Just musing - anyone with a BC found this too?

[luckylucky24]

We have a (almost) 4yr old BC and this week brought home our (1 yr old) AC.
When we had our BC we got lots of congratulations cards and gifts etc. This time we have had 3 cards and 2 gifts. Now I am not bothered about this is a greedy way especially as when parents asked we said we didn't know what she needed. Is it her birthday really soon so said we would be happy for them to get her a bday present after we knew what she did and didn't have.
Anyway I am sad that the differences are so obvious. HAs anyone else noticed this?
It goes as far as DH's work offering £500 when children are born - but we wont get that for this lo because she is adopted.

We have a similar problem. My BC gets cards from all the family on her birthday and my youngest gets 1 or 2. That's awful about your husbands work, I'd be challenging that!!

His work are awful! They agreed to pay him in full for 2 weeks paternity, but in return he has been answering emails and doing bits of work every day of his leave. Today he had to skype the office and was speaking to them for over an hour. Even during introductions he was in touch lot via email.
They wouldn't let him take shared leave with me and so he has had to take 2 weeks unpaid when his paternity ends this week. They actually contacted a solicitor over it!

We had the same. I think it's people being unsure what to say and new-baby cards don't fit the bill. Maybe have a party when the adoption order is made and suggest that people give a welcome-to-the-family card.

And congratulations!

Yes! dd1 (birth child): literally sacks of gifts and cards. dd2 (adopted), wind whistling through empty tunnels.

Of course, it's never quite clear what is about being the second child - I guess you get more fuss with the first because it marks the start of parenthood. But still.... I have family members who have still to this day not acknowledged the arrival of dd2 6 years ago.

Some people have said to me that they're not sure of the etiquette of marking the arrival of an adopted child. Hmm, ok. But I think they should understand the implicit message of their radio silence, and overcome it.

Yes, totally. I agree it is about people not knowing what to say, no suitable cards available, or very few, and I also agree people make less fuss for number two.

My work place paid a different rate for birth children or adopted. That was challenged and was made the same before the law required it

But, don't let it spoil this special time, it is not worth it.

Yes I've had exactly the same . And it's not a first child thing, As we adopted first then had bio kids.

Literally one or wo cards/ gifts for adopted kids then over 50 cards and perhaps 30 gifts for bio kids .

I have to say I found it hard to be appreciative when people who had not even acknowledged our adopted kids gave us presents for the younger ones

And there are plenty suitable cards - I've just bought two in the last few weeks in local card shops / supermarkets. There are new baby type cards that say " welcome to the new arrival " " for your little bundle of joy " " it's a boy " or smiliar . It takes 10 mins to read them all and Find a suitable one .

Failing that there's plenty blank ones or just " congratulations" .

The adopted kids I've just bought gifts for are not the children of close friends. I know one slightly and one not at all - I just know their relatives . But I always mark it because I know that hardly anyone else will.

And I don't get this " I don't know the etiquette " stuff. How hard is it to buy a toy / item and clothing and wrap it up ? You don't need Debrettes .

We had it the other way round. Baby shower, cards , presents etc for when our adopted child came home but a lot less for when I gave birth.

We found that too, although we did receive cards / gifts etc there was no 'shower' as such, and lesser to the extent of my fellow work colleagues who had babies. But Bio child on the way (adopted first) shower organised, more gifts received already!
Having said that though, prior to LO coming home I did mention to Mum / others not to buy lots of toys / new things (he was 4) as this would have been too overwhelming for him.

We adopted 2 together, no BC.

We 'signalled' that we wanted cards by sending out formal announcement cards 'Sanders and Milne are pleased to announce the arrival into the family of Tigger dob x/y/z and Piglet dob a/b/c'

This worked really well as we got sent congrats cards etc, and then everyone knew the girls' birthdays and had no excuse to forget them.

I think otherwise people are maybe not too sure what to do when. During intros is too early, they may not be too sure when moving in is, they may think they should wait until the adoption order.

We opened a secret and closed family group on facebook so we could announce her arrival. Included her dob but have had no cards from my side of the family or presents even from her birthday. DH family have sent cards with money so we can buy what we want for her but that was for her birthday not her arrival.
My cousin offered to throw me a shower but no one was interested in coming so it never happened.

