Blizzards and Boundaries

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project where we talk about open adoption relationships. We are The Nelsons. I'm Sean. And I'm Lynette. Today we're talking about boundaries. Boundaries are a challenging aspect of open adoption. So today we're talking about is there a need to establish boundaries when laying the groundwork for a healthy relationship? And what do healthy boundaries look like?

0:34One of the biggest questions that we get from friends who aren't familiar with adoption usually revolve around boundaries and the relationships that we have with birth parents and what roles each person in the adoption triad play. So our hope is that in today's episode we can share with you how we've set boundaries, some of the challenges about those, and how we've come to find a healthy balance. We met our daughter's birth parents about 10 weeks before she was due.

1:05And we started growing this really wonderful relationship. We went on a couple of double dates. We went to a couple of her ultrasounds. And we had a baby shower together where friends brought baby gifts for me and they brought self-care items and postnatal care for her birth mother. And we had this great relationship where we felt like we were really laying a good groundwork. We even got tickets to all go together to Sean's choir concert. And so by this point we had talked about what we wanted to name our baby, how we wanted to decorate the nursery,

1:39our parenting philosophies. We had talked about all of these things with these expectant parents. But what we hadn't talked about was what the expectant mother's plan was for the hospital. So what her birth plan was and what she wanted things to look like in the hospital. What kind of time she wanted to spend with baby, whether or not she wanted us there. And we also had not talked about what our relationship would look like after baby was born. We knew that a lot of those conversations would be had, especially supported by our caseworker as we got closer to birth.

2:18However, our daughter ended up being born three weeks early and it was really crazy how everything happened that day and that night. So maybe we'll share a little bit about what happened. So we hadn't really talked about any of these things yet. I remember I had a choir concert and I remember walking off the stage after the show and I had probably a dozen missed calls from our daughter's birth mom. And I listened to the voicemail and basically she had said her water had broken, that her parents weren't home, that her brothers weren't home.

2:59It was snowing and she didn't know how she was going to get to the hospital. So I called her and told her that I would run home real quick and get Lynette and that we would head toward her house so that we could take her to the hospital. And if her family got home before we got there, that we could meet them at the hospital. So we lived just under an hour away from each other. And so Sean hurried home and I have a really horrible habit of not keeping my phone on me.

3:29And so I missed all of these things. I didn't get any of the phone calls or texts that were coming through. And so Sean came in and said, baby is coming right now. We have to go. And so we grabbed everything. We didn't have a diaper bag yet. We really weren't organized because we weren't planning on going to the hospital for a few weeks. We weren't even sure what the plan was, like if we were supposed to go to the hospital. But the circumstances just made it so we needed to go.

4:00So we grabbed some of our friends, our neighbors, and they helped us install a car seat in our car since we had no clue what to do. And luckily they had the same car seat. It was very helpful. And luckily Sean's a great driver in the snow. I am not, but he is very confident. And so we headed off. We threw all of the baby stuff into a gift bag and grabbed minimal stuff for ourselves and drove through a blizzard for about an hour to go pick up this expectant mother.

4:32But as we were on our way, about halfway there, she called us back saying her parents had gotten home and that they were going to be taking her to the hospital and that we could just meet there. So we drove to the hospital and went in very nervous, excited, all the feelings that you can imagine. And we went into the room and we really didn't know what to expect. And we didn't want to overstep our bounds, like our step on anyone's toes.

5:04And if she didn't want us to be there, we didn't want to be there. If she wanted us to be there, we wanted to be there. Yeah, we wanted to respect whatever she wanted us to do. We just all knew that we hadn't talked about this yet. And so we were trying really hard to be respectful. And so we spent some time with her and her parents in the room and her labor was progressing really slowly. The nurses at the hospital offered us a room down the hall. And again, we weren't really sure what exactly would happen if we would be in our room when baby was born

5:40and then we would come in or how it would work out. But we tried to sleep that night. It did not work. I mean, we were so anxious and excited. And there was a bright light we couldn't turn off. And we were just tossing and turning for what seemed like, well, it probably was hours and hours. And finally, our daughter's grandma came in and said, it's about time and we want you in the room. We went in and we were able to be present when our daughter was born, which was really, really special for us.

6:15One of the stirrups were broken on the bed. And so they had grandma holding one leg and Lynette holding another leg as our daughter was born. And I was able to cut the vocal cord. And it was just a really sweet, sweet experience, not one that we were anticipating, but one that we really, really loved having. Yeah, it was a really incredible experience. It was one of the neatest experiences I think we've ever had.

