Contact with birth family - advice please (a bit long!)

[ScotsBird]

Hi all, apologies in advance if this rambles a bit. I am a regular on mumsnet but am a reader rather than a poster so might not have the knack of efficient posting.

Anyway, I am 34 and have always known I was adopted (my birth parents were just 16 when I was born). Great relationship with mum (adoptive) and adopted sister and mum always made sure we knew that she was happy for us to trace. So, in August this year I got hold of my original birth cert and sent a message to my birth mother after finding her on t'internet. Anyhow, turns out she and my birth father are still together, been married for 28 years and have two daughters. We have communicated loads by email and have met up (I live in south england and they live in scotland so it was not hugely simple to organise) - meeting was really positive and we all got on great.

However, my mum is gutted and is really struggling with feelings of rejection and jealousy (despite my reassurances that I am not seeking an alternative family and that I still love and regard her as my mum). She is very gracious about it though, and wants me to do what is best for me. Other issue is that birth parents never told their daughters (17 and 21 yrs) about the child they had adopted and they say now that they need to tell them, and how do I feel about the girls wanting to be part of mine and my family's lives. Feels like they are waiting for me to give them the green light to tell their daughters. I have told them that I am happy for them to tell or to keep it a secret, as I don't want to feel the responsibility for their daughters taking it badly and it causing a potential family rift.

I talked to dh last night and he said that I am the one holding all the cards cos any decisions I make will affect everyone else's lives. I don't know what to do for the best.

Should I completely embrace my birth parents and my birth sisters into my family (dh, dd (4)and ds (20mths)) and risk hurting my mum, or just back off, "remember where my loyalties lie" and maintain an email relationship with birth parents at a safe distance?

Well done if you have got to the end of this! Thoughts from anyone gratefully received.
thanks in advance

I just bowed out of the whole thing, it was too much.

My adoptive mum died last year, and I do think about contacting my bm again, but never seem to manage it. She will NEVER replace my adoptive mum, and tbh my main interest is genetic rather than emotional. I also feel my dc should know about my heritage, but the guilt doesn't really go away......

it certainly is different now. One of my lingering sadnesses is that DS will probably never get the chance to have any information about let alone meet his birth mother . I'm doing a birth parent search on his behalf now before the trail goes too cold but its not likely that I will find anything.

Every time I log back into this thread there are more amazing stories. I think that it was Oops who said that contact with bparents is like having an affair and I think this is a really good description of it. There is quite a feeling of excitement about the whole thing.

Rosa2, I think you are so lucky that your adoptive parents are delighted for you - that must help you to feel really secure. I don;t want to give the impression that my mum is devastated because she isn;t, rather she seems to be experiencing feelings that she didn't expect to feel.

Rosa and fizz, did you not feel that there was any way to have a relationship with both sides like 23ballons has with both her adoptive and birth families. Rosa, 2 years is a long time to be in contact with someone to then stop completely. It must have felt like quite a loss? I am concerned about bparents and my children - my mum is their gran, so what does this make bparents?

I think that as adoptees we can end up being the ones racked with guilt about our (only natural) curiosity and need to know about our roots. As Kewcumber (and others) have said - we weren't given any choice at the time the decisions were made about our adoptions, so does this not give us some rights of expression now? I am not sure if this is right, but it feels a little like this in my head, like its my turn.

Wideload, the work I do only brings me into contact with those who have had children removed and placed/freed for adoption. So I am around at the start of the "adoption journey". Nowadays there are far more measures in place to create life stories for adopted children and letterbox schemes which hold letters from birth parents etc.

More rambling from me - apols, but I am really enjoying being able to chat to others in the same situation.

Rosa2 - you mentioned that you suddenly had a letter from the adopted charity - can I ask, had you registered with them? or did the letter just come completely out of the blue?

My mother has emotional blackmail down to a fine art. I am tired of always being the mediator and the conciliator and having to consider everybody else's feelings all the time. Easier just to give up and opt out.

I name this post; A thought for the future!

Cor, I do think a lot of myself!

When my kids were born they had 4 great grans and 2 grans. It was a lot. dh had 1 Nanna and a Nanma! and his mam is Nannie, I had 1 Gran and 1 Granny and my mam is Granma. My sisters girls call their other gran. Granna.
So plenty of names to choose from. Oh, a thought, my dad is for some bizarre reason called Grandpappy!! (but, he's always been a law to himself!!) or Grandpaps for short. I would take out what your kids already call their grandparents and whatever you called your maternal Nan and choose another name for your BM, and she has to stick with what you decide. That way it is one less chance of you upsetting your mam.
Take care,

can someone please explain something to me.

