Jared and I knew going into the adoption process that we wanted to have an "open" adoption. It has been shown in most cases to be healthier for the child, the birth parents and even the adoptive parents. An open adoption can take on many different forms. It would be considered an open adoption if the the birth parents and the adoptive parents never met but had information about each other on paper. Open just means the information is relatively accessible. Then there is the other end of the spectrum where the birth parents are heavily involved in the child's life visiting regularly etc...
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Jared and I hadn't decided on the level of openness we were going to have yet because we believe it heavily depends on the wishes of the birth parents and the stage of development the child is at. Openness at its best is fluid and flexible changing and growing with the child and family.
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So we started the openness by corresponding through email with Momma A. We emailed for about a month. Momma A had a lot of questions for us and I really appreciated the depth and concern that was expressed through them. At first she wanted to know things like why we wanted to adopt, what we would prefer about a boy and what we would prefer about a girl. Then later there were questions such as did we believe in miracles, when did we know the church was true etc... I really did like answering these questions a lot more than the ones on the profile.
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Then the three of us decided to begin talking on the phone and exchanged phone numbers through our social worker. We really got to know Momma A very well and even though there are a lot of differences between her and me, we are very much a like too in so many ways that it would makes us laugh but also confirmed to us that Heavenly Father has many small tender mercies to give to us to let us know He loves us.
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After a month of phone calls and texts, Momma A said that she had known for a long time that she was going to choose us to be the adoptive parents for her baby. She wanted us to pray and fast about it and make sure that this was truly the Lord's plan for us too. (See isn't she awesome?!) We did fast and knew in a quiet but solid concrete way that this was the right path for us.
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Momma A was due in about a month with a little girl (we didn't know the sex of the baby until this point) so we arranged to meet in person before the birth. It was General Conference weekend (a world-wide meeting that our church holds twice a year) in April. Everything seemed so surreal that weekend, great and wonderful but surreal. I mean you are about to meet the person who in soooo many ways is going to change your life forever through a huge sacrifice on her part...and I'm just not sure our mortal bodies can handle those kind of emotions and thoughts, so to be able to cope and function things almost seemed like they were happening to someone else while I was experiencing them.
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It was a great weekend where we had the sacred experience of feeling the baby, where the three of us decided on the baby's name: Aurora May and we decided that Momma A and I were going to be "sister mothers." I would do the daily, everyday mothering and Momma A would mother from a distance with occasional visits, phone calls, emails etc...
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We took some nice pictures of the weekend but since we are keeping Momma A's identity confidential to help ensure her and Aurora's safety...here is one cropped pic from that weekend.
I can't believe that now that the next General Conference is this weekend and I now have my daughter with me and that it has only been 6 months since we first met Momma A in person. We feel like we have known her forever! When we started the adoption process we were expecting the blessing and love involved in having a child (although we underestimated how powerful that love would be) but we did not expect the great blessing and love that Momma A has brought into our lives. Now I definitely would not want to have my family in any other way except through adoption because of the rare opportunity to feel love so purely for a child but another person, my sister mother. This opportunity does not come along just any old day.
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