I also Came from Your Tummy! Right, Mom?: My Open Adoption Story

Erin talks to the birth mom several times a week and shares every detail of Alison's life as a toddler. Each has met the other's extended family, and they exchange birthday and Christmas gifts. Still, the Anhalts stress that they aren't coparenting. Both sides are committed to making the dynamic work, for their child's sake. The Atlanta couple had tried to get pregnant for a year, then endured two years of failed fertility treatments.

Finally, they decided to adopt domestically -- but not without reservations. Gretchen, 30, a publicist, and Justin, 32, an executive recruiter, worried that they might have a long wait and were intimidated about maintaining a relationship with the birth mother. Since most birth mothers insist on at least some contact, the McWhorters finally settled on "semi-open" adoption: They would agree to meet the birth mother beforehand and send periodic notes about their child's progress.

A friend referred the couple to an adoption agency, which had them create a "profile," a book of photos and letters designed to show that they would make suitable parents "It was like putting together a scrapbook of our lives," says Gretchen. A month later, they received word that a single woman in her early 20s, in her last trimester of pregnancy, wanted to speak to them.

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But the two women hit it off, and within two weeks the birth mom picked the couple to be the adoptive parents. It was an exceptionally fast agreement -- private domestic matches often take a year or longer.

The McWhorters met the birth mother for dinner shortly before her due date and were by her side when she went into labor. I don't have to be here. The birth mom had Justin cut the cord, then invited Gretchen to give baby Elizabeth her first bottle. She let the newborn spend her first night with the couple who stayed in an adjacent hospital room and signed away her rights the next day.

One Mom's Open Adoption Story

But it wasn't really a goodbye. Gretchen sends e-mails and photos of Elizabeth who's now 11 months old every week. And having read research that shows adopted children do better when they learn about their birth parents, she isn't ruling out the possibility of inviting the birth mom to visit them one day. By the time the Lynwood, Washington, couple decided they wanted a child, Erna was nearly 41, so adoption was the most logical option.

They heard through relatives about a pregnant teenager who planned to give up her baby. After meeting her and her parents, a match was made. But the teen decided to raise the child by herself. Deeply disappointed, the couple -- Erna, now 45, a technology consultant, and Edward, 40, a development director at a software firm -- chose to adopt through foster care. This route offered several benefits: But it's not for everyone. Most foster-care kids are school-age, and some carry the emotional scars of having been neglected or abused by their parents. Erna and Edward weren't scared off.

Soon after completing their paperwork last summer, the couple received a call about Christian, a 4-year-old boy whose mother was a drug addict and whose father was in prison. They were told that Christian exhibited "defiant behaviors. What do you think? Erna and Edward have been stabilizing forces in their kids' lives. Kai was recently diagnosed with a visual processing disorder, so they hired tutors and helped her do eye exercises to correct the problem.

Now she's reading at grade level. Christian acts out a lot less than he did in his old home. At 5 he's already an avid reader. The Denver couple always wanted to raise a child from Vietnam. Laurie, 28, a recent medical-school graduate, and Travis, 29, a medical-school student, had traveled extensively in the country and felt drawn to its people and culture. But they knew that internationally adopted children can be at risk for physical and psychological problems, so they hoped to have a biological child first.

But after having trouble conceiving, they accelerated their adoption plans and received a referral for a boy within six months the wait for a girl from Vietnam was 18 months or longer. Upon arriving at the orphanage in the town of Vung Tau, they were ushered into a room where a worker thrust 5-month-old Jackson into Laurie's arms, then showed the couple the door.

The first few months were tough because Jackson had serious attachment issues. He wouldn't make eye contact, arched his back to avoid hugs, and wailed inconsolably. Bedtime was a two-hour ordeal: He'd pull at his hair and scratch his skin before finally going to sleep. The couple consulted a social worker to ease the transition, and gradually Jackson's behavior improved. Within a year the Goods were ready to adopt a second child.

