Birth Mothers

Beauty was born in March 2007 and spent less than forty-eight hours with her first mom, M., before entering the care of her foster mother. M. was nineteen when Beauty was born; she worked long days to help support her aging parents. She was illiterate and had just over a year (total) of formal education. Beauty's birth father, F., denied involvement with M. We do not have contact with M. or F. Beauty's foster mother, R., cared for her for the first nine months of her life. (We do have contact with her, however.) Like most international adoptions, ours is a closed adoption with a distance of many miles separating our families. While we most definitely plan to visit Guatemala… [more]

One of my favorite sites regarding Guatemalan adoptions is Guatadopt. Prior to adopting Beauty, this was my go-to site; the CNN of the Guatemala adoptive world. I checked it daily, and while I haven’t continued that trend with the same fervor since Beauty came home, I do check in several times a week. In light of the start of Three Days, Three Daughters: An International Hunger Strike tomorrow, I read this article with great interest. The comments on said article were quite thought-provoking in their own right. In essence, they really got me thinking about the binary opposition of the win/lose concept. In regard to these girls stolen from their mothers and adopted out of the country, is it possible for… [more]

Anyone embarking on a Guatemalan adoption is made aware that the birthmother can change her mind right up until the very end of the process. That means that even though the DNA has been done, Pre Approval granted by the U.S. Embassy, and the adoption file has gone through Family Court and PGN, the birth mother can decide not to go through with the adoption. The most likely time for a birthmother to change her mind is during the DNA test, when she holds her child in her arms for the first time since giving him/her up for adoption. As difficult as this truly is for an adopting family who fall in love pretty much from the instant they receive the… [more]

As someone who adopted domestically, I believed that one big difference between domestic and international adoptions was the level of openness available. In a domestic adoption, the parties can choose whether to have an open, semi-open, or closed adoption, and even in a closed adoption, the adoptive family might learn at least a little bit about the birthfamily. I always assumed that information about the birthfamily would not be available when adopting internationally and that maintaining any contact after the adoption was not even possible.

As I was researching information on adoption.com about Guatemala, I stumbled upon Guatemala Adoption Stories. When I read the second story, Finding Carlos Roberto, I learned that an adoption from Guatemala can… [more]

One of the questions on the birth mother questionnaire that we received from our agency's lawyers was:"Do you wish to have updates on your child?" If the birth mother indicated that she did, it was up to the adoptive family to provide these updates, with no pressure from the adoption agency or lawyer. But now there is a group of adoptive families of Guatemalan children searching for their children's birth mothers. Some have created a forum for discussion on the matter. On this forum there is vast information on how to hire the right people to find the birth mother, and do it discreetly so the birth mother is not put in any jeopardy. If the birth mother does not want contact, that is conveyed to the adopting… [more]