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Hope and Joy at the End of an Adoption Rainbow
By Kerri Charette
Did you ever want something so badly it hurt? Families waiting to bring a child home through adoption endure endless anticipation until their child enters the family. The adoption journey is a rainbow with a child as the pot of gold families embrace. The joy and exhilaration felt when a child joins his or her new family is comparable to no other feeling! But what about the pot that held the gold while the others were traveling on the rainbow?
The three categories of adoption can help explain what happens to these pots that carry precious gold. A closed adoption is defined as a birth mother terminating all parental rights at birth and not keeping any form of contact with the child to whom they gave life. In semi-open adoptions there is some degree of familiarity between the birth mother and adoptive family consisting of the exchange of photos, letters or phone calls. A trend that is sweeping the adoption field is openness in adoption. An open adoption occurs when a birth mother and adoptive family decide to remain in each other's lives. Open adoptions are often requested by birth mothers as more and more women in crisis pregnancies choose to make an open adoption plan, secure in knowing they can always be a part of their child's life in some way.
In January of 2002 when we began the process of becoming eligible to adopt a child, maintaining contact with a birth parent was not even in our realm of thinking. We assumed most adoptive families, for lack of a better term, hoarded the gold and did not keep in touch with the pot that brought their gold to life. Brian and I were already the parents of Andrew (7), Matt (6), Chris (2) and Summer (6 months), but adopting a child had been in our family plan for quite some time. Once our adoption agency completed our home study, we sat on the arc of the rainbow for six months. THE phone call came in March of 2003, the week before my 33rd birthday. A baby girl was available for adoption!
We were asked to make two decisions: The 18-year-old birth mothe
