Joanna and Matt | “I’m So Grateful it’s This Kind of Open”

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project for the Nelsons. I'm Lanette. And I'm Shaun. In today's episode we have a discussion with Joanna and Matt who are adoptive parents of two. We're really excited to share this with you. We are friends with Joanna and Matt and we actually met at a soccer game that our kids were both playing in. You'll hear a little bit about that in the episode but we wanted to share their experience and their story with you because we feel like they have a really good balance and understanding of what open adoption

0:31is and could be and we just wanted to share their experiences so that others in the adoption community could understand. Again we really appreciate Joanna and Matt for sharing their story with us and we'll jump to our conversation with them now. We are here on the podcast with Joanna and Matt. Thank you guys so much for joining us today. Thanks for having us. Thank you. To start off can you guys tell us a bit about yourselves?

1:04I will start. I grew up in Las Vegas and love music. I write songs for a living. Matt loves musicals, games, and sports and is very chill. He's a great dad too. I'm a school teacher. I teach second grade. I love it. I was raised as a military brat is the term that people use but I moved around a lot. We were in Europe for most of my growing up years and then I came to Utah and Matt and I met when we were pretty young and then we got married at like 20 and 22

1:41and then Matt and I do a YouTube channel together called Hopscotch which is what he does with songwriting so that's the basic gist. We like the outdoors. We love hiking. We love friends. We love traveling. Do you want to talk a little more about what Hopscotch is just so people are curious? Yes. Hopscotch is the union of our two hobbies. As an educator and Matt as a musician a few years ago I wanted better quality educational content for my kids as a school teacher and I asked,

2:15I would look on YouTube and I was like these songs are kind of hard to listen to as an adult and I would love to have something else that's fun for kids and adults to listen to and so I asked Matt, could you write a song about seven continents? Could you write a song about skip counting? Could you write some songs in that? Sure. And then I started using them and then other teachers in the school started using them and then I thought hey we could maybe share this with other people

2:45and so we made a YouTube channel and hired some animators and just got a few off the ground and then it's kind of just took off from there. And Hopscotch is really fun. I've watched some of the videos. You guys do a great job. Thank you. It's really fun. We enjoy it and we're always learning new things. So you said you got married at a relatively young age and then how exactly did your adoption journey begin? So I have Crohn's disease and so the first few years of our marriage were spent kind of in and out of hospitals, in and out of doctors appointments and that was such

3:18a good support to me as we figured it all out and so after a few years of that and figuring out surgeries and medication then we got to do the next adventure of infertility treatments and so and then a few years after that we were kind of just feeling like overwhelmed with it all. Like we wanted to, we knew we wanted to be parents that had always been part of our shared dream, our shared goals. I actually always kind of wanted to adopt as well even as a kid. My mom would

3:51joke that I was always, you know, when we played the game of life as a kid I was like taking all my siblings kids that they didn't because they don't want to pay, you know, because in the game of life you have to like pay taxes on your kids and my my siblings are very practical and they're like we don't want this. I was like I'll adopt your kid. You know it was ridiculous. I was 10 years old and I was already like I want these children. You double-decker car probably yeah ridiculous. We had always wanted kids and I started out saying like oh we want 10 kids and then eventually realizing that that was not going to be our story and then as we were kind

4:28of grappling with the the heart-wrenching process of infertility we opened up to the idea of maybe pursuing both at the same time adoption and infertility treatments and right as we had to kind of come to this we got a call from Matt's parents and his cousin was expecting a baby and when and we had run into her at their grandpa's funeral that summer and her life had just been

4:58really hard over the last few years and this was an unplanned pregnancy and she was considering us to be adoptive parents and wondered if we were interested in adoption and if we would be interested in being a parent to this baby and we had no idea that she was considering adoption for this baby and we were very honored that she was calling through family just to see if we would be interested and so we thought about it. We're religious so we prayed to God about it as well and

5:28instantly just felt very peaceful and wrote a letter to her saying thank you so much for considering us we respect your right to choose and we respect that you're thinking about it and we don't want to you to feel like you have to make a decision right away please let us know what questions you have because she knew Matt pretty well they grew up together they're similar ages but she didn't know me very well we had met a few times but not that much so we we just wrote a letter saying thanks for considering us we are interested but we also want you to know that we respect your right

6:00to change your mind at any point and at this point she was seven months along so baby was was due yeah not we didn't have a lot of time in between that call and then when he was born and so um so we wrote a letter and then we heard back hey we want to meet let's talk and so we made a an appointment to meet with her and her parents who are Matt's aunt and uncle and then Matt's parent so we met together it was just a sunday morning and uh we we were going in thinking like

6:36you know we were gonna kind of talk about what the different possibilities might be and we were not at all expecting too much to happen from the situation necessarily but then we got there one of Celeste's first questions was so have you have you guys thought about what you're gonna name him and we were whoa whoa we were not expecting that we thought she would have a million questions for us before making a decision but she had already made her mind up she had purposely not contacted

7:07us until she was 100 sure about it um because she didn't you know want to get our hopes up and didn't I didn't want to over complicate it I guess she was she was all in she like gave us like gave us some ultrasound pictures and we were just uh overwhelmed with just like joy and kind of disbelief and gratitude after you know she said what are you gonna name and we said oh my goodness wow well obviously like we at this point we had the call had happened at the beginning of August it had been maybe two weeks since that time and so we had thought about it we had texted a little

7:42bit about about like the gender of the baby after we had talked and we had um felt excited about the name Emerson uh who's our son's name and when we told her like the name Emerson she was really excited because uh that's their grandpa's middle name who had who whose funeral it had been and that's one of the places she had decided that she wanted to place him with us and so um so it's kind of cool and we thought that name was so fitting because it's their shared heritage so as soon as we got the call we had started on our our home study process just in case because we

