Our adoption blog has gone international!

Wow, our adoption blog has gone international. According to Blogspot, our adoption blog has been seen in the U.S. (the most, obviously), Iran, India, Canada, United Kingdom, and Indonesia. That's crazy! I can't imagine how it has had the far of reach other than to really appreciate the viral nature of the internet (and the niceness of friends and strangers). I have a Facebook friend from Canada who posted our site on her FB wall, so I am guessing that is how those from Canada came about it. Not sure about the others. But, just goes to show you that this method can really raise awareness about our desire to adopt.

Why is this important? Because like Kevin Bacon's 6 Degrees of Separation, everyone knows someone who eventually knows someone who has had an unplanned pregnancy and may want to consider adoption. Just today a friend of mine was telling me about how a friend of hers is in an adoption situation based on knowing a friend who knew a friend who eventually knew the mom of a pregnant 16 year old who wants to place for adoption. A lot of times that is how open adoption happens.

Yes, many of us hire these big agencies to help us find women interested in exploring open adoption, but we know of many open adoptions that happened through a network of friends (and sometimes that network extended far).

We don't know if our networking through this blog will do us any good. We don't know if anyone considering adoption has actually even seen our blog and letter, but at least we know if you are reading this you may remember us if you run across someone who has had an unplanned pregnancy.

Last night I read an article about adoption marketing that had a lot of good ideas, especially if you are going it alone without an agency. I don't think we are ready to go that far because we do have this fancy-pants agency we've hired that is helping us to find a birthmother. But, there are a lot of easy things we can do that might increase our exposure. It's better than sitting around feeling helpless about the adoption process.

In our own adoption story of Maggie, many people are surprised to learn that after working with an agency for 18 months, we actually ended up finding our own birthmother, and she is perfect in so many ways. So, I say this to say you never know how it will happen.

Today, we got to hold precious little baby Adam who was recently adopted through open adoption. He is so cuddly and cute--I really didn't want to give him back, but alas the moms said we had to. Maggie said when we got home how much she wished she had her brother or sister already living here, and I tried my best to remind her that God has a plan for our family, and hopefully we will find out soon enough. It is so sweet to see how nurturing she is with babies and toddlers, everyone else for that matter!

If you would like to help in our journey, please post this to your Facebook wall and ask people to take a look at it.

Maggie flying her first kite!

As far as milestones go, Maggie learned how to fly a kite today. Even with very little wind, she was able to get it up in the sky. She was so proud of herself. And I am so happy she was able to do that today. We can't take for granted the good life we have and how much the simple pleasures can be the best experiences.

Feeling grateful~
Kathy

What's in a name?

We are blessed that we already have a jam-packed nursery ready for the delight of whatever little angel comes into our lives. Between all the stuff we bought, and the generosity of so many friends who just had babies, we have a full nursery ready to go.

We are open to having a baby of any gender, ethnicity, or race, so we know it is in God's hands as to who we are blessed to have in our lives. Last month we thought we would be adopting a boy, so even though the nursery was designed to be gender neutral, we did add some typical boy art work, and specifically I made some wooden letters of our baby's name that are currently hanging on the wall.

The weirdness of our failed adoption story from last month is that we were able to name the baby with the name we had chosen if it was to be a boy. Now, we are torn as to whether we should use that name again if it is a boy, or whether it is like a child who died, and we should not use the same name. I am leaning toward wanting to use the same name if it is a boy.

Yes, it feels a little weird, but at the same time I think it helps us to reclaim some of what we lost. I think we gave the little baby boy in Louisiana a strong name, and I hope that helps in some way (if you believe in that sort of thing).

Anyway, our nursery that we are going to re-organize this weekend has his name on the wall. Some people have suggested we need to take it down for our own grieving process. I don't feel like we need to unless we 1. have a girl, or 2. decide to name the baby something else. It doesn't make me feel down when I see it on the wall. It makes me wonder if we will have a baby boy, or whether we will get the surprise of another girl.

Weigh in if you have any thoughts. I purposely haven't put his name here because I am not sure I want you to know :-)