6:47So after she was born, her birth mother got to hold her and cuddle with her for a minute. And then she handed her to me and my job was to hand her to the nurse. And so I did that as slowly as possible. Because she wanted to enjoy every second holding this little baby girl. And the nurse took her and started looking at her and she saw a few things that she was worried about and said, you know, we're going to go run a few tests just to make sure baby's okay. And we really didn't worry much.

7:18We figured that this was just going to be everyone's chance to rest. But that rest did not last very long. Within a few moments, that nurse came back in and the doctor came back in and said, we have found out that that this baby has a small hole in her diaphragm. And she's going to need to have surgery. It's going to have to happen pretty quickly. And we want to get her to primary children's hospital so we can get her stabilized before she has surgery tomorrow morning.

7:52We were heartbroken, all of us, because none of us had anticipated anything like this happening. They hadn't they hadn't seen any of this or signs of this in the ultrasounds that they had done even weeks before. So it happened quite late in gestation. But this presented a huge challenge for us as new parents and as adoptive parents trying to balance this relationship between our daughter's birth parents, her grandparents and us.

8:24And I mean, technically at this point, she wasn't technically our daughter yet. This was a really difficult situation that we got thrown into really fast. And it was just so heartbreaking because this birth mother, she had all of these plans that she never really got to develop fully. But she knew that she wanted to do these things at the hospital like feed baby her first bottle and change her first diaper and just do all these fun first things with her.

8:56And she didn't get to do any of those because nobody got to feed baby her first bottle or change her first diaper. She was hooked up to a ventilator and was on all these tubes and was on oxygen and no one could even really touch her for most a week. Yeah, about a week. And so it was really hard because we had to make some quick decisions like who would go to primary children's hospital with our daughter and how would that all work since we weren't legally or technically her parents with the hospital let us in.

9:33And we really didn't make those decisions. We were following the biological families lead on all of this. Yeah, for sure. So grandpa came with us to primary children's hospital. We followed ambulance through the snow through snowstorm and birth mom and her mom stayed at the hospital until she was released about 24 hours after birth. So we got to the hospital. And again, this was really challenging because we weren't technically our daughter's parents yet.

10:09But the hospital was really kind and gracious to all of us. And they provided us a room that night. Not too far away. And the doctors and nurses were very communicative with us and with our daughter's birth parents and birth family, I should say, through this whole craziness. There was a lot of stress and just it was an overwhelming time. I'm not even sure how much to say or where to stop trying to balance bonding with baby after papers were signed. The hospital had some different rules on visitation.

10:50So we were trying to get those rules changed so that birth parents could still come and spend time with baby. And we were all just trying to get this time to bond with baby and show her our love and support her and help her. And it was so overwhelming. We were all stretched so thin. Yeah, it was really hard because we wanted to love on our new baby and her birth parents didn't get to spend the time that they were hoping.

11:20In fact, the birth father was out of out of the state when she was born, completely unexpected. Fortunately, he was able to make it back pretty quickly and spend some time. But the way that it was working at the hospital was they wouldn't leave birth parents alone without one of us there. And we wanted to give them time. We didn't want to be hovering all the time. Right. And so it was just really difficult thinking about things from their perspective and trying to give them the time and the space that they needed was really important to us.

11:55It was really hard, but it was really important that they go through this process because placing a child with a family is emotionally. I mean, I can't even really imagine. I've seen it four times now, but it's really, really hard. And we wanted to really help them have the experience they wanted to have. Absolutely. But also, we we were trying to bond with baby too. And we had other people with us every day almost all the time.

12:31And it was really great to have that support, but it also made it really hard to feel like we could bond. We ended up spending about a month at primary children's and that's a long time to always have nurses with you and other visitors and really get the time to build that connection, especially as an adoptive parent when you haven't had that time during the pregnancy. I think that any new parent who has a child in the NICU could understand some of the feelings that we're expressing now that you don't get the same instant connection or ability to hold your baby or do all the things that you kind of imagine doing with a brand new baby.

13:16Yeah, so it was just this whirlwind of all these feelings. And honestly, I felt a lot of guilt trying to balance the relationships I wanted to be fostering for my daughter with her birth parents. I wanted her to have a connection with them. I wanted her to spend time with them. But also, I selfishly wanted to be spending time with her myself and I didn't feel like I was getting enough of that time and I felt so guilty about those feelings.

