I have beens sharing my emotions and experiences with meeting our adopted children for the first time and what our early days and weeks with them were like for me. In my last post I wrote about our domestic infant adoption, and in this post I am going to share what it was like adopting two older children domestically.

Our adoption of Mercy and Des was not exactly planned. Marcus was only two months old when we got a phone call from a domestic agency that we had sent our profile to when we were waiting for an infant placement. We were asked if we would consider adopting two older children (with... more

After writing about the emotions that adoptive parents often feel when they are going through the adoption process, I wrote about the emotions that are common for adoptive parents to experience when their children are first placed with them, and then I started sharing some of our personal experiences with meeting our children for the first time and what our early days with them were like.

Our first two experiences were with international... more

I have been writing about the challenges that we have faced in navigating a relationship with the birth mother of my two oldest daughters. I have shared a lot about our personal situation, and yet I have left out a lot of details and specifics.

In this post I am going to offer some advice in handling a difficult relationship or situation with your child's birth parents, and I hope it is helpful to some.

If you are in a challenging relationship with your child's birth parent or birth parents, here is some advice.

- Get professional help. Adoption agencies that handle domestic adoptions usually have one or more employees who specialize in handling contact between adoptive... more

I have been writing about our relationship with the birth mother of two of our daughters, and the challenges we have faced in trying to do what is best for our girls.

Continued from this post:

Shortly after I responded to the request I got from "an aunt" of the girls, I got a request through the adoption agency for letters from the girls to their birth mother. At this point the staff at the agency had changed, so the lady that called me had very little knowledge of our adoption situation or what had happened in the past. I talked to her in detail about what had happened and that... more

I have been writing about our domestic adoption of two older girls and the challenges we have had in regards to the relationship we have with their birth mother. I am sharing this story because I am sure that we are not the only domestic adoptive family in a difficult situation, and I hope that maybe our story can be of encouragement, support and help to other families in challenging situations.

In my earlier posts I wrote about how we had high hopes for a positive open relationship with my girls' birth mother and then I wrote about the challenges and struggles that came when it became... more

In my last post, I started writing about the topic of when relationships between adoptive parents and birth parents are challenging.

As I said, my husband and I went into the adoption of our two older daughters with the hope that we would be able to create and maintain an ongoing open relationship with their birth mother. However, fairly shortly after placement it started to become clear that contact between the girls and their birth mother was not going to be in their best interest, because of lying, swearing, verbal abuse, manipulation and other issues. When the professionals involved... more

A lot of the things I write about on this blog are inspired from my own experiences with adopting transracially.

Lately we have been facing a difficult situation with the birth mother of two of our children, and I am sure that we are not the only family in a tough situation, so I thought I would write about it.

Many of us adoptive parents prepare for our domestic adoptions by doing lots of reading, research, etc.

If you read the blogs of birth/first mothers such as Jan, Jenna, Heather... more

In my last post, I shared our experience in choosing to adopt domestically after two international adoptions.

We found both international and domestic adoption to be a wonderful way to expand our family, and also found each type of adoption to have its own set of benefits and challenges.

Here are some of the differences we found and experienced when comparing our international adoptions and our domestic infant adoption.

- There was much less paperwork with our domestic adoption, and we did not have to deal with (or pay for) immigration.

- While preparing our family... more

After a successful adoption of an infant from Vietnam, a successful adoption of a special needs toddler from Korea and a failed adoption from India, my husband and I were left trying to find the right adoption program for our family to bring us our sixth child.

Our... more

In my last two posts I discussed the benefits and the risks associated with domestic infant transracial adoption.

In this post, I am going to give you some tips to minimize your domestic adoption risks.

-Before choosing to adopt domestically, you should do some real soul-searching and decide honestly if you can handle the emotional risks associated with domestic infant adoption. If you are able to prepare yourself for disappointment while keeping hopeful, and remembering that many... more