Introduction

     Let me reintroduce myself. It has been so long since I have been in the blogging world; I forgot that I have not been personal. My name is Melody. I have been married for over 11 years. We have two gorgeous daughters, many thanks to their biological families. They are the loves of my husband and my lives, their biological families lives, our families and friends lives. Children are indeed a blessing.

     We live in the South, and love it. I am an Air Force brat so I moved around many times. I am so happy to live in the South, and to have my girls live in one place and in one school district. I loved my childhood though. I spent a big part of it in Germany, and met many people.

     I have been a stay-at-home mommy for a year. Before this past year, I worked either in something medical or with children. I was a stay-at-home mommy to Little Bug for a little over 4 years. I plan on staying home with Monkey until she can attend Kindergarten. We had a rough start, I only had one week maternity leave with Monkey due to me being employed less than 6 months with the job I had during the time of her birth. I would have quit my job, but I was the victim of a fairly bad car wreck that damaged my shoulder and neck, and destroyed my vehicle (needed to buy a new one). That set us back a lot money wise so I had to continue to work. Thankfully, we are doing much better now, and being frugal allows me to stay home with our girls.

     When my husband and I were dating, we talked about children many times. We also talked about adoption. Many of my family are adopted and friends. Adoption has been the normal for me. It really was no wonder when we started to look into adopting to start our family. We did do what most people do when they get married, try and get pregnant. When it was time for me to go to my yearly doctor, she said I should have been pregnant by now. We both were tested to make sure we were okay. We were told, y’all are going to need fertility treatments. We went home, then we looked at each other and were like, nope, why? Adoption was never a second choice. Why, not look into what we need to do to adopt now? Within 6 months, we receive a call that a baby was born and was in private foster care. Her biological mom wanted to meet us. Little bug was a week old then. We took Little bug home that very same day.

     A few years later, we decided to start adopting again. Since we adopted once, most of the biological families that saw our profile wanted a family that did not have any children so we knew it was going to take longer. We did have one failed placement (matched for 5 ½ months and contact with the biological family). I will discuss more about failed placements later in another post.

     Monkey, our youngest girl, was born nearly 5 years after Little bug. Their birthdays are 5 days apart. How cool is that? Well, until they get older and hate it, haha. We met Monkey’s biological family about three months before she was born. This was our first experience with a baby being born in the hospital. When she was born, her biological dad text me the sweetest text, “Congrats, your baby girl is born. She is beautiful and healthy.” We were in church and I had my phone on silent and never heard it. If you could have seen me when I saw it! I was running around like a true crazy person. I also had all kinds of voice mails. I ran outside to listen to my voice mails. I called Monkey’s biological dad and our lawyer. We grabbed Little bug and headed to the hospital. Since we had the failed placement last year, we did not tell Little bug that we were matched. Well, she kept asking whose baby were we seeing and finally, is it my baby? Is it my baby sister? We told her, yes, we believe it is her sister. We visited with Monkey and her biological family every day until Monkey was able to come home after 5 days in the hospital.

     We are fortunate to have an open adoption with both our girls’ biological families. The openness does vary. Our eldest daughter physically sees her biological mother a couple times a year. We email and talk. Our youngest has not seen her biological family since the hospital. I have seen her biological mother. She, they, want to wait until Monkey is older before they have an relationship with her. We do email. Both families receive many pictures. Again, every open adoption is going to be different. Make sure everything is done for the child in question. An open adoption will help a child in the long run. It does not mean we are any less our daughters’ parents. Also, I am sure there are cases when an open adoption is not in the best interest of a child. Take a foster/adopt situation. The child was placed in foster care for a reason. The biological family was unable to do what the court needed to parent their child. The court gives many, many chances to parent your child. Just think ahead: When your child is an adult, did you do what you could with his/her biological family to form a relationship when he/she was a child?

If you are wanting to adopt, here is the book I wrote about our adoption process.