Incorporating Birth Families into Our Family

A week or so ago, someone asked me how we incorporate our children's birth moms into our family.

Honestly? I don't really know. It just kind of happens.

I think the best move that we have made is to hire an investigator in Vlad to find our children's families for us. We did Addie's and Will's searches the winter after we brought them home and have someone doing one for Jack here in the next few weeks.

He was able to get pictures, lots of pictures, of their birth parents, aunts, cousins, grandparents, and siblings. We made all the pictures into a collage and they are now hanging on their bedroom walls. The children love it.

Addie gets told all the time that she looks just like her mommy by folks that don't know that we aren't genetically related. She just smiles. But often after we leave that person, she'll look at me, grin, and say, "I do look just like my mommy." So true. She's the spitting image of her birth mom....just with brown eyes rather than blue.

Will always gets told in town that he must look like his dad. :) Jason's never with us, so they assume that since he looks nothing like me he must resemble his daddy. We can head up to his bedroom and see quickly that he actually looks exactly like his older brother...who looks like their mom.

The investigator was able to talk to their birth parents. He found out information on their backgrounds, their health...everything about them, really.

That information made it easier to put it all together in a life book, which the children love to look at. Who wouldn't like to look at pictures of family members that they don't remember ever seeing before? Who wouldn't like to know as much as possible about their birth families? Most of us know that and take it for granted.

The thing that is hardest for me is when Addie asks me if she did thus and so when she was a baby. I don't know. I don't know if she was cuddly. I don't know if she liked to eat. I don't know how old she was when she started to talk. I don't know if she had a special blanket to sleep with or if she sucked her thumb like Jack or if she threw toys when she got upset. I don't know how big she was when she was born. I just don't know.

We have only one picture of her as a 'baby', though she would have been about 15 months old, I believe. The picture off the registry.

Same with Will. We don't know much about him as a baby. One picture. We only missed 21 months of his life, but sometimes it feels like a lot longer. He doesn't ask as many questions as Addie does. Perhaps the gender makes a difference in that?

We make a point to talk about their birth moms on their birthdays. We ask them questions...what do you think Mama Tatiana (or Anna or Larisa) is doing right now? Don't you suppose she'd love to see you all grown up?

The children always have answers. They learned while we were in Russia that if we were awake, those in the states were asleep and vice versa. So. That question (what do you think she is doing right now) is always answered with "She's sleeping." Brilliant. :)

Other than that, the children bring up their birth families themselves. Not a lot, but typically we'll hear something about once a week.

For example, when Addie got her glasses this week, she said, "I think we should go to Russia." "Why?" I asked. "So Mama Tatiana and Papa Alexandar can see me. I don't think they would recognize me with my glasses on. Plus, I want to go back to my orphanage cause I don't think they would know me either. It'd be a surprise!" was her reply. I didn't have the heart to tell her that her birth parents wouldn't likely know her either way. But. I was so glad to hear that. After her horrid trip back to her orphanage in January, she has been declaring that she would never go back to Russia again. Time has allowed her to work through her feelings and she's ready now to head back to see where she used to live.

Praise the Lord.

Will doesn't really bring up his birth family at all, though. Again, I think it's likely a gender thing. It seems that most boys aren't quite as emotional. He really doesn't care who gave birth to him and what she looked like. He doesn't care if he was a cute or ugly baby. He has much too much to do to worry about that stuff.

So that's that. We don't make a big deal about it, but our children know that if they want to discuss their birth families we'll be there for them. It's an open topic. Our goal is to make them aware that they are adopted, but also that we love them to the ends of the earth and back. They are our children...they were loaned to us by God. While we don't understand why God allowed them to join our family from the other side of the world, He did. Their birth moms are a huge part of their lives.

We hope that in being open about it now perhaps we'll ward off some of the anger and confusion when they are old enough to truly understand. Perhaps by allowing them to talk freely about their birth families now, they will someday know that we have hidden nothing from them. Sure, they don't know all the nitty-gritty details as to why they were in an orphanage in the first place, but they do know the story in little children terms. As they grow we add details and hopefully by the time it's all clear to them they will be so used to hearing the story that it won't be too big of a deal.

While to many folks it may seem a little odd to discuss your children's birth families, to us and to many others it is the normal of our homes. I can't talk to them about how fun they were as infants or how adorable they were when they were born or how they cried all night but we loved them anyway. I CAN talk to them about their history, which includes the families they were born into and the baby homes they lived in for a couple years.

It's the least we can do, talking about their families who still live in Russia. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have children.

Praise the Lord for birth families!!!