guest blogger: marilee

marilee is the beautiful brunette on the left.

marilee is yet another twitter friend. she has been so fun to get to know and there is so much more to her and her life's story than what she had room to share here. i highly recommend you become her facebook friend as she invites you to do so at the end of her post.

i love this post. i love her honesty ...and i think her post is especially important on the heels of nikki's post this week. i cannot express enough how important it is to keep your promises.

i share this mostly for adoptive couples who may not be living up to their promises and pray that as i do so, that more people will be inspired by nikki's courage and change.

if you are an expectant mother and are considering adoption for your baby, please know that not every adoption sounds like this one. many (most, even) of the adoptive couples that i know love, honor and respect their birth parents and the promises they have made to them ...many, like me, even consider it a privilege to have birth families in their lives.

however, marilee's story is important and needs to be told. she should be loved and adored for her choice, not forgotten and dismissed.

love you, marilee.

Hi! I'm obviously Marilee Hicks. My son was born 2/26/2009, and it's been a mess since then! I met my boyfriend Sean in 2007, and we started dating literally a week after we met. We went together like a puzzle! We met at Wartburg College through our roommates, who went to high school together. I can't imagine us coming together any other way, so I was pretty lucky or God had a plan to stick us together. We first talked during the first day of classes when I was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer thinking I was in German! I have a horrible sense of direction, so of course I wouldn't be able to find right class!

He went home for the summer and sure enough, I found out I was pregnant. His parents wanted nothing to do with me or our son and must not have realized it takes 2 people to get pregnant. I told my family, and they just about had a heart attack. Their perfect little Baptist daughter screwed up big time. Sean's parents wanted me to get an abortion and offered to pay for it so their son wouldn't have to pay child support. I was scared and didn't want to lose Sean, but I didn't want to lose my baby either. My parents stopped talking to me for a while, so I googled adoption. I honestly didn't see any other options. I found a family that I thought was great so I contacted the agency and sent an email to the family. We emailed back a forth a few times and finally they called me. We talked for over 4 hours that night, and I honestly felt like part of their family. Landon was still my little seamonkey, so I didn't see any problems with placing him. It all felt "right".

Sean started talking to them also, but he's really shy. Their contact was not as often as ours. Sean finally told his parents he was coming back to Iowa to help me when I was over 6 months pregnant, and I finally felt like this would get better. Sean's parents gave in, but then they started calling Sean and asking him to keep our son. They also started sending me letters asking me to change my mind and would talk about how they'd be great grandparents. We traveled to California in December to meet the Wetmores, and it was awkward at first, but then we started getting along once the inital meeting was over. We signed a contract saying we would get 2 visits a year and recieve hard copies of pictures once a month. Of course Sean and I knew it wasn't legally binding, but we had faith that they would follow through with their promises.

I started having doubts about giving Landon up more and more as the pregnancy progressed. I told the counselor that I wanted to at least consider raising Landon, and I was told that I was unfit to be a mother. The Wetmores came when I was close to having Landon and spent time with him in the hospital. The nurses went to the Wetmores for all of the decisions and looked at me like I was horrible for wanting to spend time with him. Every time Sean and I asked to spnd time with him alone, we were told we could have it later. I kept trying to put off signing the papers until Sean and I got to spend time alone with him, but finally he had to be taken home and Sean and I didn't have anything to take care of him. We were told after we terminated our rights we would get to be alone with Landon for the first time. We were also told we'd get to say goodbye to him alone. We were told we were too young to be parents and it wouldn't be fair to have another girl take "their" child back. They renamed him Alexander Bradford after we were told they would keep the name we gave him. We never got to spend time with him, and they left the state without telling us. My parents also spent over $5,000 paying Landon's medical bills since they refused to pay them. I guess some people are so desperate to adopt that they lie about who they are and what they want out of an adoption relationship. They ignore our emails and the agency told me to set up a payment plan or take out a loan when I asked about his medical bills. I'm not saying I regret placing Landon for adoption, I just wish I would have picked a family closer and willing to hold up their end of the deal. The one good thing is the link they have to their website. They have pictures of Landon on their adoption website, so I look at it every day hoping for new pictures.

Sean obviously didn't return to Wartburg when I got pregnant, but did start taking classes at a community college in the area to get back on track. His parents didn't want him to go to college near me at first and he won't be returning to college here in the fall. This is tearing us apart, but I'm trying to keep it together. His parents always say they would have been great grandparents. His aunt even said she would have raised him until Sean was ready for it. If only they realized it might have been differen if they would have been there when this mess first started happening.

