Steve & Amy – Hoping to Adopt

I’ve been a little busy lately, so I haven’t had a chance to post about this until now. Last weekend I took off work so we could go to the FSA Adoption Conference that Friday and Saturday. There were a ton of really good sessions for people involved in adoption in any way. There were sessions for each person involved in adoption.

We really enjoyed it, and our desire to adopt was increased. We truly feel that adoption is a blessing to many of the lives it touches. My favorite part of adoption conferences is going to the birth parent panel. I love to hear the stories of the birth parents, how they decided upon adoption, and how their lives have been since. I have so much honor and respect for these women. Here is a link to several real life stories from birth mothers. They are amazing!!

One thing we have learned since we began the adoption process, is that many people don’t agree with adoption. There are many different reasons why. Much of it probably comes from how the adoption process use to be. Adoptions use to be very closed (many agencies didn’t allow birth parents and adoptive couples to contact each other after placement), but there has since been a huge trend towards open adoption. For most situations, continuing contact in some way after placement has blessed the lives of all involved, especially the child (which is what it’s all about). It can remove a lot of the questions and curiosity the child might have because either they are able to know their birth parent(s) personally, or the adoptive couple is able to know the birth parent(s) better and therefore share more about them with the child. There are also many myths about adoption that exist. We plan to blog about some of these in the future.