Adoption Blogs

Okay, I admit it, I'm on a travel theme.   Something about being in a car for 5 days with 5 kids and no hubby makes one think a lot about what works and what doesn't.  In case you are planning any road trips of your own, here are my top tips: 1)  Bring headphones and an iPod/MP3 player for yourself. Sometimes you really need to just drown out the whining and bickering. 2) Don't play "the quiet game."  Everyone hates that game and sees right through it.  If you need them to be quiet a while, just mandate it.  Or see #1 3)  Plan a lot of stops.  A lot. I figure on stopping every 100 miles or 2 hours, whichever comes first.  Looking ahead… [more]

Hello Again! It's been quite awhile since I've been able to post and my apologies, I had a serious issue in my computer that was not allowing me onto the site. So, I'd like to make up for lost time! This post is very long, but I think worth the time to read, it's a lesson everyone touched by adoption needs to hear: my son is 27 years old now, and it's all still clear as a bell. Enjoy! Giving birth changes a woman forever. It is the most personal, emotional, incredible experience she will ever have. It is not an experience that can ever be forgotten or discounted. Women who have chosen adoption can no easier forget their child… [more]

Back in the 1990’s I spent some time in Guatemala. Completely surrounded by a foreign culture and a foreign language (both of which became second nature to me while I was living there a while), I was a long way away from home and away from that wonderful lady who gave birth to me and raised me- my mother. I know the 90’s don’t seem like that long ago, but technologically it sure was. Email hadn’t yet become popular, so our main form of correspondence was by snail mail. And when you’re that far away it took about 2 weeks for a letter to travel from one to the other, then 2 more weeks for a reply. International calling still cost us an arm and a leg back then (or… [more]

With Mother's Day coming up, I can't help but think of my birth mother and my adopted mother. One carried me in her stomach and the other in her heart till the day she died four years ago. I can't imagine what was going through my birth mother's mine the day she gave birth to me knowing she was going to give me up. It must have been so hard on her. I can tell you what my adopted mother was thinking when she knew she was getting me. She was very excited, and anxious for my arrival. I know this cause she told me. She was the best mother any child could have ever asked for. She was always there for me. She loved me with all her heart and… [more]

As far as I know -- or maybe inasmuch as it's obvious -- Dear Hubby and I are the only ones on either side of our family (in this generation) to form our family through adoption.  One of my uncles adopted several of my aunts nieces and nephews in my generation but because they lived in the Philippines, I really never got a chance to know them.   There is just not a lot of precedent for how we do things. That said, both our families constantly amaze me.  They have not only welcomed our children with open arms, they've been great cheerleaders and advocates for them.  You can not see any difference in how the family treats my kids verses all the… [more]

By the late 1970’s and into the 1980’s, adoption agencies began to experiment with open adoption. The days when adoption was kept a secret began to dissolve and people began to embrace the idea of adoption. As adopted children and biological parents began to show an increased desire to have a relationship, that brought on a desire to have a relationship from the very beginning of the child’s life. Having an open adoption from the very beginning made it possible to avoid the disappointment and difficulty of trying to find one another later on in life. Relationships between adopted children and their biological parents were still very uncommon in the early 1980’s since the practice was viewed as radical, risky, and experimental. Gradually, throughout the decade, seeing that there were a… [more]

Wow, I think back on when I was placed with my family and it just makes me smile. My first several years my mom was so afraid that if she didn't tell me about how they got me, that I'd learn it from someone else and she didn't want that to happen. So one day in the summer when I was about 4 years old, I was out playing with my cousin in the yard and I remember her calling me and sitting me on the bed. She told me she had something very important to talk to me about. Being a 4 year old, I said, "OK." She went into explaining to me that I didn't grow in her tummy like my sister did, that I grew in another woman's… [more]

Hello, My name is Rita Bradford, I'm 37 years old and was adopted when I was 9 days old. I was born in Nassawadox, VA on January 22,1975. I was adopted by a wonderful family. I'm so very thankful for them. I went from having no one to having a sister and a mom and dad. I'm currently searching for my birth family. I've been searching on my own for 14 years now. I'll get into more of that a little later, and I'll start from the beginning for now. I've often wondered how my birth mother must have felt the whole time she was pregnant with me and even the day she went to the hospital to give birth to me. She must have felt scared, worried, anxious,  and… [more]

When I was a child, we traveled.  Almost all of travel was in the car (as was Dear Hubby's); nonetheless, I saw many National Parks and traveled through a good many states in my short 18 years at home.  When I was a child, I thought four kids constituted a small family! We travel with our kids, five in all.  We started traveling when our oldest was an infant and we've just never stopped.  Everyone thinks we are crazy.  They think it even more when they find out most of our travel is by car. Dear Hubby and I talked a lot about travel before our first daughter came along.  We agreed that in air travel, something is lost.  When our oldest was just a baby, my dad said, "It's good for… [more]

Before World War 2 there were few laws regarding adoption. Child trafficking and other problems arose because there were no regulations to keep them in check. War has a way of changing society, though, and after The Good War was over and the baby boom era began, the number of babies born to unwed mothers rose. With the increased number of unwed pregnancies, the government stepped in and created laws to make adoption more possible and desirable. Unexpected pregnancies were still considered something to keep hushed up, so the new laws made it so a biological mother could place her child up for adoption and the records would be sealed up from public access, making it possible for a woman to carry on with her life like nothing had ever… [more]