8:16wanted to be ready and so as soon as we got the call that was probably the first overwhelming thing we had kind of looked into it before we even got the call because we had just opened up to the idea of adoption and simultaneously with infertility treatments and process of adoption because our expectations were very low we thought it would take a long time it would probably take years which was definitely more true with our subsequent adoption but in this case it was very quick and so we got paperwork and we went to a workshop a class workshop done through our local

8:51adoption specialist and it was awesome and they had lots of great things to help us understand a little bit more about how to create a better open adoption relationship and try and try and give us some more perspectives and i really appreciated those perspectives i think we had always wanted an open adoption but going to those classes helped us to see some of the awesome benefits as well it was really eye-opening um and just really helpful most of it was just like hearing experiences from different people all on you know different sides of the triangle it was just really

9:26great to to see like okay there's like you know people have gone through this um there's a community here another thing because we are more distantly related uh when we sat down and met with celeste um we wanted to just know what what were her expectations what do you want this adoption to look like and she had similar questions for us um her mom and dad had some great questions too like is this going to be a secret is this going to you know um and that was one thing that we really

9:56didn't want we didn't want it to be a big weird family secret that everybody knew he was adopted and he you know we just didn't want that so right after i said we don't want it to be a secret we feel like this is one of the best things um and we want we want our child to know how special it is and not and not have it be a secret be weird between the families or um create any mystery you know so um so that was great we just started off with those sorts of things how do we want it

10:27to look um what are your expectations what are your hopes and dreams are there any things that we should know that you're hoping for um even with names uh her mom said hey we'd love to know your name just in case it's a name that celeste doesn't like because maybe that would be bad you know and so it's like hey this is your kid i'm not you know for her she she was okay she was like i don't this is not about me which i honestly think it is about her and she's amazing but for her from her perspective she was very thoughtful in just the process and we appreciated the discussion with

11:01her especially right at the beginning right at the onset and we tried to just be like open about like just trying to think of like anything that could like be it be like a hiccup in anything like okay what if we like move to england like is that would that be a problem like what if we you know it's like trying to like put it all out there at the beginning just so that it was it's like clear communication and everyone knows what what we're expecting and that's great yeah and for some else though she was like yeah that wouldn't be a problem you know for other people it might be and

11:32that would be okay um but we just want to make sure we were actually the right the right fit she right at the beginning talked about the birth we talked about birth plan together we talked again this was this was 40 days before he was born so it was a very quick turnaround from the discussions and meant that we needed well from my perspective i really wanted to make sure that we communicated so that it could be at least a little bit less traumatic for her especially and so and

12:03she was very inclusive for us she included she invited us to all of his remaining appointments and to his birth it was really special to be there for that for everything we could be i remember we went out to lunch together after one of the appointments and just talked and because i mean she she knew matt pretty well but she didn't know me and that was another question they had for her when we sat down the first time was what like what do you want to know about me i know you know matt but what do you want to know about me i for all she knew i could have been you know i could

12:37have been crazy but worse but hopefully not but she she did mention i've seen you over the years i had met and i had been married six years and she said i've seen you at family reunions you've always been kind to my kids i've seen like i've seen the way you're a teacher you you know so she did have i guess some things that she knew about me even if we hadn't talked a ton and so that was really i guess really meaningful to me that she had enough enough of a background with me to feel comfortable right at the beginning and you know we said do you want to know about our potential

13:11parenting styles do you want to know about this i think it'll be great it'll be great you know so she had a lot of faith and a lot of trust in us right at the beginning and i think that helped us in turn to also have a lot of faith and trust in her over those next few months as we awaited our overrated the arrival of this this baby she didn't have her priorities like she wanted this child to have like music in their life she knew that was gonna happen with our family she wanted she wanted them to have like um the church the her specific like the beliefs and the belief system and stuff

13:47with that so um so yeah she like had she had her the things that she wanted and um and everything else she was like yeah whatever celeste invited both of us to be there she was like matt you know if you do if you feel comfortable being there like i'm i'm cool with that i was like i mean yeah i'd love love to be there for you know for my kids birth yeah we just we all showed up early in the

14:17morning uh it was it was scheduled she was scheduled to be induced and so um we all showed up early in the morning just kind of ready to to wait however long it was going to be and just be with her there and um it was just really cool yeah we had talked a little bit about the birth ahead of time so i had never been to a birth before this is a new experience we tried to do we tried to do some basic research of what to expect and i was a little nervous because matt has been queasy and

14:51passed medical procedures with me and so i was like no you gotta get this together we need to make sure we're prepared like joanna's the one getting like needles put in her and i'm the one that's like getting lightheaded yeah and the nurse would be like are you okay and i was like yeah i'm fine and we're not talking to you but um but yeah he so so we tried to do some research and we talked a little bit about what she wanted at the hospital she had she was so such a trooper and she had a

15:23good support system her mom was there um she had a good friend with her as well and so yeah so we we kind of all went and she was really sweet she was like if you want a photographer there if you know so so the they the hospital this was obviously pre-covid um but yeah so we so we had a photographer there a good friend that takes pictures in the hospital and then um yeah and and so that was really sweet um we were there at 6 a.m and he was born at 6 p.m so it was like 12 hours of hanging

15:57out together and matt played on the guitar like we watched a movie we talked we took naps and it was really chill compared to the ones you see in the movies and just a special time together to talk one thing that um we had done because she loves music music it was a huge factor for her and picking us um and in feeling like that connection with with matt and with her they both love music and so one thing we um had done was to write a lullaby for our son um in preparation

