The Terrific Teddy Tradition

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We are the Nelsons. I'm Sean. And I'm Lynette. In this episode, we'll be sharing a bit about what placement might look like in a domestic infant adoption. We'll also be talking about adoption baby showers and balancing relationships with multiple kids' birth families. And we'll share a brief interview with our oldest son, who is a seven-year-old adoptee.

0:41Today we're going to start off by talking about placement. Placement, for those of you who are new to the adoption world or are unfamiliar, is the moment after biological parents or birth parents have relinquished their parental rights and are now physically handing baby from them to their new family. So in this placement, or this really symbolic moment of literally placing baby into their parents' arms,

1:12there's a lot of love, there's a lot of emotion, there could be a lot of tears, and all of the emotions in between that you can imagine. But it's a really, really beautiful experience, and each one looks different. Each four of our adoptions, each four of our placements have looked different, but the feeling of love that exists in that space is just so immense. Yes, I would say placement is really especially emotional because you can just feel this love

1:44radiating from these biological parents of our kids. You can just feel how much they love them and care for them and how much they're hoping for everything to work out for the very best for their children. And so from the perspective of the adoptive parent, our hope is that we can facilitate or create an experience, at least as much as we can from our part, that is going to be really sweet and meaningful for our children's birth parents. And so this is a moment that

2:18you'll want to think about a lot before it happens and kind of prepare to make it a really sweet and special moment. In some instances, you'll work with maybe an adoption agency that walks through the process of what that placement is going to look like, and you are on the same page as the biological parents. One bit of advice that I would say is to make sure that you have lots of photographs taken or videos or document somehow your placement ceremony. With our first child, her placement was

2:54very ceremonial. It was a few weeks after her birth parents had signed papers because she was being discharged from the NICU at that point. And since things hadn't worked out as planned, like we've talked about in previous episodes, we had this placement as we were leaving the hospital to try to kind of create what her birth mom had been hoping for before. And so part of that was trying to have gifts that were thoughtful and sentimental, especially gifts that promised that we would be

3:31putting in work to continue this relationship, that this wasn't really goodbye, it wasn't the end, but that we would see them again, would see them soon. I think that we had letters from our families that we gave her. Homemade gifts. My brother is a really amazing woodworker and he made jewelry boxes for both of the birth parents. And we tried to just include things that we thought they'd really want to have. We had things from her time in the NICU that were sentimental that we thought her

4:01birth mom would want to keep and just tried to have meaningful gifts as part of that ceremony. So with our first placement with our daughter, there was a plan kind of formulated between us and our daughter's birth mom, but that was after her birth, after the NICU. And so we kind of talked through what we were hoping that would look like and what she wanted that to look like. But with our second, as we mentioned in the previous episode, he came so fast and we really didn't

4:32have time to plan anything out. And so we wanted to make it simple but also really meaningful. So our first place that we thought of what can we do to make this meaningful was gifts, which I'm not sure why we were thinking of gifts. We're not usually great at giving gifts, but with our daughter, her birth father gave her a teddy bear when they actually told us that they were placing her with us. But he and birth mom both had the same teddy bear and every month we would take

5:04pictures of her next to the bear so we could all see how she was growing and at her first birthday we had a bunch of comparisons so you could see her growing with her bear. It was really fun and we thought that was a neat tradition so we decided to try to continue that with our son. And so we found him a bear that was quite similar to our daughter's bear and got a matching one for his birth parents and told them about that tradition and that we would be sending them pictures every month of him with the bear. We also got them a photo album for pictures that we were going to be

5:39sharing. And we did put a few photos in the beginning of the album. It was just a gesture or a sign that you're going to have lots of photos, not just of him that we're going to send you, but of you and him together and us together and it was just symbolic of the fact that we were building something beautiful that would last and that would continue into the future. Yeah we really wanted them to know that this wasn't goodbye. This wasn't like the end of their relationship with their son. Really we just wanted them to know that we would be doing everything that we could to foster that

6:11ongoing relationship. I would say just trying to think of what you can give that promises that you're going to be putting in the work to keep this relationship going. I do think the letters from family can be a great addition too if you have time to collect them. We did not in this situation. But we did in two other situations where they wrote really sweet notes thinking particularly of the last adoption that we did last year. It was so sweet to read letters from our family members and birth family members basically saying welcome to the family and hey we'll see you at birthday

