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Adoption
Do any of you have biological and adopted children?
I'm currently pg, and considered slightly high risk, so DH and I are considering adopting for our second baby. Plus we think adoption is a wonderful thing in general. I was just wondering for those of you who have a family of biological and adopted children, how is it going? I'm sure everything is great but I'd like to hear your stories.
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Re: Do any of you have biological and adopted children?
I have a 4-year old son who was adopted at 28 months from Russia, and I have a 9-month old bio son. ?Things are going fine and they get along great! ?I hope to have adopt again and also have another bio child too. ?
So far we haven't run into any obstacles and the boys get along very well! ??
We aren't there yet, but this is our probable plan. We'll be adopting 1 child, and may have 1 bio child.
To answer the OP, I have one bio daughter, planning to adopt (possibly) but not too soon.
And I hate to hijack but I was *JUST* thinking of asking the same thing so I'm going to take Sally J up on her offer and ask a specific question:
You know how you love your bio LO like unbelievably, more than you could have imagined, etc.? How is it different with your adopted LO? I know it's possible to love a baby born in your heart but is it a *different* kind of love? This is my biggest concern. Even if we were having another bio - I'd wonder how I could possibly have room in my heart for more? But I worry with adoption that I would love them differently and then feel guilty about it. IDK if that makes sense?
But is the love "different"? I don't know how else to word that, DH wants us to try for a bio child by 2011 so I was wondering/am concerned.
No, the love isn't different. ?My older son who was adopted was 2.5 years at adoption, so we didn't have the baby experience as we do with our baby, but the love is the same. ?I was worried about that too, but I feel the same about both of them. ?Honestly, I sometimes "forget" he hasn't been with us since birth and I didn't give birth to him. ? My adopted son is "my son" and that's the only way I think of him, I don't necessarily think about him being adopted anymore as part of his description. ?We do talk about it and he knows he is from Russia, and we talk about where he lived before us, but that's a conversation and after we are finished talking, we drop it.
Let me know if you have any other questions!?
I am kinda a mixed bag here.
+ I have a bio son who is almost 15 yrs old. He is not a bio child to my husband
+ We currently have a 3 yr old foster son, who emotionally feels like "ours". We are hoping to adopt him.
+ I am currently pregnant and will probably have this baby in a few weeks (YAY)
My son LOVES our FS, seriously loves him like a brother. My husband loves my son like he is his own. And of course my husband loves our FS.
And for me, I can honestly say that the love is NOT different between my son and my foster son. I too sometimes forget that I did not give birth to him. I bonded wth my FS very quickly, my husband took a little longer. He just did not want to get too attached too quickly. In our case, you have to remember that there is the possibility that he can be returned to his mother.
I think there is always enough love to go around, no matter how many children are in your home
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I have a little different perspecitive because my brother is adopted and I was the bio child. I could honestly tell you I didn't see any difference in the way my parents treated us. They loved us both the same. My brother never felt like he wanted to meet his bio parents and it was because he said he only had one set--and that was our parents. They adopted him when he was 6 weeks old and I came along 4 years later.
I will probably never have a bio child unless we take extreme measures and still it's almost a 0 percent chance. Ben feels like my own child. We've had him since he was 2 days old. He came home with us from the hospital. I can't imagine loving a child more just because he came from my womb. Ben is bi-racial, but I still forget sometimes that he's adopted. I will see traits in his personaility and think "wow, he got that from me or DH" not ever thinking about his adoption.
If you have any doubts whether you could love a bio child as much as an adopted child, then I would truly consider whether to adopt or not. I don't think the love should be different. I think the love should be shared.
Interesting that moms of bio and adopted kids say their love for them is no different. I have 2 adopted, and I feel as though my love for them is different. Not that I love one more than the other, or that I feel one is more "mine," but that they're such individuals--complete opposites in many ways--that my love for them manifests in different ways.
Do I treat my kids differently than I would bio kids? Probably--because they have a more complicated story. They were adopted internationally, so there are issues with culture-keeping that wouldn't exist to the same extent were they bio (although they would still be Korean-American).
I don't think it benefits an adopted child to fail to acknowledge these differences (and I've heard this from adult Korean adoptees in caucasian families). Being fair as a parent doesn't translate to treating children exactly the same.
I have two bio kids that are not DH's. We are adopting DD and will have her home on 9/22. Dh loves my kids but I think that he will have a special bond with DD because my kids were 10 and 12 when he came into the picture.
We have spent almost three months at different times with all three and I think they get along good. We have a huge age differance with our kids being 15 and 13 years from DD.
I do not love DD less or more. It is kinda hard to explain but I think that I will appreciate her more because of the struggle to bring her home. I hope that my bio kids really bound with DD before they leave home to be adults.
