but they do not have ours, nor the boys' new names. After the boys' are 18, if the boys wanted to try to go back to Russia to find them, we would provide them with the information we have, we would be emotionally support of this, but would not provide them with the financial assistance to take on this endeavor. It is extremely likely that neither of the birth parents are even alive anyways.

Two of my grandchildren were adopted, by their foster family, so they wouldn't go into the system and end up where ever. I was very pleased with this. We went through foster parent classes, we already were raising 2 of my grandchildren so 2 more wouldn't have been any harder.

We prayed and prayed but knew in our hearts that this mom and dad and older teen kids were supposed to be our grand kids forever family.

We have done all sorts of activities with them as a family and love every minute we get to spend with them. They live less than an hour away and we're grandma and grandpa to them. They haven't asked about their stuff because they're still young. My daughter is doing very very well and she's been in the family activities with the rest of us.

I can't tell you how much I hated my daughter for losing these kids but I know they are where they're supposed to be.

Some day I imagine they'll be curious and want to know. When that's okay with the adoptive parents we'll take part in that any way they ask.

I wasn't adopted but have a relative who was and a best friend.

Here's why they searched - information was made available to them when they became adults. They thought about it over time - no rash decisions. They reached out just out of curiosity I believe. Were thinking they would not hear back. They did hear back.

I think the meetings went well overall - they also met the families. It's just people they end up knowing. My relative is on Facebook with her biological mom and her kids. It's not super natural. I think it's all a bit odd but they are happy to know each other.

In my friend's case, her grandparents were the ones who made birth mom give her up. So when she met them it was a bit hard for her. They were overjoyed to meet her now, but it does bring up a lot of emotions.

One of the best things for my friend was to understand her health better. She has a medical condition that as it turns out runs in her biological family. So that information was great to learn. And to be understood.

In these cases, the mom did not have the info about the child they gave up. It was the other way around.