16:29and so at the hospital matt played that lullaby for her and um and she loved it and we kind of just cried together and talked about you know this baby that brought us together and um and it kind of changed our relationship we'd always we knew her matt had known her his whole life but um but there was just a new connection so uh so that was kind of a uh yeah special moment in the hospital and trying to be there for her and not be in her way and she showed up to the hospital with gifts

17:04for us which we were absolutely shocked and a little bit i don't know mortified like you can't give me anything you're already doing so much for us but um she said i couldn't sleep last night it's just like christmas i just am so excited for you guys to be parents and so she had um like a like new parent gifts you know like a pillow and a sleep mask for me and then earplugs and just kind of funny ones but also um also just really sweet we had some gifts for like flowers and um some

17:41i think some toiletries maybe and but yeah just a few basic things to help her help hopefully help her feel a little more comfortable but um but you know like what do you do for for someone who is entrusting you with a child you know there's there's just it's just a huge connection to be able to share share this baby together and that was a little bit about the before the baby was born as the day got got on farther and he was getting closer to being born i guess she she had

18:14enough dural which was helpful so she could be more comfortable and a little bit more relaxed and then um and that was obviously all her choice when she was ready to to push and and we were all just yeah just there for it and it was just beautiful um she had we had talked ahead of time and she said i want it i want it to be as much like it's you your birth as possible like i didn't she almost sounded like she didn't want to get in the way and i was like this is about this is as much of your your experiences as ours so she was just very thoughtful um very very thoughtful and i just

18:49hope that we were as thoughtful and and considerate of her as well um and so when he was born that like the doctor set baby on her and then later after he was all cleaned up passed him to me and then i i brought him over to her and we looked at him together and just admired this cute little human so but yeah i got to cut the umbilical cord yeah that's so cool yeah i did that i did that with our first as well it's the coolest that's awesome really special so special so yeah so that was his birth we were there at the hospital together and then we had a

19:25room right next door to each other and tried to make sure we talked to her ahead of time we want to make sure you get time with him and um she was so wise and prepared she had also talked to a counselor we loved that she was getting um just both of us were getting some some help with counselors to make sure we were doing the best we could with the knowledge we had at the time you know um and so she spent some time on sunday after like the morning after just talking to him one on one and um you know we would go into her room she would come into ours we just tried well she she

19:58couldn't move as much so we just texted and wanted to you know when can we come in and spent some time together talking and admiring cute little human that's awesome hospital time is amazing yeah that's really cool so what did placement look like with this specific situation i know we're going to talk about your second adoption as well but we were in the room next door and the social worker came in and talked to her we i think that you're not supposed to be in the same room i could be right yeah i think you're right about that so um and we were wanting to just be respectful of whatever

20:33her needs were so she had people with her a good support system and then afterwards we came in and chatted and she held him and she was very um yeah she just seemed pretty upbeat she knew what she wanted and um i'm sure that there was a lot more behind the scenes i'm sure there were they're like i'm sure and also at the same time she um she did she had said from the beginning i know i know that this is what's best for him this is what's best for me and this is um going to be good yeah we

21:06spent some time together afterwards um but yeah we didn't do anything anything too different partly because from the beginning when we talked about it she was just so sure we did try and make sure because we live pretty close to each other um after he was born um we just tried to make sure especially at the beginning that we spent some time together so she i think we saw each other about once a week for the first month she could just hold him and as he got a little older it became a little less frequent um not necessarily because we didn't we were so happy to for her to

21:42come and spend time with him whenever for us to spend time with her that was not an issue i think it was just as she was recovering and doing other things life gets busier as as he got older and so um but yeah we still we still enjoy time with her so it's awesome well we'll probably ask lots of follow-up questions about both stories but do you want to tell us now about your second so we were kind of putting putting a lot of effort into just like tell tell everyone that we know we

22:14were we're hoping to adopt again doing all this stuff on instagram and facebook and uh we made like a little video about our family and like um i don't know we were just we were just like all right we're just gonna like do all all the stuff that we hear you're supposed to do and uh and see what happens we felt like with all the opportunities that we had seen we weren't really financially in a place where we could do like a like go through an agency um so we were just like kind

22:46of crossing our fingers for like someone to hear about us and for for us for another private adoption to just kind of happen there was a few years of that a few years yep like a good four years of that so yeah um yeah and then and then ever since five at this point and a couple friend of ours um uh for joanna's birthday gave us like a huge check out of the blue yeah uh just like for an

23:22unreal amount of money and we were like hold hold on like what is this um and and i mean they they kind of they kind of put it out as like you know we we know you guys i wanted to grow your family however you need to do that um we just felt like we like like god was telling us that this money wasn't for us like it like it was for someone else and we felt like it was for you you can't

23:55take that lightly i don't i don't know how you say no to that you know i mean we did say no at first we were like you you you should reconsider this and also we can't accept this because we're good enough friends that we don't want it to be weird and anyway but but they basically said like you know we don't care what you do with this money like you can give it to someone else uh for all we care but we don't want to back we it's just it's not for us it's not for us and at some point during these conversations i was realizing like well this this actually would

24:28would make would put an agency adoption within our reach um and you know i told joanna about that and so we just sort of started thinking about it yeah and this was that i think um this was like um this was like right after we had done two rounds of ivf um we have tried to always pursue adoption and infertility simultaneously um for multiple reasons one is like you don't have control over either but when you're putting effort in it feels like you have a little more control you don't but at least it feels like you do so um so you know when one wasn't going well we put a

