A home for my thoughts

I ended my blog at  (Trying to Adopt Baby) but I kept coming back.  I found I needed a place to share our experiences.  Adoption is something that once it touches your life it forever changes you.  I always wanted to have adoption as part of my family plan but the way the road took me was not what I had expected.  I'm working each day at finding a balance between making sure our daughter knows that adoption is the way she joined our family but also making her realize that it is not a single fact that defines her just as childbirth does not define a biological child.

Adoption is everywhere for me.  There is not a day that goes by that I dont think about adoption.  Little things like her daycares requirement to put her name in all her clothing.  We have plans to visit her extended birth family and they do not know our last name.  At this point we still are not comfortable sharing that information with her birthparents and thus I realized that if every shoe, sock, shirt and pair of pants had her full name in them- she would have no clothes to wear to visit them.  Daycare was fine accommodating this as she is the only child with her first name at her daycare.

I also am an adoption expert now to all those that know me.  Really I'm just an expert on our family and our adoption.  To those around me I am the one to go to if a friend is having trouble with fertility and is considering the road of adoption.  I am the one to go to when a friends daughter finds herself pregnant with plans to go to college.  I am the one to go to for all things adoption because I am "an expert."

I also think daily about how our daughters story will continue.  Who will she become.  How will her adoption shape her life story.  So far it has impacted her in obvious ways like DH and I are her mom and dad, but how else will it shape her.  What will she think of her birthfamily?  How do I influence that?

I started fresh for a few reasons 1) we are no longer trying to adopt- we have.  2) we had several friends /family following our blog.  I dont know if any of them still follow my blog but I wanted to create a clean space to allow me to speak more openly about my daughters story.  It is her story not mine though DH and I are pivotal players in her story.  By creating a new space I can tell the parts of the story that I don't want to openly share with people that she knows personally because I want to ensure that I am the one that teaches her about her story.  There are many hard things about her story that will need to be addressed as she gets older.  3) Part of my reason for blogging is other blogs helped me while I waited.  I realize that if I can be honest about some of the hard parts I can then help others.  I dont think I read other blogs that dealt in detail about the exposure check list.  I have only read one other blog that deals with birthparents in jail.  I know not a single blog that has talked about blood bourn pathogens.  These are the things I was not ready for though I dont know that anything would have gotten me ready.

So here I go again!  Welcome to my family's story!