13:47It was really a hard tightrope to walk during that time. And it was really overwhelming. And I think really topping that off, we hadn't talked about what our open adoption would look like after placement. And so it just really made things even harder because at one point, we were talking with these birth parents and we said, we need a little bit of space to try to bond with baby and

14:19it was really difficult to try to express to our daughter's birth parents that we needed some time alone with our baby to bond with her so that we could start developing a relationship with her and connections with her. And so through a couple conversations, we were able to share our feelings and probably in less than... It probably wasn't very eloquent. Yeah.

14:49Yeah, I look back and those conversations were really awkward and hard. And I don't think we expressed ourselves as well as we could have. Maybe reading crucial conversations would have helped. Hindsight is 2020 for sure. Yes. So finally, we were able to bring our daughter home and we had the opportunity for her birth mom to come to the hospital as we were leaving in an attempt to fulfill what her initial hopes were where she could walk us out to the car and help put baby in the car seat and say goodbye that way.

15:24I think that was a good thing for all of us to be able to follow part of her plan even though things were totally out of our control. I think that that helped and part of her healing process because she was visualizing what things would look like in a hospital and everything went wrong. And that was the one thing that we could do that would help her to grieve in the way that she needed to. There's this big focus in society on taking care of ourselves and promoting self care over anything else right like you've got to take care of yourself before you can do anything else.

16:00And there's probably some merit to that. But I also feel like it can be a detrimental way of thought when looking at an open adoption relationship. Because if you're thinking about self care when you're setting boundaries, and you're thinking about loving yourself as your priority, then you're not thinking about your child. You're not thinking about the adoptee and what they need. Because having an open adoption, it takes work and in the first months especially I think it's hard.

16:40It's this act of juggling and feeling uncomfortable, maybe feeling insecure and sharing your baby that you've waited for with the people that gave this baby life who love this baby just as much as you. That's a hard thing to do. And if we let that idea of self care overtake things, I think it's really easy to say, oh, I need to take care of myself and this is too hard.

17:14I can't handle it right now. And I've seen some of our friends really struggle with this, and it's a hard struggle we we really understand it. But I would say that if we can let our boundaries be set by what's best for our child, and what's best for our family, then we're going to be better off. So basically self care is important, but caring for our child is our number one priority.

17:44And when we're setting boundaries, we need to keep that perspective that it's about our child and helping them. It's not about our comfort. And I think that's the most important part of this experience that we've shared in this episode revolve around the adoption of our daughter, our first child. We have three others, right? So I'm going to give you guys a little bit of a preview of this episode today, some more general thoughts or tips as far as what you can do, what we can all do to create healthy boundaries in in the adoption world.

18:26And I just said that we need to keep the focus on what's best for our child, the adoptee, when we make any decision. It's easy for us to make decisions that are easy for us as parents. But as you consider and as we consider the relationships that we want to have with our children, that we want our children to have with us, and that we all want to have with our children's birth parents, it takes a little bit more thinking, really focusing really what's going to be the best thing for our child.

19:04And how will the decisions we make right now affect future relationships? And I think we also need to make sure that we're keeping our promises. Follow through is so important. And we said that in our last episode, and we're going to keep saying it. Keep the promises you make. Also, we would say learn from our mistake and make sure that you talk about expectations early on. Make it safe for the expectant parents to share their hopes and needs and be 100% honest about what yours are.

19:36If it's not a good match, it really is better to know sooner than later. I have an example of this that affects our family personally. Our fourth child, our youngest baby, who at the time of this recording is just over nine months old, his birth parents chose adoption and they were matched with a couple. They started having conversations about what open adoption would look like, what their relationships would look like after baby was born. Conversations revolved around, yeah, let's have visits, we'll send pictures, we'll do calls, and we'll visit frequently.

20:13And then they had been working through attorneys and this couple wrote specific language in their adoption paperwork that basically outlined that they would send pictures at Christmas. And if they were ever in the area, they would let them know. There was nothing about visiting, there was nothing about really a relationship, and our son's birth mom basically said, how am I supposed to love this baby through pictures? That's not what I want. And so at that point, she expressed to that family that that's not what she was hoping for in an adoption situation.

20:49And at that point, she began to start looking for a new family for our son. And we don't know the whole story like the other side of the story. It's quite possibly like we talked about in the last episode where we wanted to promise less than what we were willing to do. Like we didn't want to promise anything we wouldn't follow through with. And so, I mean, I think it's great that they were upfront enough that this all didn't come out after placement. And these expectant parents were able to find a match that felt more comfortable for them.

21:24But it really is so important to talk about what your expectations are early on and to be honest with each other so that you can see that it is a good match. And if it's not, then find a better match. I think it's also important to bring up the fact that as parents of adopted children, we need to make sure that it's clear that we're always going to do what's ever best for our children.