25:05little bit more effort into the other one and vice versa and so after a few years of trying for private adoption that wasn't working we thought well let's do ivf and we'll see how that goes um we we've done lots of other infertility things but never ivf and so um so we did so we did ivf and then it didn't work and then we did another round and then it did work and then i had a miscarriage and so it broke me emotionally and it changed a little bit about the way i felt about loss and so that was another obstacle later on with this particular adoption that was a little

25:36bit harder for me than than it had been with emerson um initially but with that all of the our friends said we you've already spent this money in much much more so as far as we're concerned we're just helping pay for all your infertility treatment it wasn't even necessarily paying it forward but to us we felt like um like just maybe just maybe it could put us in with within reach of an agency if that was the right thing for our family um and i still had heard a lot of things had heard a lot of things about agencies i was kind of a little worried um but we would get uh

26:11because we had always stayed home study ready and tried to be current we did still get emails from our social worker about possible situations and one particular situation caught our view and um it was a birth mom in out out of state from an agency that was looking for a couple with our same religious background um and faith and so um and we looked at it and we thought about it and said ah sure why not we've got the you know we had this kind of kick to to think about it and so

26:45we just emailed and said yeah we're interested you know and um yeah we shared our profile with them and then we got a call from her from the agency saying she wanted to talk with us over the phone and so they patched us through and all the while they have an agency representative there and um and we talked and then we heard that she liked us and she wanted to go forward and so then we had this mountain of agency paperwork that was so scary it was a lot of things to sign and a lot a lot a lot of money that we didn't i mean we we did have some but

27:18it was you know maybe going to be for a down payment for a house or something else and so it was it was just a different experience and it was hard because i didn't like that i didn't like thinking about money when i thought about growing my family and yet in the world of infertility there that's that's the way it is either way you know you invest in your family um and and yet it still feels like dirty to think about it that way and i don't like it and it was uncomfortable and it was out of my realm of experience and so there was a lot of things

27:50um going into this that were different and yet when we talked to her it just um she was just fun and very chill and a little a little more frank like just calling it how she saw it and um we liked her a lot and also again it was similar with celeste where we were like just to make sure like you you picked us on a phone call you've never we i mean she had seen our profile she knew a little bit more about us but um i we asked to talk to her again before signing anything because we just

28:23wanted her to know it like not not to know if she was going to place with us necessarily but if she was thinking about placing with us to know what she was getting to know what she was choosing because i just i still was like i know that that's what our profile says but just to make sure so we talked to we talked again on the phone we um again i was like just so you know i didn't vote for so and so right and you know like i just really wanted her to know just in case what if we're not a good fit what if she doesn't like us and i want her to know immediately because i didn't want to get her hopes

28:56up or anyway so like we might not be dark people yeah yeah is that a deal breaker is it a deal breaker you know and and because that's something that was she did she does love dogs and so um so we talked and then you know she once we said yeah and we moved forward and then we asked the agency to just be able to talk with her again and that apparently isn't as common with this particular agency and so we did have to kind of advocate for that and um i but i think it was good we she she

29:26and we just like to get getting to know each other a little better and um and so yeah we signed paperwork and we asked the agency to kind of move forward um with doing an open uh open communication agreement which was separate so that we could get each other's contact information outside because up until this point an agency representative had to be available and had to be there to listen in on both sides of conversation she didn't know her last name she didn't know our last we

29:56didn't know hers they had it all redacted just to make sure that um privacy was respected which i'd get from an agency point of view we respect that that that's the way it's done um and also it was just a different world to us and so we were there was a big learning curve um but as we got to know each other more and talked a little bit more frequently uh it was fun to get to know her and also i had a lot of anxiety i had a lot of anxiety about um just the recognition that uh

30:26that i knew what loss felt like and i didn't really want to get attached because what if it didn't work out and i wanted to respect her right to parent if she chose to do that in both of our children both of our children their birth parents are older than us um which also uh i i liked that because i felt like they were coming from a place of wisdom and both have um parented other children and they're wonderful wonderful moms and so they have a lot to offer with wisdom and ideas and anyway but at the same time there was an anxious part of me so that that was a reality

30:59of uh of the situation which we it was five months before birth um and so that whole time on the back my mind was a little bit of i felt like i was going a little crazy i'm excited but i don't want to be excited so there was a little bit of that and um yeah i want to prepare but i don't want to prepare in case something in case she changes her mind which i want to respect and i want to make sure that i'm okay with that because i feel like you need to be okay with either one this is still this is her baby it will always be her baby even if we adopt him we share this baby and so

31:30anyway um and he can also be my baby but just you know just a little bit of so yeah i did definitely meet with the counselor and try to work through some of that and and then we also wanted to meet her in person because she lives out of state and so we planned a trip to go see her in june he was born in august and um so we went down and visited her and this was all you know arranged with her what she felt comfortable with and found our own accommodations obviously and met up with her and and met her um some of her family members and that was really fun um and nerve-wracking and

32:08with our first with our first son it was easy to be like yeah we're gonna be great parents because we didn't have any kids yet so of course we were gonna be great parents it's all hypothetical but with this next with our second son we now we have a five-year-old and so when we met her we were very aware that she was going to watch us parent our son for you know the days we were with her and and at on the one hand of course we want to be open and honest and who we are and also you want to present your best foot and yeah the first time we saw her was the first hour of church our five

32:45year old is like we're trying to like help him sit through this uh this this meeting of speakers and you know nothing for kids and uh and we're traveling so we don't have all of our normal resources and it's been a pandemic so he's not used to sitting in church and it was like a little bit of a comedy and also she was super cool and kind about it and just and she she had invited us to come to her church her congregation to um because she wanted to introduce us she was like