I have no idea how any of the system works.

I want to know if my bm has tried to make contact with me at all..

I don't actually want to meet her, but would hate it if she had left a letter etc for me that I never got to see.

Could I be contacted without registering anyway?

I would like my bm to know that I had a very happy childhood and understand the decision she made and in fact am really pleased that I was adopted as I had such great parents and brothers.

I have no real need to met her as I don't feel that I am missing anything as I really don't believe that my life could have been any better etc, even though both my mum and dad have now passed away.

Someone asked me the other day whatabout your DD, what if she asks and you don't know anything about your BM, so now part of me feels that maybe I should make some sort of contact for my DD sake but not sure about that at all...

Anyway after all the waffle what I really want to know is the process for finding out bm.

I know my real name, dob and place and that is all really (got a typed list of bm features and hobbies etc) but don't know what adoption charity etc that it went through..

Any help appreciated... I am almost 40 and it has only just recently become an issue for me!

.

.

Gosh this is all interesting stuff, and something that my DS may have to face in future (but not for a while as only 9 months). I live overseas where he has no legal right to trace his birth parents, but I have his BM's name and current address so he'll have a starting point at least.

What concerns me, though, is I know enough about the birth family to know there is some nasty stuff in there and I wonder how to handle that. Have a while to worry about it though.

Does anyone know whether girls are more likely to trace their birth families than boys?

And to those of you tracing at present, best of luck.

Heifer. I am currently going through the process of tracing birth parents. Like you I have no wish to meet them but I am hoping to find out some medical information (I started another thread about my search a few months ago).
I had more information than you so could contact the adoption agency direct. However, I am now using a 3rd party to trace all the information. They told me that as well as the adoption agency the local authority where I was adopted may still have files referring to my case.
The organisation I am using is called After Adoption. They have offices in Manchester, Cardiff and Leeds. I am sure that there are other organisations that do the same job but I have been impressed by them so far. They provide all sorts of services, including counselling.
I find posting about it really helpful because very few people know about my adoption. I feel as if I have been living a lie but now I am 40 it is almost too late to 'tell the truth'. (Again I have another thread on this dilemma!) It really helps to get other people's point of view in an anonymous forum, but also know that fellow posters care.
Sorry that went on a bit. Wishing you luck in whatever you decide to do.

ONM - based on the work we did on our prep course, I would say that there isn't a predisposition of either gender towards wanting to search rather it is based on the nature of the person and the degree of curiousity they have about their genetic roots. Like my sister and I - I love to research our ancestry wehreas she really couldn;t be less interested in the people she hasn;t met. It also seems that certian life events can trigger the need to search in many people who have previously been uninterested eg birth of their own child, death of a parent.

As for dealing with unpalatable infomration - we had to dicsuss a real life situation where a child was born to a 12yr old girl as a result of rape by her step-faterh who was subsequently jailed for the attack. Our discussion (subsequently confirmed by social workers) was to feed little bits of information over time that were age appropriate. Eg you start with a very young child saying that their tummy mummy (or whatever phrase you use) was very young. Then expand that to "still in school" etc. We all still felt that it was important to be honest (gradually) even with such dreadful information particularly as in this case it would have been easy for the child to find out.

Of course now I have a child, the thought of having to break such news would be daunting and I would be tempted not to. I still think its right that peopel should know everything they can about what made them.

Sorry Heifer - I don't know the process, but I'm sure someone else does.

Thanks KC.

Over here it is SO easy to adopt (once you work out the red tape) and there's no pre-preparation required. So you're left to prepare yourself, and sometimes you wonder if you've prepared enough. Makes you worry about the kids whose parents don't prepare, for example a lot of kids aren't told they're adopted.

Sounds like it goes too far the other way in the UK though, i.e too many hoops to jump through.

Heifer, can't remeber how the system works. I think you apply for a copy of your birth certificate, and then you have to agree to counselling before you go any further.

I know you have to have counselling about it. I was based in Manchester at that time, so used After Adoption who were very good.

I have to say, I never had a burning desire, it was more curiosity than anything else, and also to know about genetics atc.

TBH meeting my bm was a huge non-event. I felt no desire to keep in touch, in fact I found it smothering. I don't regret meeting her, but had no real wish to maintain contact

thanks openingacanofworms

I had a look at after adoption website, but am now even more confused!

I really don't know where to start, so I think I will have to bite the bullet sometime and phone up - really would have preferred to do this online!

