Our Second Family

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Our Second Family

by Carole

We adopted two children within 15 months - first a son and then a daughter. What is unusual about us is that we have two grown children and decided to raise a second family.

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We thought our ages would work against us but they didn't. We had three failed adoptions before our fourth adoption plan worked. We adopted our son in November of 1998 after having had two months to get to know the birth mom and for her to feel comfortable with us. Our adoption attorney located the birth mom for us. She is wonderful and it is an open adoption. Our son was placed in our care about an hour after he was born. He is the most handsome fellow and is the light of our lives. He was recently diagnosed as PDDNOS which is the first step on the autistic spectrum. He is affectionate and very smart and we hope that he will be a "recovered" autistic child by the time he is five.

Although our son is from a different state, we finalized the adoption in our home state. We had no problems in the adoption and were very satisfied with our adoption attorney. The second time, we located our daughter through our own efforts. It was partly through the internet and partly because of personal connections as will be explained below. We used the same adoption attorney but this time finalized the adoption in the state where our daughter was born rather than in ours.

We found out about our daughter on the night she was born. The birth grandmother recognized me (mom) from our picture on our brochure which we sent out (in large quantities) all over - in this case in response to an internet posting. It turns out that the birth grandfather was career military and I had been an Army officer. We were stationed at the same post over twenty years ago. They remembered me (it helped that I hadn't changed my hair style in 20+ years - long blond straight hair). When the people who were to adopt their granddaughter backed out when the birth mom was in labor, the birth grandmom pulled out our brochure and called us.

It helped to have a common history to talk about and it established a connection and credibility that made everything work out. The personal connection was such a coincidence that it made us believe that our daughter was truly meant to be with us. She also looks a great deal like us as does her birth family. Our daughter has neurofibromatosis which we were aware of prior to the finalization of her adoption. We hope that her condition will be mild which most of them are. Her adoption is also an open adoption.

The three failed adoptions were very hard on us. After the third one, we almost backed out but decided to try one more time. We are still friends with the first birth mom who decided to keep her baby. We exchange letters and pictures. The second birth mom placed the baby with another couple and the third birth mom had problems that we would not have been comfortable dealing with in an on going open adoption situation so we turned down the third situation. That's our story and it has a happy ending. We have two beautiful babies who are now 2 years old and 9 months old.