33:15i want you to meet my people i want you to meet my friends and so it was just it was very nerve-wracking like okay we're gonna go we're gonna meet your friends we're gonna just like feel so vulnerable right right just like this is who we are and also i hope you like it but he might not so for that to be the like first place with a lot of other people around i'm sure that that could be really challenging yeah but she was she had a whole itinerary planned like she took we went on hikes

33:45together when we went like when we went and she wanted to show us her favorite spots um she showed us around the area and the local line and um she had friends that hosted us for dinner and so it was really special we felt like we understood her so much better after that trip to really get to know her and to honor um her family and to honor some of the things that she finds that she loves like the outdoors um and uh we met her dogs were very cute we'd say we're not dog people but we

34:16actually i love other people's dogs i just i feel like i'm uh i'm not ready to commit to owning one because i want that creature to have the best life and i feel like men are too much of a border like dog people but um you get it you get the idea so yeah so we went out to meet her and then um um and then we just we got to go to a like an ultrasound appointment um to and talk to her doctor and kind of the doctor was really good about saying let's talk about a birth plan let's

34:46talk about what you want it to look like and so that gave her an opportunity to kind of open up some more questions and discussion about what we wanted it to look like and yeah so then we came back for the birth so leaving our other son in the care of grandparents and again it's out of state so um we she had a scheduled induction and then we went out of state and to this induction date and then um the hospital where she lives is small and they didn't have room so every day she called

35:19for a week and was expecting to go in and every day for a week they said call again tomorrow call again tomorrow call again tomorrow and so in that time um we hung out we did a lot together we went out to eat we played games um and it ended up just being a really cool bonding experience to have some more time together especially because our son was still with grandparents and so before we had been kind of just making sure our son's needs were met and now we could really just make sure that um that

35:50our Katie's needs were met and so so our son's birth mom's needs were met and so that was really fun and special and we actually really appreciated that extra week with her. I played a lot of baseball with one of her other sons yeah oh it's fun every day we just went out and hit baseballs and while we waited I can't wrap my mind around that with the hospital saying you can't come yet that's so wild but it sounds like it worked out well yeah and it didn't it didn't go past her

36:20initial due date I think that was also part of my anxiety is like what if I get a call and I'm not ready and she lives this far away and you know there's always that at the back of your mind when it's an out of state um out of state experience but um but yeah it was it was wonderful and I really think that the time that every thing that we did ahead of time to get to know her was helpful for everyone in the process um I think she she's expressed appreciation for that as well

36:51just to really know us better and um and then when it came time for her to give birth she just knew that we loved her and cared about her so much and that we honored the wishes that she had for this son and and that we continue to honor her every day same as our other son's birth mom and so so yeah we went to the hospital I went she invited me to the birth she was a little less comfortable with not being there just being an unrelated male um understandably and it worked out because now it

37:24is COVID times and so she could only have two guests with her one was her friend as a support and then the other one was me and so um we were there and this one was a uh an overnighter so I slept on a pad on the floor of labor and delivery it was a little bit slower with the induction and you know was embarrassed that I snored I felt so embarrassed by that so things like that but um so yeah and then he was born the next day and it was surreal I felt so privileged

37:56to be there and I got to cut the umbilical cord for our second son um so that was that was fun and nerve-wracking and um just be a support system to his birth mom throughout the birth be there to help her when she got her epidural and um I think just yeah it's just kind of a special privilege to be there not not one that's common in the as far as I know in the adoption world but we we felt so grateful for the relationship that we had with both of them that allowed for that situation to

38:28be comfortable for all parties I love that so what does your relationship look like now with with all of your birth family yeah I think it's yeah I think it's like dual dual roles like they're my like extended family but they're like his birth family I think maybe like more even more yeah more at this point um and and and therefore like our our immediate family it seems relationship

38:58wise so I can give you some examples we um with with Emerson's birth family he does have birth siblings and so we love to be together for birthdays for their birthdays for Emerson's birthday when possible birthdays are fun a fun way to make sure we have some events planned specifically for those things usually we get together around Christmas we get together because they're in state and they're close by so it's a little easier um but Emerson's always invited to their birthday parties and then we usually try and do something special with his birth mom around her birthday

39:29um this last year we had her over for some cake and we played some games and Emerson had picked out a present for her and so that was fun those are some things that we like to do and then usually Christmas we'll go sledding together or um they were kind enough to have us up for dinner this year which was really special so yeah usually about three or four times a year we'll get together and then we'll we do some Marco Polos back and forth um and things like that uh and then with um

40:00Katie with our other our newborn's birth mom we because she's out of state we do a lot of Marco Polo and we text and send pictures and then we also had her up here for Christmas this year which was really special we loved that we it was a meaningful time to be able to spend where we had gone to see her friends and met her in her world before he was born and then now after he's born to invite her into our world so that she could see our friends and um kind of see him settled and

40:31spend some quality time together so she and she has some family in the area up here so we could kind of split time she could split time and have have some time with us and then if she needed to retreat then she could so that was really uh I I loved it I think she I think they did too so yeah it was really fun we went sledding and we made tie-dye shirts and we went out to eat and we went to a basketball game and they went to a batting cage while she and I went and did errands

41:01together and um you know did some touristy things in our own town which is always fun but yeah so we tried we um we mainly just want it to feel like family in the end right so there will always be some things maybe some messier things so far we I feel like we've tried really hard to be good communicators and open up the door so that if there are things that they're feeling uncomfortable with they can share that with us but um I wanted to add uh initially with Emerson's birth mom Celeste

