Open Adoption

Adoption has changed so much in the past 10 + years. It use to be that you could not get any information about your birth parents even for health history and birth parents were left not knowing anything about their child, whether they were happy or even alive. Now you have what is called Open Adoption. Because of open adoption, we got all kinds of information on the birth parents and their siblings and other relatives before we made our decision. You might hear this term and think that it means that the birth parents retain some kind of rights to the child but that really isn't what it means. Open adoption is meant to provide communication between the birth parents and adoptive parents before and even after the adoption. This is healthier for the birth parents because in knowing that their child is happy they don't live a life of regret and what-ifs. Contact after the adoption varies in each case but to give an example our birth mother asked that pictures and letters be sent by us once a month for the first six months and yearly thereafter until the child is 18 (though I can't imagine stopping at that point). Letters would be sent to the agency and they would get them to the birth parents. Open adoption agreements vary and there is more to it than what I have written but this gives a general idea. Another thing that has changed about adoption is that you NEVER hear of people not telling their child that they were adopted.