6:44parties and we're so excited to meet you in person. Those type of things. It was really sweet. Yeah that was an incredible thing. It was really fun for us to read those but I think that it was also a really meaningful gift for that birth family to see that they were becoming part of this entire family that we consider all of our family. Family, birth family and all. We often refer to it as our village because it's really a small village with all the people that are involved in our lives

7:18because of adoption. So thinking of this second adoption our placement was really sweet. I can remember walking in the room and his birth parents just had these big smiles on their faces when we walked in and similar to the feelings that Lynette talked about in the previous episode were you know that familial connection that we had with them. It was there and we had lots of hugs and we took pictures together and it was just a sweet moment and didn't last very long. We

7:53exchanged gifts and then they left. Yep and so our son was born just a little bit early so we spent several days in the hospital with him at the NICU and it was an amazing experience to work on bonding with him. It was different than our first time around because we had a daughter at home too and so we couldn't both be at the NICU soaking this in and really connecting and enjoying him. And so

8:24we were on this kind of schedule where we were just always rotating between work or taking care of our daughter or at the hospital with our son where Sean and I didn't see each other much for those first several days. Yeah and while we were in the hospital we began to learn a little bit about hospital culture and their relationship to or how people thought about adoption. Yes in our second adoption it was very interesting to see that the hospital our son was born at was not very adoption

9:00friendly. I mean there were a couple of nurses that were amazing. We had one nurse who was the mother of a birth mother and so she was a grandma to a grandchild who was adopted and they had a great open relationship and she was so sweet and always took really good care of us. I would say we also had a lot of experiences in that hospital where we were like oh they don't really love adoption here. Yeah our son's birth mom mentioned to us too that the night before I think after we

9:35had left but before they relinquished parental rights that the nurse was like trying to convince them not to do it. Yeah we definitely sensed some hostility during our stay in the NICU which was hard and kind of awkward. I think that just the reason we wanted to bring this up is that it's something that I think is important to be aware of and be understanding of. Yeah and on the flip side I would say in our fourth adoption almost all of the conversations that we had with nurses

10:09were just really positive and really encouraging and just really sweet and so again it really comes down to the individual nurses that are on staff. I don't think it's really a hospital culture perhaps but an individual. Maybe it might be more like regional cultures or perspectives. Yeah I don't know but I mean it's not something you can really do anything about but I'd say it's something to be aware of and just be understanding that people are different and

10:40they have different views but you get to take that baby home soon and it's going to be okay. All right so we also wanted to talk about baby showers. We mentioned them a little bit when we talked about our daughter's adoption but we didn't talk much about it and we were really really lucky. We had a really sweet neighbor throw us a baby shower for our son after he was born and she did an amazing job and we just wanted to take a minute to talk about this.

11:12Yeah I think one of the cautions that we would give is that even though things are looking great in an adoption match between you and expectant parents it can be risky to have a baby shower before baby is born before baby comes home with you. Yeah I mean you don't want birth parents or expectant parents to feel coerced and you don't want to have to do the awkward returning gifts

11:44kind of thing and I don't know it's just a scary place to step and we've had a couple of baby showers before baby was born and felt really lucky and blessed and they were amazing experiences and those adoptions did work out but that would also be so painful if it didn't work out. If you're thinking about baby showers just be cautious and know that there's always a chance that expectant parents will change their mind and they have every right to do that. Yeah maybe making sure

12:17that that's also understood somehow by your guests your family and friends. Yeah and I think that Brianna and Andrew in our interview with them they mentioned this just a little bit to kind of gauge your excitement level and share that with your family members or friends that know that you're planning on adopting and help them understand that there is a possibility that this baby won't come home with us. This baby might not be our child and as long as everybody

12:47understands that personally I feel like this is a great way to educate people who are not really part of the adoption community or don't really or haven't had much experience in the adoption community but also if it doesn't work out they can be there for you and they understand and you've shared with them why things might not work out the way they could. Yes and I do think that baby showers can really be a great way to educate loved ones with our son and with his baby shower.