I do have some paperwork (2 certificates) but don't really tell me anything.

they do have entry numbers on so that may help with my search, but not on the database I got linked to, it only asked for details that I don't have (adoption agency, birth home etc)..

I have no idea why I suddendly want to do this - I have had no interest in the last 39 years! then suddendly I am frustrated that I can't do it all online!...

Heifer, I went through it all about 6 years ago (But despite having a name and address and number, I never made 'that' call, primarily because I didn't want to risk upsetting my adoptive mum).

Anyway, I decided that I would leave my contact details on the register in case my real mum had been looking for me, because I couldn't bear the thought of someone out there possibly being deeply unhappy about their decision back in the 60's. I made an assumption that if that was the case then my BM would have found the contact register and left her details on it. Turns out that this hasn't happened in my case, so I've left my details and moved on..

anyway, here is the register I went onto... there may be others but this is the one social services told me about..

sorry - wrong link. Have just checked google again and this I think is the official one linked to social services

thanks squiffy, I will take a look at that - sorry you didn't feel that you could make the call, maybe one day you will.

It may well be that I decided not to proceed, but at the moment I want to get as far as I can until I have to make some big decisions etc.

If you got on great with the birth parents what do you have to lose by meeting the sisters? I think its worth meeting them at least. They may feel put out that they're not the first and onlys but they may be thrilled and you might find you have quite a bit in common (its not unlikely )

A friend of mine got in touch with each birth parent and found half brothers and sisters on both sides, and actually while he has little contact with the parents these days he loves the siblings and they stay in touch.

I know its scary, but if you've done it once already you can face it again.

all the best of luck with this one!

Heifer.
As it happened I had been to the Social Services in the County that dealt with my adoption in December last year. As I was adopted before 1973 I had to have what they call a 'One off councelling session'. It's just to let you know the pit falls and the good things that happen about finding your birth families, they then gave me the details for an adoption charity who could then help me if I wished to take it further, ie- they would request my adoption file and then if I wished tried to trace my BM. I knew which County etc I was adopted from so that bit was easy. But then with Christmas and a few other things happening hear I never carried on with the search. During all this time, my one Birth Sister was trying to trace me. She had left messages on adoption sites etc. She eventually tried Social Services in the same County and they found me pretty much straight away. Granted it helped because I had been to SS already a few months before. But it wouldn't really have taken much to find me anyway without that.
So if you know which County you were born and adopted from contact the SS's for that County and they should be able to help.

rosa2 - thanks for that. I do know where I was born and what county court dealt with the adoption so that is a starting point.

Think I will probably take it very slowly and decide each point at a time and not rush into anything..

Hi to everyone, I just wanted to give you an update (if you are interested of course!) and let you know how things have panned out with my original issue. This was really about my birth parents telling my birth sisters about my existence (bparents got married and subsequently had two more daughters).

After loads of really helpful musings and advice from posters on this thread I told them that I thought that they should tell the girls, particularly as we were going to continue building up our relationship. I explained that I thought it would be a more contentious issue if they left it for a few years and then told them that I had been part of their lives for a while.

So ... they told the girls and it was really positive. The girls said that they were really excited about the fact that they had a sister, and that they wanted to meet me. As I live in England while they live in scotland it makes it easier to take things at a more steady pace so I have said I will meet them while I am up home for Christmas.

Fingers crossed and thank you all for your time and thoughtful words - they really helped.

Hi Ladies
Thought I would give you all an update on my story. I met my bm and one of my bsisters for the very first time yesterday. Me, my dh and our 2 children went. It was lovely, we all had big hugs and then basically sat and chatted about anything and everything. Takingthe children helped because they helped break the ice as you could kind of be busy dealing with them whilst getting more relaxed.
I had even taken some photos of me growing up, which my mum and dad gave me to take to show them, so I went with my parents blessings. Although I had an hour long 3rd degree over the phone last night. lol. But can't blame them.
It was a lovely day. I can't descibe how I feel now, happy yes, but also strange, it's like you have been told of your adoption since time began so it's always been like a story you are told as a little girl. Then suddenly this story has come true and you are meeting the characters from this story.
God, does that make sense? lol.
Anyway, next month we hope to meet my other birth sisters which will be nice as we have all been chatting on msn and email so we seem to get on.
I know a few of you don't want to actually meet your bm's, and all I can say is, go with your feelings. As the adopted child, you do feel like piggy in the middle, but remember, it's YOUR life.
Take care all

x

I'm so glad to hear that your meeting went well. If your parents are anything like me, they will be desparately curious about your birth parents. You shouldn't consider yourself "piggy in the middle" but "the centre of the universe", or even several universes! Good luck with everything.