21:54And luckily, we haven't really had to deal with this in our family. But it's important if for any reason you feel like it's not an uplifting or good thing for your children to be connected really closely with their birth parents, you might need to alter or change a little bit of the relationship that exists. And obviously doing this with open discussion with birth parents.

22:25And really, I think it's so important to remember that when a person is making an adoption plan, when you have a parent who loves their child so much that they're considering adoption, they're maybe struggling with things, but we're not talking about someone who's like a danger to this child or threatening. When we're looking at these kinds of situations that are generally happening in domestic infant adoption, it's we're talking about people who are good, safe, loving people who are human and have struggles maybe,

23:01or situations that are out of their control. And so having a relationship and these kinds of adoptions is really not scary or threatening. And there are other situations where that's not the case. And we will be talking with friends and adoptive parents of children who are adopted from foster care and different situations in the future so that we can talk about setting boundaries when things might not be as safe.

23:34As safe or as steady or as child centric. So really, I think to set healthy boundaries, we need to be talking about expectations, and we need to be really open and honest, focusing on the child and what's best for them and following through and keeping our promises. And I think one other tip that I would suggest is maintaining a really good relationship with your children's birth parents, that if you're communicating and you're constantly kind of nurturing that relationship,

24:10that when you do need to have discussions about boundaries, it's more normal and more natural. It doesn't kind of come out of left field and surprise anybody, but the stronger relationships that you have with people, I think the more open and the more honest that you can be with each other, I would recommend just cultivating that relationship and doing all that you can to make sure that it's healthy and strong. And I would say that having boundaries is important at all stages of open adoption, but it's really the biggest focus and the beginning of a relationship, right? When you're setting up a relationship.

24:48I would say that the one thing that I look back on and wish we had done differently is with our first option. I feel like we might have been a little bit too hard lined. Maybe just rigid, just a little too rigid with boundaries. We had heard so much about the importance of setting boundaries and having limits, and we wanted to follow this advice because everyone told us that it's so much harder to implement boundaries after a relationship is already established.

25:19And so we were like, oh, we have to set up boundaries right now. And in the end, it really wasn't something needed or natural. And so if I could go back, I probably wouldn't have been as rigid as structured and setting up like visits and how long we can visit, how often, because that's really not been our style since then that dissolved pretty quickly.

25:49And we just opened up to visits whenever we could. And that's really how we've done it ever since then. I think our perspective shifted really quickly from when will we have visits to when can we have visits. It was just sweet to experience the love that our children's birth parents have for them and their grandparents have for them. And how rewarding that was. I think that helped to change our perspective really early on. So in our family culture, I would say boundaries are mostly just about keeping an open communication line and trying to keep it all focused on what's beneficial to our kids.

26:29A few times we had to have really specific conversations about what we called each other, especially what our children called their birth parents or what our children's birth parents called themselves around our children like, come to mommy. Well, mommy is Lynette, right? And so obviously that's maybe a natural thing for a birth parent to say because they are a mom and dad to our children. However, that's not how our children will refer to them. And that's not how we refer to them.

27:01And so we had to have some of those conversations to make sure that that they understood what our expectations were and what our family culture was. Absolutely. And as a family culture, it's not going to be the same, obviously, for every family. But being upfront about that as a family was really helpful. And with our youngest, it was really fun, actually. So our kids have always just called their birth parents by their first names or they'll say my birth mother or my birth father, birth mom, birth dad.

27:33But they usually just refer to them by their first name if we're talking to each other. And our youngest when he was born, his birth mother said, you know, I really don't want him to call me by my first name. We were like, OK, that's fine. What do you want him to call you? And she wants him. She wanted him to call her Bima short for birth mom, short for birth mom. And we thought that was super cute. And so, yeah, just having these open conversations can be so beneficial in so many ways, because I'm glad she felt comfortable telling us what she didn't want to be called and proposing what she did want to be called.

28:09And I think it's adorable. And yeah, she's Bima. That's how that's how we refer to her now. Well, I think that'll about wrap up this episode. We hope that our story and our experience is helpful. We know that every adoption story is unique. Boundaries are important. It's important for you as adoptive parents or prospective adoptive parents to be considering what would be important to you and your family culture. But really considering what boundaries are going to be helpful for your child and really be looking at boundaries through the lens of what's going to be best for your child rather than what's going to be easiest for you.

28:51Yeah, in the end, this is all about our children, about these sweet little babies, and we want them to be safe and protected and loved immensely from so many different people and angles that they feel support and connection and love. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the open adoption project.

29:46You

Transcripts are generated automatically and may contain errors.