13:18It was a really neat opportunity. We were able to talk with loved ones about adoption, about adoption language and trying to be sensitive to adoptees. Just trying to build this understanding of what adoption means in our family and what open adoption is and looks like since that's something that's often not understood in our society. It can also be a great opportunity to include birth

13:49parents. You could include gifts for birth mom if that works out with your shower or find ways to be inclusive of birth parents by maybe having people write notes to them or I don't know. You could get creative and do things to include the ones who brought your baby into the world. With our first during the baby shower where all the women were together I took out the birth father to lunch. I think we went and had barbecue or something like that and spent some time together and got to know

14:21each other personally one-on-one and that was a sweet experience for me to connect with him in a way that I hadn't before. With our last adoption our neighbors through a drive-by baby shower because of covid and they basically said hey let's just have your whole family sitting on a blanket in your front yard and we'll have people drive by and wish you well and they dropped off gifts. And in this particular baby shower they brought us pizza and cookies for the whole family and it

14:54was just really sweet so people in the neighborhood were walking by giving gifts and talking with us and again like Lynette mentioned this is a great opportunity to educate our friends about adoption and share with them how special it will be for this baby to have not only us as their family but also still be connected to their birth families. And so re-emphasizing timing we would agree would encourage considering having a baby shower after baby is born. It's also super fun if baby can make a cameo appearance at their baby shower which is what we did with this adoption baby shower.

15:31It was really neat for everyone to get to see him for just a part of the baby shower. So we were really lucky this friend did a great job with this baby shower. She had really sensitive fun games, it was engaging, and it was a great opportunity for us to talk about adoption as friends and family. Just a neat opportunity. And the last thing that we wanted to talk about in today's episode is balancing relationships with multiple birth families. With our first child we really didn't

16:03have much contact with her birth father after he and her birth mother broke up and so we never really felt like we were balancing multiple family relationships because they were all kind of together and then not. Yeah anytime we had to get together it could be like at birth mom's parents house and birth mom might be there and her parents and maybe even grandparents and it was kind of centralized in one place or they would all come to our home. Yeah but then when our second child was born we had the opportunity to build these relationships with more family members with both sides his

16:36birth mother and his birth father and the relationships looked different. We learned that we really couldn't expect these relationships to be the same as they had been with our daughter but that you can have fulfilling and different relationships with multiple sides of birth family but it was a bit of a juggling act and so we had to learn to embrace that. Yeah I think in the very beginning we tried to keep things really kind of separated by birth family like events so around

17:09the holidays we would have you know three or four small get-togethers at our home or at birth parents homes or their parents homes and like Lynette mentioned that was that was kind of a juggle sometimes but I think over time it's morphed a little bit where it's morphed a lot yeah where it's become a big family much more cohesive. Yeah like I think of birthday parties I mean we've had a dozen birthday parties or more now where we have members from every birth family there

17:41and it's really sweet because they get to do they get to know each other and develop relationships with one another and they get to know you know the other grandparents that our children have and it's really sweet that all of these people really come together and love on our children it's really sweet. It's wonderful and so yeah loving our kids is the ultimate goal right and it's been so neat to see our kids receive more love from all of their birth families

18:14so remembering that that's really the focus and letting that guide these relationships has helped us a lot. We also had a really interesting new dynamic with our son's birth where he has an older biological brother and honestly I was a little nervous about that at first I wasn't really sure what that would look like but it's been so sweet to see his big brother who loves him so much and it's always a treat to get to see him and to have them spend time together. They have a sweet

18:46they have a sweet relationship. Yeah it's been it's been really fun to see that relationship develop and I mean we don't get to see him that often a couple times a year around the holidays we and we have some other get-togethers in the summer or around birthday parties so a handful of times a year but it's just sweet like they mess around and kind of rough house with each other and I know that our son's biological brother used to have or maybe he still does have a picture of him in his room so he can you know remember him and think about him and we know our family we have

19:22pictures all over the place and our kids have little photo albums and stuff with pictures of birth family in it and it's fun for them to think about and and connect with those those members of their family. It's so fun and it's also fun to just see similar characteristics and personality traits that they share and seeing that sweet relationship is always neat. Yeah I think it's been one of the one of the coolest things is there's there's always this question between

