This Adoptive Parent's Christmas List

1. Pictures and letters from my children's first mothers. They need them.

2. Truth and transparency between expectant mothers considering adoption, prospective adoptive parents, adoptive parents, first parents, and adoptees.

3. Tax credits for women who choose to parent and raise their child(ren), equal to the Adoption Tax Credit available to adoptive parents. There should not be more financial support for people who adopt than for the women who bear the children.

4. More support and better protection for first fathers who want to parent/would want to parent if they knew.

5.  That everyone who reads this will read the post, The Reality of Adoption 2012.

What's on your list?
Sally Bacchetta
The Adoptive Parent
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What's It Gonna Take To Put This Baby In Your Family Today?

This just came across my desk: I have a 1/2 Caucasian, 1/2 African American baby girl due December 11, 2012. Her birth mother has continued to smoke a pack a day throughout the pregnancy and smoked marijuana 2-3 times per week during the first two months of pregnancy. Birth father smokes marijuana 4-5 times a week. If you know anyone who may be interested please contact me at...

Is that typical of the messages adoption agencies and social workers receive?  

First off, you don't have a baby girl, and there is no birth mother in what you're saying. There is a pregnant woman and the baby inside her.

And this: "If you know anyone who may be interested..." Seriously?  Pull up your PAP spreadsheet and see who checked off "open to mixed race" and "will consider drug history."  

Is that how we were "matched?" What about all the warmandfuzzy be-patient-your-baby-will-find-you crooning whitewash?  

Seeing it laid out like that... I feel like I'm going to retch. What is the matter with people?

Click here to purchase Sally's adoption book, What I Want My Adopted Child to Know: An Adoptive Parent's Perspective.

Sally Bacchetta
The Adoptive Parent
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Award-Winning Writer Publishes Groundbreaking Book on Adoption

Award-winning writer and author Sally Bacchetta announced the release of her new book, What I Want My Adopted Child to Know: An Adoptive Parent's Perspective. The book is described as “a tender, revealing look at adoption from the parent perspective.” Whether an adoptive parent, an adoptee, someone considering adoption, or simply curious about adoption dynamics, What I Want My Adopted Child to Know: An Adoptive Parent’s Perspective will touch hearts and increase readers' sensitivity to the challenges and joys that are unique to adoptive parenting.

Bacchetta wrote the book in response to a need common among adoptive families. “Adoptive families navigate emotional terrain that fully-biological families don’t have to,” said Bacchetta, adoptive mother of two. “This is a book adoptive parents can give to their child and say, ‘I know adoption is painful, unsettling, joyous, and affirming. It’s that way for me too. More than anything, adoption is the way we came together, and I’ll always be grateful for that.’”

“Sally has written a narrative that is heartfelt, honest, and warm,” said Greg Franklin, Esq. and Fellow of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys. “She’s told her story truthfully and without sugar coating, but also with knowledge from which I would have benefitted had the book been written before my family embarked upon our own journey to adoption. The readers of this book are lucky to have the benefit of Sally’s experience and her shared wisdom, because her story reminds us that we have so much in common.” more

buy the adoption book

Sally Bacchetta
The Adoptive Parent
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Sally Bacchetta's YouTube Channel

Birth Mother Voices

I expected to be emotionally moved by the Birth Mother's Day celebration. In fact, it was more like a tectonic shift.

Birth mother grief... I never imagined the depth or scope of it. I didn't know, I just didn't know, how it felt from your side of time.

Our childless counselors and the celibate priests, and those married with children said, "Go on with your life. You will be able to have other children", and turning away they spoke only of the joy of those who received our children as though it was now the only story. (from Breaking the Silence by Mary Jean Wolch-Marsh)

There is a child somewhere,
Lost in earth,
Or time,
He was mine.
There is no other feeling
Like the movement of an unborn child,
It's closer than someone touching you,
From the outside.
It is purely and cleanly,
And clearly,
Your own moment.
For those few months we were together
Alone against the world
But society,
That grand cheat,
Took him away
When we needed each other most.
I cannot say why I could not keep him.
Could there be a reason why?
Did I reject him in my guilt?
Because he wouldn't let me give up
When I wanted to?
I carried him, and he carried me.
Through a time when we could not go alone.
And I've been lost ever since.
(Lost by Cindy Sheff)

I know now that I will never know, but now I understand.

Sally Bacchetta
The Adoptive Parent
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Sally Bacchetta's YouTube Channel

Adopting Snowflakes

People often ask if waiting for our second child is easier than waiting for our first. Absolutely. And no way. It's just different.

I had no frame of reference the first time. I knew I wanted a child, but the want was a general feeling of wanting to grow my family. I wanted a baby to hold, a toddler to play with, a child to teach about faith and integrity.

Now I know the intimacy and intricacy I was missing. Now I know that I want a baby with spring-loaded fingers and translucent eyelids. I want chub-a-licious drumstick thighs and a sweet-smelling head. Now I know that I want a toddler to pee all over the bathroom and mop it up with my pillow and proudly announce "It's OK, Mama. I cweaned it all by myself!" Now I know that I want a child to say "Even when I'm upset, Mama, I always love you."

Now I know what I was missing, and that makes the second wait more painful. At the same time, it's much, much easier waiting for my second child, because I have been blessed with my first. By turns captivating, aggravating, inspiring, and tiring, she will always be My First.

Every adoption experience is different. Every one is unique and beautiful in its way. Just like snowflakes.

Sally Bacchetta
The Adoptive Parent
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Sally Bacchetta's YouTube Channel

"You Can't Imagine Me!"

One of my favorite things about three year-olds is their absolute conviction when using words incorrectly. A recent example is when my daughter - whose paint-the-refrigerator-door-with-ketchup plan I thwarted - planted her hands on her hips and shouted, "You can't imagine me!" and stomped out of the room.

She has no idea how right she is. All the time I dreamed of a child, all the waiting and anticipating, as often as I pictured myself in moments with our child... none of it even comes close to the reality of her.

Sally Bacchetta
The Adoptive Parent
My Google Profile+
Sally Bacchetta's YouTube Channel
Parenting
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