Sharing Motherhood

I should ask Mal and Noelle to post everyday. Thanks to Dawn's links, I received as many hits yesterday as I do in a normal week.

The last couple of days have generated some great discussions between Noelle and I privately. I can't emphasize enough what a funny, smart, beautiful person she is. Our personalities click. I think that's one of the reasons Mallory and I get along. She has many of the same qualities that Noelle does naturally, and those qualities seem mesh with mine.

I sometimes feel bad when the mutual admiration society starts on the blog. I know not everyone's open adoption is this way. I know there are first parents and adoptive parents who don't click and still must figure out a way to have a relationship. I know there are parents on both sides of adoption who don't respect their child's other parents, and who make it difficult or impossible to sustain even a tenuous relationship. I know it's very painful to be in a relationship like that. Especially when you've gone into it with the best of intents to have a really open adoption, and are left with a sliver of a relationship instead. My daughter's adoption is not the only picture of open adoption.

But on the other hand, I want people to know it's possible. You can share motherhood with another woman and not have it threaten your own. In many ways they are two different kind of motherhood, one no more valid than the other. But in other ways, it all comes down to one of kind of motherhood; the fierce love a woman has for a child she nurtured either before or after birth. When it works, sharing that motherhood enhances your life in ways you didn't know possible.

If you are considering domestic adoption, please seriously consider the benefits of open adoption, primarily for your child, but also for your child's other parents, and yourself. Like any relationship, it's a risk. But when it works, the benefits far outweigh the risks.

Comments

[yankee,transferred]

I love you. Seriously.

[Lilian]

Wonderful!! This short, to the point, and lucid discussion is even better than the previous two posts on the subject. And, like I said when I came here from Dawn's post, I was around before and I'm going to stay. I even commented about the gelatin question! :)

I'm just "jealous" that you have 362 comments in Dawn's blog (probably and understandably the record holder), and I have "only" 145. Just kidding... :D