I always think I'm doing a great job at this parenting after placement thing. Until my children grow and develop and smack me with new things. Just the other day, my older son and I were sitting at the table eating our breakfast. And he asked, "Why doesn't Munchkin live with us?"

Color me floored. He's always been a verbal child. Sort of slow on the physical scale (but within range; just meaning he was never a climber and so on) but always pretty darn verbal. He's recently been asking some "big" questions about various life things. Some are funny. Some... more

In a discussion about post-placement pregnancies, a member of the adoption forums said:

I don't feel like a mom, and she's said she doesn't feel like a grandma yet.

She went on to discuss how her current, post-placement pregnancy feels like a "first pregnancy" in many ways. I think the honesty of these words lend a lot to the discussion of post-placement pregnancies. I wish more... more

If I had one piece of advice to give birth parents who are looking to add to their family (other than get a good therapist and work on issues ahead of time) it would be: don't have your child(ren) in close relation to your placed child's birthday and don't have your child(ren) during the holidays. Okay, technically, that's two (and if you count the therapist point, three) pieces of advice. But man, I'm struggling over here.

Getting used to a newborn, even after you've been through it once, isn't an easy task. No two babies are the same! Our new son's personality... more

The infamous and sometimes scary "first week home" has been completed. We survived. Yes, we're somewhat sleep deprived but otherwise we're fairing quite well. We're learning how to be a four person immediate family instead of just three. We're learning how to juggle a two year old child's inability to understand things outside of their immediate desires coupled with a newborn child's need to have their immediate needs met, well, immediately! Basically, we are learning a bunch of things in a short amount of time. It's like an intense crash course in parenting with no end in sight!

On... more

And so, last week, I fell off the planet! Okay, not quite. I just birthed a baby. That's right! Parker is here! His birthday was November 24th, which was only one week (and one day) early after all of our complications. (And just one day before my prediction!) He weighed in at seven pounds, seven ounces and was twenty-and-a-half inches long. My labor was rather long for a third one but worth it in the end!

Needless to say, as we came home last Monday, blogging wasn't my top priority. We've been getting used to being a two-child home, learning about breastfeeding and being rather... more

I didn't expect to have any emotional issues after Nicholas, my parented son, was born. He had been a planned pregnancy and, in my mind, that removed any of the things that I had experienced during and after my pregnancy with the Munchkin, my placed daughter. After all, what was I to feel depressed or anxious about? I was financially stable, married to an amazing man, working in my chosen career field and about to become a mother after having been denied that joy just a few years prior.

It should have all gone swimmingly!

Don't... more

I'm giving a presentation on blogging birth mothers this weekend at the University of Pittsburgh (more tomorrow!) and I'm a nervous wreck. You see, I don't really have a problem with public speaking or reading. I majored in broadcast communications in college. I'm used to proper inflection and reading from a prompter (which can go really fast when someone messes up!). I'm not specifically used to a crowd of people but, alas, I think I'll just focus on my Husband's... more

The child within my womb continues to grow. He's still somewhat of an acrobat, flipping this way and that throughout the day. By evening, however, he is usually in the head down position. And every evening, as I get under the covers of my bed, I am transported back in time. You see, every night this child gets the hiccups. Around the same time every night, I feel the rhythmic bump of fetal hiccups. And my heart aches.

I didn't know what they were at first when I was pregnant with the Munchkin. Without reliable internet, I didn't have the ability to Google "short, spasmodic... more

I love The Shape of a Mother. It is a website that touches my soul. And my hips and my stretch marks and my extra, stretched out skin. The idea behind the site is to show that Mothers are beautiful, no matter what their shape, size or story. When I'm having a bad self-image day, I peruse the site and read the stories and am reminded that I am not alone.

Today I was reminded of that in a way that I hadn't been in my previous excursions on the site. I came across an entry entitled, "Birth... more

"Moonbeam thinks it through" is the title of a recent post by the talented writer who calls her blog Paragraphein. I love her writing and have mentioned her blog several times. This post discusses how her daughter processed the addition of a new brother into her adoptive family. The post is short and sweet, but full of meaning.

Critics of open adoption often talk about how confusing they are for children. However, many children of divorce have shared custody arrangements... more