41:31uh uh we wanted to establish a way that we could like send pictures because she wanted like pictures but she also um wanted to like see them on her timetable um so it wasn't just like us texting her pictures at maybe a time that she wasn't uh feeling like emotionally up to to seeing them um and so that that was like the only the whole reason we got Instagram got an Instagram account

42:03it was for that so we could just put the pictures up she could go on whenever she wanted to see them and and then it turned out to be also a bonus for the grandparents because then they could see all the pictures too I think with Katie she doesn't have any any social media right so so that's more just like Marco Polo's and and texting back and forth and and and we do send pictures to her and she's and she sends pictures to us too so that's fun so I think a lot of what you shared

42:37um at least for hopeful adoptive couples that are listening could probably glean what they could do to foster relationships both before a child's born and after any other advice that you might give or kind of lessons learned either before or after placement to build those relationships again I think what you shared is beautiful but if anything advice wise that you would share definitely read about it and understand multiple perspectives I think no matter how how much I know there's always more to learn and so that's been very humbling even between our first adoption experience

43:10and our second um I feel like I learned a lot more after like in between that and trying to advocate for ethical adoption and trying to that was something we did with our agency was we tried to we tried I don't know that we succeeded but we tried to make sure um and ask good questions and check on the ethics of it and check to make sure that her needs were met that was one thing where you hear a lot about private adoption versus agency adoption and there was a lot that we learned about that in the process one of the things that Katie appreciated about the agency as a birth mom

43:42is that they were really watching out for her she had people to advocate for her all along the way and because it was a good experience for her I feel like that was a huge that's huge right so even if I have maybe other questions that I would love to know a little bit more about agencies in general for this specific experience for this specific birth mom it was a good experience for her and I appreciate that and I want to you know make sure that every single adoption is perfectly ethical and I think that that's our responsibility as adoptive parents to make sure

44:14we advocate for for good practices and make sure that not only are we following the law but we're making sure that birth mothers are advocated for because so often they're taken advantage of and so we are not perfect men and I are definitely not perfect at that but we were trying and as you learn more about it you just may you know do your best to make sure that their needs are taken care of we asked a lot about what like the services she had that they had available to her with counseling with post placement care and along the way they they were really solicitous and made sure

44:49that she had her needs met I know that sometimes agencies get a bad rap but I do want to say that for her for for this relationship for this birth mom that was a huge part for her that she appreciated that support system so that is one thing I wanted to say another one as you talk as you think about adoption we talk about open adoption but the agency was like there's a lot of different versions of open adoption right so even as we talk about open adoption there's so

45:20many different ways that open adoption can look and so that was one thing that we talked a lot about with Katie and her family coming as they you know they knew they wanted an open adoption but Katie said at Christmas when we were hanging out together like I knew I wanted to open but I'm so grateful that it's this kind of open you know I'm so grateful that we we really can just talk and and communicate and it's not just like a you know she and she and I both laugh because after after our second son theater's placement we both signed open communication agreements through the

45:54agency that just like ensure that we communicate with her every three months and via you know picture or this or that and she was like this is ridiculous they're going to text me all the time I don't even have to sign this and I was like that's so good that you felt we want that you know and we feel the same way that we're of course we'll sign it because we would love to do more than that you know not everyone is going to have that you know there might be there might be people who are or are less comfortable with that on on any side of it and and you know we're just we're

46:29just grateful for the degree of communication that we have with our kids families and also for our it's like not just for us sometimes people be like oh good for you but it's not it's not for us like it's it's for everyone it's for the health of all parties involved our son is five and he for the longest time thought every baby was adopted like whenever our friend our friends you know were having a kid and it's like oh cool where's the where's the birth mom like who is the baby coming from he legitimately thought adoption was the typical or like when my sister was pregnant

47:04it was like oh are we gonna adopt that baby too like which of course we were horrified that he said at the time but to him adoptions is so normal it's not it's not a you know it's it's not the weird thing it's just like obviously i remember our daughter saying similar things she asked someone someone saw the grocery store who was pregnant she asked if she was going to place her baby with us yeah we can definitely and we like died yeah yeah so it was very natural in our family and

47:38definitely weird for that one for sure yeah yes so so i i think i think also people obviously every situation is different when we talk to people about adoption they almost seem threatened by the idea of birth parents being involved in your kids' lives and i and it saddens me a little bit just because i i don't understand that i i guess i do understand it theoretically but in our lives

48:08our our kids' birth parents have been nothing but supportive and kind and just another person rooting for them and so even at christmas both birth both of our sons birth moms got presents not only for their son but also for the other one and it was just like just part of the family you know and um and like birth grandparents and birth dads that we're connecting a little bit more with but we we just so much appreciate them that we can understand our kids a little bit more from their

48:41heritage and honor that so that as they grew up they just have like lots of cool families to be there to root for them and so um another thing that we want to say to other couples i guess would be um not everybody who adopts has infertility as part of their journey but if infertility is part of your journey um it will continue to be part of your journey and so i think that's been something for me is someone told me you know adoption will cure childlessness but it

49:16won't cure infertility and so just at the end of the day you're you have to there will be still be emotional work to do not um i think just the process of being a mother is amazing and i'm so grateful for that opportunity and also i will always mourn the fact that i don't have control over when and how to build my family that will always you know i i think i'm over i think i'm good and then it will come up again and so trying to make sure that i have a healthy support system surrounding infertility and um and a healthy appreciation for the fact that our kids

49:50genetics are different than us and we love that and also it still is funny to us as people like oh he looks so much like you or or and with our second son who doesn't really look like us i'm still amazed because they're like oh he's going to be so tall and like that's so great that you maybe he will be maybe he won't be but we love them for who they are and not necessarily because they're like us but because they're because they are them um and we love seeing we love seeing the biologies and the similarities they have with their birth parents to us that's really fun