My computer crashed recently and I was lucky enough to lose everything. I'm slowly getting pictures back, but I'm the one with the brown hair in the attached file. I'm double majoring in Political Science and Public Relations with a double minor in Marketing and International Relations. I'm adopted, so please don't think that I'm anti-adoption, I just wish there would have been more support on my side. I understand that the Wetmores hired them, but birth moms have feelings too!

If you have facebook, I'm the only Marilee Hicks listed. =)

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i am grateful for you.

thank you for being part of baby gavin's adoption story. we thought we could give a little back to our favorite customers.

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guest blogger: CB

CB is a twitter friend. her story is getting me all geeked up to increase my finding efforts.

Except for the folks who started it all, few people can claim that Twitter monumentally changed their lives.

But this past August, I stood in a delivery room with a woman whom one month before I didn’t even know existed, as she delivered the little girl who would be my daughter. And it’s all because of the social networking site.

“A”, our daughter’s birth mother, was working with an agency in another part of the country from where we lived. She’d had several missed connections with potential adoptive families and, as her due date approached, the agency was turning to new, innovative ways to find potential families.

And that’s when this tweet showed up in my Twitter feed:

AA baby girl due Aug 28th. Looking for adoption ready family with HS / BCI check completed. Can present ASAP to BM call Dave at …

I was following the agency on Twitter, not because I thought I might be matched with a birth mom, but because they had been sending out great articles about adoption that I found useful as my husband and I prepared for our wait (we’d received our home study approval just six weeks prior).

When I saw this tweet, I read it and thought, “What the heck. I’ll call Dave,” and picked up the phone. Thirty minutes later, he sent me A’s social and medical profile. One day later, I sent him a link to our online profile. A day after that, we were on the phone with A, and she was telling us that she’d chosen us to be her daughter’s parents. It was the most intense, and unexpected, phone call my husband and I had ever had.

Three weeks later, my husband and I left our home on the east coast to be present at our daughter’s birth. As it turned out, we had about eight days to wait for that to happen, and we used the time to get to know A and the wonderful folks at the agency.

We had lunch several times with A, did some low-key site-seeing with her and went to her final doctor’s appointment with her. At our daughter’s birth, I stood next to A and held her hand as she delivered our beautiful little girl. My husband watched from a window just outside the room with A’s social worker.

We learned that we were the first – but fortunately not the last – family to be matched with a birth mom through the agency’s Twitter outreach. I love that. In this Internet age, there are certainly bad things that come of it, but there are also beautiful, wonderful things. Being matched with our daughter’s birth mother is one of them. Making new friends who are also adoptive families is another.

It’s important to note, however, that before we moved forward with the agency, we reached out to several folks to make sure that the agency was reputable, including our “home” agency. We asked a ton of questions, and respected the fact that the agency had a bunch for us as well. Although the matching itself was easy, I don’t think that adopting a child should be. If you choose to put your adoption story out there on Twitter, Facebook or other Internet venues, take care with what you share, and be skeptical of whom you follow. In short, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

This Thanksgiving, as I list all that I am thankful for, my beautiful family will be at the top of the list. And, funny as it sounds, Twitter will be a close second.

guest blogger: nikki

nikki is probably my bravest guest blogger.

i admire nikki so much because she was brave enough to change. brave enough to rearrange her life. brave enough to say, "something is off; how can i fix it?" i look up to people like that. after all, change is hard.

i will not allow mean comments on this post. before you judge nikki, please know that this is a story about change.

love you, girl.

I guess I'll begin with a little introduction. My husband and I met in Nov of 1998, our first date was Dec 13th of '98 and after a quick 12 days he asked me to marry him, which I did, 5 months later. We've now been married 10 years and have 3 children. 4 yr old twins, adopted, and a 3 year old, biological, who surprised us all!