And then they got the news that Laurie was pregnant. But they moved ahead with their second adoption, returning to Vietnam last December to meet 6-month-old Shane. He was affectionate right away. The woman we met was a birth mother herself. She said that her son was doing well and that she was very much in his life; she sees him on family holidays, and when he was young, she sometimes babysat for him when his adoptive parents went out. I listened carefully, but knew then and there that this was not the kind of open adoption I wanted.

Adoption Diaries: Stories of Domestic, International, and Foster Care Adoptions

I thought that her boy was probably very confused. Differences aside, the counselor was thrilled that we were pursuing adoption and told us we would have no problem adopting a child quickly -- upon completion of the adoption information, we could adopt in mere months. We were ecstatic but scared by the reality that we would soon be parents. We spent five months cleaning our house for social worker visits, gathering tax returns and letters of reference, taking blood tests, and finding marriage and birth certificates.

That was the hard part; the easy part for me was writing a stellar "Dear Birth Mother" letter eloquently describing our life, our intentions, and our passion for having a child. Our adoption packet was complete in December and things were pretty quiet until the phone rang the following February. Then the real work began. Happily for us, we were selected as potential adoptive parents by four different birth mothers. No one can say what draws a birth mother to pick one couple over another.

One said that we resembled her own family, another said that we seemed happy in our pictures, and yet another said that she liked the fact that we went to church regularly. The first was a birth mother in Cincinnati who already had two children, one of whom had a disability. She was 22 and thought we were "perfect.

All that she requested was that we be present for the birth of her son. She gave us the hospital address and date, which was just a few weeks away, and we scrambled to make preparations to get there, overwhelmed by the fact that we'd be parents in a few weeks. But when we arrived in her hospital room, I knew that something wasn't right.

The birth mother's new live-in boyfriend was there, and she didn't want any time alone with us. She let us hold the baby, but didn't take her eyes off us for a second. We left after about an hour, feeling unnerved and empty. The next day we received a call from the social worker in Cincinnati; the birth mother requested that we not visit or call for the next two days, and she would let us know what to do next.

A Digest of Commentary on the term Tummy Mummy

For the next 48 hours, we didn't shower, sleep, or eat until we got a second call from the social worker. We wouldn't be taking the baby home. The disappointment was overwhelming. Telling our friends and family that we would return without a baby was devastating. I lay in bed for five days with a migraine, moaning to the air, "We will never have a child. Our social worker from Pact told us that there would be a next time. We listened as she consoled us, but our sadness and rage at the injustice of it all was too much. Though we'd been chosen by three other birth mothers, we withdrew our adoption portfolio until May.

By April, I was rejuvenated and excited to get back into the process, and in the first few days of May, the phone rang with a new possibility, a baby girl in Ohio. The situation was heartbreaking. The baby's teenage birth mother had spent ten years in foster care and conceived the child at a party with a man whose name she didn't know.

And although she liked our profile, she was so ashamed about her situation that she wouldn't even speak to us.

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If we went forward, what would we tell that little girl about where she came from? We didn't know if we could tackle such a legacy of shame, pain, and sadness. The very next day, while we were still thinking about the little girl, the phone rang again. It was a second local agency with whom we'd also registered. There was a Caucasian birth mother who was going to give birth to a biracial baby boy in the middle of the month.

We were her first choice, and she didn't want any contact with the baby until he was 18, and only if he wanted to pursue a relationship with her. We were thrilled; we'd have the child we'd dreamed about without having to deal with a complicated relationship with the birth mother. How to Start a Family Solo. The woman we met was a year-old single mother of four, warm and humorous, with a deep Southern drawl.

We liked her immediately and admired her honesty. During a tumultuous divorce , she had had an affair with an African-American man, who is now in jail. After the meeting, the birth mother said that she wanted us to be her son's parents. We all hugged, relieved that everyone had found what they were looking for. Three days later, Micah was born. We attended his birth, fed him his first bottle, and the hospital gave me special access to the nursery.

When it seemed impossible for the birth mother to let go of Micah at the hospital, we gently coaxed him out of her arms and wiped away her tears. She finally let go and placed him in his car seat and her grandfather took her hand and walked away from our new family.