50:21um but uh but yeah i guess that's some things to think about we are grateful for infertility because that has been a journey that's brought us to our kids but we also know that it is a continual something to work through and something to figure out and um yeah and the like obviously there's a different bonding process than they come from outside of your body versus inside of your body and so um not one is not superior to the other but they are different so i would imagine but um i

50:55don't know the other side so i don't know there's just always more to learn i don't know everything but i think just coming from a place of humility and trying to learn more and talking to other adoptive parents i shawn and lena are you guys were so helpful to talk to as we were waiting to adopt theodore and so that was really helpful for us in our journey to just have another another other adoptive parents and other experiences to learn from so maybe i'll just put in like how randomly it was that we met that we had boys on the same soccer team and we had been recently

51:29approved to adopt a fifth time and um i saw your picture on their website as a hopeful adoptive couple and i was like i swear i saw them like yesterday and then we went to another soccer practice or soccer game and i was like yep that's them and that really awkwardly came over you like hey uh you're hoping to adopt right not but i'm making well okay well in my mind i'm like i hope this doesn't come out awkward but i think just connecting with other people and having those

52:02type of conversations with people that are in similar situations is so helpful yeah absolutely i think so and um and i think just their most as far as i've met a lot of parents are so happy to talk about it you know like if you have it if you have an adoption experience so we haven't talked about this one yet what are some of the lessons that the adoption process has taught you just like the the reality that like i don't know i think before before adoption when it was just like this

52:37thing that we wanted for so long you know uh i think i idealized like how awesome of a parent i was going to be because like you know we've had we've had so much time to just like uh plan it out and just like i don't know uh we're just like so mature uh and then and then they come and they're and they're kids and like yeah it's it's still hard it's it's still like you're still gonna fail

53:08like we're still gonna do things wrong yeah just because we you know wanted it really a lot doesn't mean that we're gonna be superior at it but um yeah we had a lot of friends around us having children and i was like oh let's do that as parents let's not do that as parents and uh and i'm sure that people say the same about us yeah for sure yes absolutely um i think the importance of continuing or just continuing to learn about adoption has been important um um and listening

53:39to adoptive voices that's something i always like to ask if someone says oh i'm adopted i always like to ask tell me more tell me more about what did you like is like being an adopted child what you know so that's something that i i try and learn more as much as i can i think that we are the same we try and learn a little bit more and then also learning to be a little bit more open about expectations with people with the you know language and i think we've tried to as we learn more try and share that with friends so that we can uh you know eliminate the the word real mom forever from

54:15people's vocabulary um and and then also at the same time do it in a loving way that's not offensive so it's it's tricky it's awkward it can be awkward i i like i i feel very strongly about it but i i even still like have a hard time calling people out on things especially if they're good friends or family members um joanna is much better at it i don't know about better i try and we don't want anyone to feel sad so that's one thing is as we've adopted we've tried to be like oh as a reminder

54:48like just either on social media or family texts like here are some of the things that we can do to help you know our child feel more comfortable as an adoptee in our family you know here are some things that we can do so try and do it a little bit preventatively not just as a it's like a reprimand as a reprimand or response you know um and then as needed every once in a while um it's mainly when they i try and do it more when they're talking about other people because you still hear the phrase like in the family culture if you're like oh yeah they adopted and then they have one

55:20of their own right and then we try and just very gently say like oh did they have you know a biological child after they adopted that's really neat could we say that yeah but just try and do it gently and then i think we still made people feel offered every once in a while but most of our our friends and family are really open to it at this point they know that we're they know that we're doing out of love and not out of judgment and just trying to help foster that change and because it's important to us that our kids if they will always people will always say things

55:52right it's going to happen but in our immediate family and extended family that's something that that we do try really hard to work towards um and and we've you know people have apologized i'm so sorry i said i'm so it's totally fine we don't want you to feel sorry we're just trying to help form different patterns for the future so so yeah that would be one thing um and then also trying to include our extended family as we develop relationships with our birth family um and so uh yeah getting helping foster those relationships so that my mom likes to send pictures to each of

56:25them my mom you know my mom wants um and i and i love that i love that um katie has both my mom's number and that's mom's number and so um i like that we don't have to be the only ones to include them in our family so a lot of our listeners are considering adoption for the first time you've gone through this twice now uh what if any advice would you give to someone at the beginning of their adoption journey i would say let go of some control like you i think just changing

57:00expectations at the beginning i'd also just say like assessing what it is that draws you to adoption what it is you're expecting out of it working out together what it is that you want it to look like for for you specifically yeah i think even looking at um especially at the beginning people start asking like are you you know are you open to a child with special needs are you open to foster care are you open there are a lot of different paths to adoption right um agency private foster

57:35there's so many different ones and each each of them has um like different things about them and so i would just try and educate yourself on what does each of those potentially look like and then also remember um there are a lot of waiting couples and so um i think a lot of times agencies or other people lure you in by being like oh you can adopt faster by doing this or you can adopt faster by doing that and that is that is possible but but then also just changing your

58:06expectations a little bit to be more open to the fact that it might take longer it might your your timeline might not work out maybe it will and maybe it won't and so um i i feel bad saying this because it sounds depressing but honestly i think it would have helped me a lot to just say i'm going to look anywhere between it taking two years to 10 years and what can i do in a healthy way to help promote this adoption without feeling like it's completely out of my hands because it is it truly

58:37a lot of it is out of your hands not everybody's going to feel comfortable being an influencer on instagram i'm sorry like i am not that person and i wish i was but i'm not you know and so but at the same time i remember with our first son being like nobody's going to choose us we're like poor we're teacher a musician and then that was exactly what celeste wanted was you know teacher musician but at the same time like if if it's meant to be it will be and also just being the best that you