I do love my children differently or maybe a better way to say it is that I love them for different reasons. This is not to say that I don't love them equally however, because I definitly have equal love for them. I'm sure most people love they mom differently than their dad, or love one sibling differently than another. Or that you love them for different reasons, yet you still love them equally. That's how it is with having more than one child, whether bio or adopted.
My children are individuals and I have different things in common with them. Charlotte is super girly, doesn't cuddle quite as often, enjoys singing and dancing, and reading books. I relate to her with all of those things. Cooper is rambuctious, a climber, likes to be dirty, can't sit still for more than a few minutes, but loves to get cuddled often. I enjoy the very physical nature that Cooper has.
I love Cooper different than Charlotte because I carried him in my belly and I've been able to nurse him. I love Charlotte different than Cooper because she opened my heart to whole new way of growing my family, and because I had to work so hard to get her and keep her.
I love them for who they are and my heart has grown twice the size to accomodate all the love I have for them. The fact that one is bio and one was adopted has only impacted the bonding process for me, but not the amount of love I have for them. There is nothing better than getting twice the hugs, twice the cuddles, twice the kisses, and seeing them interact with each other and love each other. It seriously makes me heart sing every time I see them together.
(FWIW, I have spoken to other moms who only have bio children and they say the same things about their heart growing bigger to love more children, loving the children for different reasons, yet loving them equally.)
I have a bio son, and am in the process of adopting #2. It IS hard to imagine how I could possibly love another child as much as I love my son, but it makes no difference whether that child is bio or adopted. Many of my friends who have two children had the same concerns when they were pregnant. One friend said that you don't have to "make room" in your heart when your second child comes along. Your heart just doubles. I fully believe that can applies regardless of how that child comes to you.
Just because they have doubts doesn't mean that they can't love their children the same. If anything, it sounds like they are trying to do their homework before starting the adoption process. I think that if all people who had doubts stopped the adoption process, there would be no adoptive parents out there! The whole thing is so new and different, it's natural to wonder how things will be.
ETA: And thanks everyone for their answers. I really like hearing the different POV's (and from people with bio/adopted sibling situations - very cool to hear about it)!
"I have four children. Two are adopted. I forget which two. -Bob Constantine
"All for Love,' a Saviour prayed 'Abba Father have Your way. Though they know not what they do...Let the Cross draw men to You...."
We have a daughter adopted at birth and I am pregnant and due in 1.5 weeks. I worry about the opposite. We went thru so much for our DD that I cant imagine loving another child as much as her. I mean like I really have stressed about it.
This pregnancy is a miracle blessing...and was a huge surprise for me. I feel so lucky and blessed but I have realized recently that the love will most likely be different...BUt not because of how they joined our family but just becasue thats how love is. It will most certainly be equal but I am sure quite wonderfully different!
ANd I will know I did it all right if our oldest says we love her more cuz we chose her and the younger one says we love her or him more because we grew them..hehe
And yesterday as my daughter kissed my belly I told her my belly didnt grow big like this with her..but my heart did and I loved that because its so true and embraces the difference between the 2 stories.
br
I'm coming in late....
Our oldest DD is bio and we adopted our twins at 8 weeks. There are some silmilarities and some differences.
For instance, when I gave birth to DD1, I fell in love the instant I saw her. She was mine. With the twins, I didn't know what to expect the first time I saw them- we had been sent two pics a day before we met them (and we had only known about them for a little over a week, everything happened SO fast) but they looked completely different in each pic and they looked HUGE. When I walked in and the foster mom asked me if I wanted to meet my (tiny) babies, I looked at them and KNEW they were mine. I felt that same instant connection to them that I had with DD1 and I was head over heels in love with them immediately.
Differently- I love that DD1 is so much like me (even though it drives us crazy some times lol!). We look alike, we act/talk/walk alike. Everything. The little ones have completely different personalities. DS is a lot like MH in some ways, and even looks a lot like him ironically! But I love that we share them with someone else too. I love knowing that there really are a whole collection of people out there, us included, that make them who they are.
As far as the 3 of them together- it's all they've ever known. DD1 was 2 1/2 when we started the adoption process and had just turned 3 when they came home, so it never occured to her that brothers and sisters came any other way. She just started telling people "God is going to bring us a baby when He is ready." She still says that- it's just sometimes God chooses someone else to "grow" it for you. She always had baby dolls of every color, so we never even bothered to tell her that the babies would be AA. We just brought them home, she never even brought it up. The first time she even acknowledged it was several months later when she colored a picture of our family and she made sure every body was the right color. The three of them are inseparable. They fuss every once in a while, of course, but for the most part, they are as close as siblings at this age can be. They adore each other and the two little ones just worship big sis
(And she wouldn't have it any other way!)