19:53nature versus nurture right and personality traits and it's interesting that these two boys grew up in different homes different families different situations and they have a lot of even just little mannerisms that are similar it's pretty fun to see. It's so fun. I would say that maybe one of the challenges going back to our daughter's our daughter's story after her birth parents separated

20:25after they broke up we were trying to have these two different relationships for a time where it was kind of tricky because we didn't want to be like the middleman in their relationship even though their relationship had ended and it was it was hard not to want to talk about the other birth parent and so I would just say in any relationship with birth parents any visits anything any type of communication we want to keep it about our children about the adoptee

20:59and make sure that that's positive and really focused on on our kids and not maybe the other aspects of relationships that could cloud the really big benefits that we get from having open adoptions. I love that. Next up we're going to share an interview with our son our oldest son and ask him a few questions about adoption. All right thank you for being on our podcast. We're

21:30excited to talk to you. I am too and a little scared. What are you scared about? That millions of people are going to listen to this. Oh that would be pretty cool but I don't think it will be millions of people. How much do you think? I don't know definitely not millions. Well if it's 200. That would be exciting to me. What if we actually got a new little baby

22:02and another and then another. Do you want another baby brother or sister? I want three more. You want three more? You like having baby brothers and sisters? Nice. I'm ready. All right what does open adoption mean? Do you know? It means you know your birth parents. Do you get to see them? At birthday parties. Sometimes celebrations or weddings and Christmas.

22:33Christmas. Christmas. Nice. How do you feel about being adopted? I feel happy so I know my birth parents and I know my birth father and my birth brother. All right so are there have you ever talked to your friends about adoption? Nope. Nope okay. What do you like most about being adopted? That I know my mom and my dad and I know my birth mother and birth father and my birth brother.

23:12That's awesome. And also if I wasn't adopted then I would just still be with my birth mother and birth father. And do they love you? Yep. Very much. Nice. They do love you very much huh? Is there anything about being adopted that's hard? Nope. All right what is your favorite thing about your birth mom? That she's nice and caring and she loves me. That's so sweet.

23:47And you love me really much. Yep. Too. You are very loved. What is your favorite thing about your birth dad? He's a handsome like me and when mom met him he was like I love him but I don't know him but still it looks like I love him. Yeah I loved him even though I didn't know him and your birth mom I loved her and didn't know her. You remember that story? Yeah. Yeah. What is your

24:18favorite thing about your birth brother? He likes to play with me really much all the time. Do you wish you got to see him more? Yeah. How many grandparents do you have? Actually can you tell us about your map, your family map? My family map shows all the people we know. It shows all my grandma and grandpa and it just has all the rings and there's all my brothers and sisters,

24:49my grandparents and grandpa. Are there a lot of people who love you? Yeah. How does that make you feel? Happy. What is the best thing about having lots of grandparents? That they are loving and they love me very much. Do your friends know you have lots of grandparents more than them? No. How would they feel about that? Happy for me I think. That's nice. What is the best thing about

25:21adoption? It's that my mom and dad love me and my brothers and sisters and my birth mom and birth dad and birth brother love me too. That's great. What do you wish people understood about adoption? That's a hard question. Yeah. What do you think? What do you wish people understood about adoption? They know their grandma and grandpa love them. Yeah. So you love that you know your grandmas

25:55and grandpas all love you? Yeah. You wish people understood that? Yeah. I love that. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project. Today we've talked about placement, we've talked about baby showers, and we've talked about balancing relationships. We've also had a wonderful interview with our son. We hope that this information has been valuable

26:25to you. If you have any questions for us or things that you would like for us to talk about in a future episode, please feel free to reach out. You can message us on Instagram or you can email us at openadoptionproject at gmail.com. We hope these episodes are helpful for you. If they have been helpful, we would love to hear about that, especially in the form of a review. If you could go to Apple Podcast and share how the podcast is benefiting you personally, we would love that. We really want to reach a lot of people in the adoption community and when they search for a podcast

26:58that has a high rating and has comments specifically, they're more likely to listen. And again, our hope is just to connect with as many people in the adoption community as we can so that we can bless their lives and ultimately bless the lives of our children and adoptees all over. This is the Open Adoption Project. Thank you for listening. Now for the music.

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