Open Adoption Book

I have not written anything about my open adoption book in a long time, and really not much about it. So if you are not interested in adoption or do not know anyone that is wanting to adopt then this post may not be for you. If you are curious about adopting in the USA, domestically, that is from an agency or attorney, please check out my book, and the rest of this post.

When we were searching for more information about adopting, we read everything we could get our hands on. Unfortunately, the books had TOO much information. Yeah, seriously, the authors did not get into what someone went through to adopt step-by-step, and the expenses they occurred, which is what we wanted to know. We wanted real answers, real people. That is where my book is different. I left out all the fluff and jumped right in. I start the book off with a bedtime story that I tell to my eldest child and now to my youngest, and then get into how we started to adopt and end the book with some URLS to help you with your quest to find your child.

So how did this book start: Well, it had many starts… friends, and family asking questions either in our immediate circle or at church and work. The actual writing happened due to watching what was going on with my husband at work. He works for an extremely large company and was approached continuously about adoption. The funny thing is, sometimes people talking to him did not even know he had adopted, they just wanted to talk to someone and vent on how they wanted to be parents but could not biologically. He would give them what info he could quickly about adoption, but there was not enough time to give them more information. He would pass them my email, and we would email, or talk on the phone. After a while, I realized that I had written this book many times, and I decided to really write it. We printed it out and my husband kept it with him and when asked questions, he would pass it to someone. This happened more and more. The input received back was amazing. Each person that read the rough draft went into the process of adopting. After being invited to people’s house to eat dinner and talk about adoption on more than one occasion, before he was being approached, and then after, and now all the people that wanted his help at work, we decided it was time to publish. I must say, er, type, it is easier when I run into someone at the mall now and they want to talk about adoption in front of the kids, and I can pass the name of the book along.

We keep the book inexpensive at $1.99 for the kindle version (you can download an app and read anywhere even on your computer) and the print version is $5.00.

I hope this post helps with the questions.

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. 

New direction for this blog

I am currently reworking this blog and determined that I am going to blog a few times a month with the hope of even more. I would love some input on what people are looking to read on blogs as it has been years since I have blogged since I got into Facebook. I am a stay at home mommy  (for the last year due to childcare issues, and my youngest needing some extra help). I am a mommy by the blessing of open adoption so yes, adoption will be seen quite heavy on my blog. I also love to cook, and save money. 

Today, or should I state that it started yesterday, I am dealing with my first and hopefully last kidney stone. I am on pain killers (yikes, I hope I do not type anything embarrassing) and antibiotics and just waiting (yahoo, okay, not really excited about the waiting part).

If you are looking to adopt in the United States by an agency or attorney, please check out my adoption book: December Babies: U.S. Domestic Adoption. I wrote this book because when we were going through the process, I could not find a book that had everything in one book. I also wanted a book that was not extremely long, but had the information that was needed without all the fluff. I do not share private details of my girls' adoptions as that is their information. I keep the price cheap as it is not about making a lot of money, but about giving out the information that my husband and I learned. Earlier this week, my adoption book was the top 50th top paid book.

I also recently published, Summer Fun on a Budget for Kids, only .99 cents. I am still waiting for published Amazon reviews. It is full of many indoor and outdoor activities that are usually free or inexpensive to keep them busy. I also have a lot of tips for places in the community that caters to kids during the summer in the United States. This book would also work with the indoor and outdoor activities in most places in the world, but the links are for the United States. This book made it in the top 22 in paid ebooks recently.

I have a couple more books in the works. The cookbook will be a long ways off as I like to recook each recipe at least twice before I decide that it is going to stay. You can check out my (old) cooking blog here. Some of the recipes will make it in the book, and have been pinned many times on Pinterest.

Okay, going to see about eating something even though I am not hungry. I have two girls to take care of :-)