My son is 15 months old and we have had several visit with birthparents. They are a couple who is still together. We had so much contact (monthly letters and pictures, numerous texts daily, and once a month long visits) that we had to put some limits on things. I'm not complaining. In fact, I like the contact. We have limited it to 2-3 visit per year and some update letters and photos. The reason I ask is because we are about to adopt #2 and I was wondering what others' situations were like. In the ideal world, we'd have another set of birthparents just like my son's. I know that's not realistic.
Also, since placement what sort of gifts have you given birthparents and how often? We gave them necklaces at placement. We give flowers on mother's day and a small gift for father's day. (This year we gave him cookie.) I made them each a "babybook" of son's first year that I'll give them next visit. At christmas I made an ornament with son's handprint. I think I'll keep up the tradition of flowers (mother's day), cookies/fruit basket (father's day), and homemade gift like ornaments for Christmas. Thoughts?
Re: Contact with birthparents and gifts
TTC September 2010 thru October 2011
SA February 2011: Normal
RE App. October 2011 - Recc. Clomid and IUI
Taking a break from TTC to pursue adoption
Met our 2 year old son in Russia July 2012!
Court trip October 2012
Home November 24 2012!
Back to RE Summer 2013. TTC journey continues:
Dx DOR, endometriosis, low sperm count
Clomid + IUI#1, #2 = BFN / IUI #3 = ???
Laparoscopy scheduled December 2013
We are not in the process of adopting a 2nd child yet but hope to at some point. We visit with dd's birthmom (and her family) about 4 times a year. Early on we sent pics/updates every few months - 6 weeks, 3m,6m, 9m, 12m, 18m etc - and now it's 2x a year until she's 18. I don't limit it to that, though. I send pictures/cards at other times, too, especially after our visits. We keep in touch on fb and through emails, too. We talk on the phone around holidays or before visits. If we were to adopt again, I would hope that we could have a similar relationship.
We've given our dd's birthmom a couple of necklaces. I found some pretty ones on Etsy that had a heart and her inital on it (it's dd's inital, too). Holiday-related type gifts -- ornaments or art projects that have to do with the holiday, framed hand-prints...Flowers for Mother's Day. We painted a heart shaped box at a pottery studio and gave that to her birthmom for Christmas - we put a pretty bracelet inside that said "You are always in my heart" on it.
For her birthday we are giving her a photo book full of pics of all of our visits with her and a couple other little things. We're going to get together and she and dd are going to get their pictures taken together.
I think you're right on track with your ideas. I think they sound thoughtful.
Thank you all you your input. These people are very special to us.
I'm not sure what your question is with the first paragraph. If we adopt again, we'd be looking at a similar visitation schedule as with our first.
Your gifts sound fine. It really is unique to the relationship.