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Adoption
GTKYF: Telling people
Did you tell your family and friends of your decision to adopt in a "big"way, or did you slowly share with people one by one?
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Re: GTKYF: Telling people
We slowly shared. We had TTTC, so my family were already aware of that and observed our change in focus from treatments to adoption over time.
We told MIL out of the blue, as she was not aware of our TTTC. It wasn't a big thing, though, DH just told her, and we gave her a copy of Adoption for Dummies. She is very excited now, and seems to want to make a big announcement at Thanksgiving. We are determined to keep it more low key.
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Our families knew we had been TTC and bits and pieces about the medical treatments we were going through. Once we committed to our agency and started the homestudy process we started telling family -- not in any big way, just in normal conversations.
We told close friends too and let them know it wasn't a big secret. So the news has trickled out to those we know over time. No big secrets. No big surprises. I also started blogging about it on my private family/friend blog once we were homestudy approved.
If I remember correctly, adoption was on the table while we were TTC. There wasn't any big announcement when we made the decision. When we did the formal application, we just started telling folks, "We picked an agency and we're moving forward with adoption."
Big way. Our motto was to share as if we were expecting biologically - keeping in mind that we never had any emotional or traumatic experiences to work through in our quest to parenthood.
We firmly believe that the more confident you are about your path to parenthood that family and friends will follow. We also believe that the more open and upfront you are with information about the adoption journey and information the more educated your family and friends can be. Adopting is an unique experience that doesn't happen to every family. The more people you can educate in a positive light the more good information that is floating about.
We started off with telling immediate family by phone that we were expecting through adoption within the next year. We then created our adoption journey website for family and friends. The site included an FAQ about domestic adoption - it helped to clear up myths and to ward off insulting or insensitve comments. We also included a time line of the steps for our adoption, and a blog to talk about what was going on in our journey.
Our family and friends were supportive. And, if there were any family/friends that were unsupportive they saw that we didn't give them any openings for their negativity and probably chose to just stay away. We didn't receive regards from everyone but that's okay. If you don't have something nice to say, then don't say it at all ;-)
I just want to add that you (as in anyone who is looking for advice on this topic) should tell people in "your style". We are not big announcement type people. Had we been pregnant we would not have been all big announcey either.
Good luck.
I completely agree with this. I mailed cards to our family members to tell them about my pregnancy. I thought it would be a good surprise for them to get in the mail, but I missed the fun of seeing their reactions. With the adoption, we told them face to face and/or over the phone, depending on whether we were going to see them or not. It was much more fun that way, because we got to hear the excitement in their voices.