59:13can be and understand the process better so that when it does come you're ready for it and you have a better perspective because i think um desperation makes us do silly things sometimes or um feeling out of control can can be hard so i don't know i don't know like living life in the meantime right yeah do do like we're not just like we're not just like sitting down like waiting for this to happen um we you know we we have to live until it does right yeah and live so that it sounds i don't know

59:47maybe that's not the best advice so take it with a grain of salt but those are some things that i think can help with a healthy hoping to adopt and waiting waiting for this special thing but i really do feel like um whatever high higher power or higher being or peaceful place that that you can go to to um trust in that trust in like the the good the good in the universe that that nobody else is going to take your baby if this baby's meant for you and your spouse um or you you know um then

60:24then do everything you can and then also sit and do other healthy things so i don't know if that makes sense but i think especially hoping to adopt can be really obsessive also i would say if you're at the beginning of your journey please like start watching out for scammers they will come these are not necessarily like the most positive happy things that i'm sharing so i apologize but um in the adoption world there's so many vulnerable parties right and a birth mother is very vulnerable

60:56um can be very vulnerable and adoptive parents are very vulnerable because they want this so much and so and unfortunately other people know that and they prey upon both parties and um and sometimes even i've seen adoptive parents in desperation do things that are not like i don't know just not super ethical or not super great and so i would say just be the best you can be and educate yourself and do do what you can but don't i feel like some people go all out and overboard

61:28trying to attain something that really truly is out of your control yeah yeah that's awesome advice i think as a brand new adoptive couple we were thinking about like all of the things that we could do to make it happen faster um when i mean the first time right when we could have been like developing ourselves in meaningful ways so that we would be better individuals and a better couple and better parents ultimately right but it's so easy to get kind of obsessed and so tunnel vision

62:00that i think the advice that you give is really important that you have to take a step back and realize that it's not probably going to look exactly like you think it will yeah the timeline might not work out right um and and for us this has been the same with infertility this is the same with like adoption where we have a certain timeline and hopes and expectations and with all of that it was like a lot of loss a lot of a lot of dashed expectations a lot of things that didn't work out and so we tried to come up with things that we were looking forward to along the

62:32journey so that we didn't have to only rely on that specific part of our life um but that being said like there there are good support systems out there because it is an emotional journey regardless of what it is right like but and the waiting process is emotional but like even as i talked about theodore's theater being born that was emotional and as far as like anxiety and and feeling i don't know the right word maybe bonded to this baby because i was just still

63:02worried um and then afterwards feeling a lot of guilt that uh you just want so much for this one like wonderful person who's given life to your child to to be happy and to have their needs met and knowing full well that they're in it is a tough thing they're grieving and they're going through a loss and so um seeing that up close and it's it's it's it's beautiful and it's also hard and it's worth it and it's also hard and oh i'll say just like as you're learning like agency

63:36versus private are both are both options we had obviously ruled it out for a long time with agency um someone had told us if you do end up going through an agency your village will help like you have a village call on them and they really did and i would say honestly if you're considering adoption for any reason talk to a therapist like we're all about going to see counselor men i have both seen counselors for different parts of our life whether infertility or loss or um just like dealing with things and so i mean i know maybe it's a taboo but we're pretty open about it and

64:09it's been great we we each have our own counselor we see them every once in a while i saw them more more frequently when we were waiting for theodore because it was just you know something more to work through people are welcome to reach out to us to our i my instagrams pay spam 2010 and then um we can also find our at hopscotch stuff so we're pretty open happy to share whatever with people add us to your community if you want to talk to someone we talk about shawn and linnett

64:39have been there for us we would love to be there for you whoever you are on your journey and feel free to ask questions and we have talked to other couples one-on-one um we don't know everything we definitely still have a lot to learn but we're grateful for that grateful for this way of building our family so we just know most things i hope the sarcasm comes through over i was gonna say any parting words matt but i think that sums it up right i feel like matt's been so good with his dad jokes recently

65:14that's right sorry for talking your ear out adoption has helped me with my dad jokes yes so thanks so much for listening to this episode of the open adoption project and thank you again so much to joanna and matt i loved how joanna talked about how her mom and matt's mom also

65:47both have relationships with their kids birth moms right i thought that was really neat how i think what she said was their family to all of our family right and so their whole families has adopted their kids birth family and it's just grown all across the board i thought that was so beautiful yeah i love that relationships are created through adoption and i think most people just assume that it's the parent child relationship that's created or the birth parent and adoptive

66:20parent relationship but really it could be so much more and i think joanna said this but you know the more people we have in our village the more love that our children feel uh it's just going to be the best thing and maybe a better thing for them yes and i loved what one of their kids birth mom said that she was so grateful that it was this kind of open because there are so many different kinds of open and adoption open adoption can mean such a huge

66:53array of different things right it can be just some emails every now and then or it could be in-person visits and seeing each other frequently it just looks so different in every situation but i feel like one of our main goals and purposes is trying to help take fear out of the equation when trying to determine what kind of open adoption relationship is best for you and your family taking that fear out and just looking at what is really going to be best for your child yeah i

67:25totally agree we are wrapping up season two of the podcast we have two more episodes left for this season and then we'll be taking a short break and getting ready for season three which we're super excited about thanks again for listening to this episode of the open adoption project we invite you to share our podcast with your friends or family members so that they too can be more educated and understand more experiences in the adoption community we are grateful to each

67:56of you as our listeners and really hope that this podcast is beneficial to you thanks so much and we'll be back next week

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