In the interest of balance - we were showered with cards, gifts, people making soup for us, turning up with preloved toys and clothes.... Sorry, i know that doesn't help.

First child: Baby shower thrown for us, loads of gifts, loads of cards. Huge fuss.

Second child: No shower, few gifts, less cards.

Both adopted. A large part is people just don't view subsequent children as a big deal. Many people assumed we had the stuff we needed but still sent cards.

I also think a lot of it is people don't know what to do about adoption and don't want to pry. We were very open with the first, but the second was uncertain for a long while, then a huge rush; so we didn't share much.

Speak to people who are close enough you need them to fuss over both kids (as it come up naturally) and don't worry about the rest.

We did the same as Under in sending out formal announcements that DD had joined the family, also mentioning when her birthday is. Some of the lack of presents etc may be as simple as they don't know when his/her birthday is, or whether you plan to mark it (yes, I was asked that question!).

Perhaps we were just lucky with our friends and family, but I think we got similar amounts of cards and gifts - so much pink...!!!

I'm astounded by the stupidity of someone asking a parent if they are going to mark their child's birthday .

Because ignoring your child's birthday is such a common thing

Kr1stina - i normally completely agree with you/follow your advice to the letter - but actually i wouldn't have been offended by anyone asking that. I think we have to do so many things differently as adoptive parents that someone just checking they weren't doing the wrong thing by buying cards and presents is fine - thoughtful even.
Although of course if they were implying that the birth mother should be erased from memory then they obviously deserve our approbation.

luckylucky24 re "My cousin offered to throw me a shower but no one was interested in coming so it never happened." That's awful, I am so sorry, i could have come if I had known. One of my best friends offered to do the same but it never happened. In the end it was my work colleagues who gave me a shower, and it was lovely (sounds odd!).

We sent our arrival notice with birth dd with Christmas cards. For DS we just mentioned his long awaited arrival in the Christmas card. I think for us maybe there was a sense that we could not quite believe it was all finalized. I think that is one thing I would do differently if I had my time again, I would make more fuss about the actual legal bit being finalised. But by then he had been with us 6 months. It all seemed quite different to birth dd's arrival.

Im sure you are right and you are more understanding / generous than me. I woudl be perfectly polite to anyone asking this but yes, I woudl judge them .

Because I've never heard anyone asking this of a bio child or their parents. And " not doing birthdays " seems like just another fun / nice/ happy thing that adopters and adoptees miss out on . Which seems a bit crap to me .

I guess I think of a child's birthday as belonging to them and not their mother, biological or adoptive. No one gives me a gift or congratulates me on any of my children's birthdays , it's about them. They'll still celebrate their birthdays long aftre I'm dead - it's their day not mine .

I do appreciate that many adoptees find their birthday painful , as do many birth mothers who have lost their children . But I've only met one adoptive family who didnt celebrate their child's birthday and they were seriously weird /disturbed . They celebrated the day they got the child instead because the child didn't exist before then

I suspect you are right and the questioner was implying that the adoptive parents might want to erase the birth family . But I don't see how you can do that without erasing part of the child .

Sorry , I was replying to JustHappy

Maybe i'm influenced because i found it quite hard to get excited by adopted dc's birthday this year. We'd only had her with us for a few months, we were just writing settling in letters and we were very, very focused on the birth parents and how they must be feeling.
Everyone kept asking (but it felt like pestering tbh) about what we were doing to celebrate and we struggled. Luckily thanks to mumsnet we knew to "fake it til we make it" so the photo record shows big smiles, cake, balloons etc and LO was only 1 so pretty clueless. But i guess coming from the other side of birthday excitement makes me more sympathetic. Noone really understood why we weren't going all out.
Birthday no 2 will be an extravaganza tho!

In defense of my (admittedly clueless) friend, they were so keen not to offend that they sometimes tipped the other way, such as asking about whether we were marking DD's birthday. I think she heard that DD had been removed from her birth mother at birth, and turned that in her head into that time of year being traumatic for DD, so we might not celebrate it. Or something!