I spent a year on fertility pills and after a lot of prayer, and a prompting or two, knew we were supposed to adopt. In mid Dec 2004 we took a second mortgage out on our home, started our home study and had turned our papers in to an attorney in Louisiana by the first week of January 2005. Around the middle of January our social worker, who worked for an agency in UT said she was sitting at her desk when she felt very strongly that we needed to put papers in at her agency. After a lot of prayer, knowing the cost difference would go from 8K to 21K + ~30K medical bills, we felt we should. We got our profile back, wrote a letter to a specific birthmother, and the very day she saw our profile she picked us. She actually asked if the agency made us up because she had gone through every profile and we were exactly who she was looking for. We celebrated, and cried a whole bunch, and thought we had 6 weeks before our babies would be here. Less than 72 hours later we were in the NICU with our perfect little 4lb 12oz princess and 5lb 2oz prince. Suddenly we were thrown into this process without being educated about the things that would follow.

It was a L O N G 5 days for all of us. Our birthmother really struggled with her decision and kept going back and forth about whether or not she could place. I saw my babies and was instantly attached and in love. Becoming a mother was the best thing ever! We had never met our birthmother, and to this day only met once for about 5 minutes two days before she signed. (She had had a c-section so she was in the hospital from Monday evening through Friday.) She came in to the NICU while we were there, totally unexpected. She had told her social worker she didn't want to meet us. We hadn't had a chance to discuss anything about the openness of our adoption, and only did so after the twins were here. On Tuesday we were asked if we'd be willing to send letters and pictures once a year. (YEP!) On Wednesday we were asked if we would send a video once a year until they were 18 and letters and pictures 4 times a year, specifically, Birthday, Easter, Halloween, and Christmas. (Um, ok, sure) later that night we were asked if we would name our daughter Madison. (We had already picked out a name for her, but if we didn't say yes would she sign?! Oh gosh! We said yes! =( ) On Thursday we were asked if we would be willing to keep one and let her parent one.

That's where we drew the line. I said no, it was both or nothing. On Friday she left the hospital without signing. (Yes, I threw up and cried harder than I ever have in my life.) Friday afternoon we got a call that she had decided she would sign, but she had taken a pain pill so we had to wait 4 hours, then they'd call us if she was still going to sign. We went to the agency at 6:30 to sit with social worker. Her social worker had taken the papers over to be signed. Her flight back home was booked for around 9pm.

At 6:47 the call came, she had signed.
*TEARS*

Over the next 6 months before finalization we sent letters and pictures. However, it didn't seem like there were ever enough pictures sent or the kids weren't wearing the right colors, and she would call the agency for more. (Please know I'm just giving you information and had I known now what I didn't know then, this wouldn't have seemed like such a big deal!) The agency got 2 phone calls from two different men saying they were coming to get 'our babies'. I guess my point is, I was freaking out! I was SO scared of loosing my babies. Finally we made it to finalization and they were ours! That's when I really went back on what I had told her. I pretty much stopped sending letters and pictures because I didn't feel like I could keep up with her requests. It was after finalization that she learned we hadn't followed through with the name Madison. She just wasn't Madison to me, and she was my daughter right?! Before you start writing your comments of hatred, please know that things have changed!

I came across Mrs R's blog shortly after my twins turned 3. At this time I had gone to writing a letter just once a year, and sending 1 cd with pictures and videos from the year on it. I never heard from her. She was a stranger to me and I to her. I read about the openness Mrs R had with her birthmothers and thought, "Wow?! How is that possible?"

I wondered how she wasn't afraid her boys birthmom's coming to get her kids. Having that kind of an open adoption seemed so foreign and even scary to me. One night I emailed Mrs R. I basically laid it all out about how I felt I needed to 'protect' my kids and myself...yada yada. Gently Mrs R helped me to realize that most of the walls I had built were from my own doing and my lack of education. She opened my eyes to a new way of thinking and with that, I wrote a letter to our birthmother. I told her how deeply sorry I was for everything. I told her I was so scared that she wouldn't sign that I didn't dare discuss any options about our openness, the name change and so forth. I gave her my email address and told her I'd love to hear from her. Then I waited.

About 6 months later I got a letter. I quickly responded to her and 2 weeks later I got my first email. To make a long story short, we now email each other often, she has my blog and is able to get updates whenever she needs to. Just 2 weeks ago she sent the twins a package. Through Mrs R, and this blog, I was able to receive the education I needed to realize that I was in the wrong. I am SO thankful for this blog. I think we can all learn from each other. My twins will have a relationship with her now, one that, had I not corrected my ways, they wouldn't have had. I too have a relationship with her now. She told me she thinks of me as her little sister (I'm almost 10 yrs younger). We emailed each other one night for over 2 hours just back and forth. We don't even use the agency to communicate any more. She has our address, we have hers. I'm so grateful so has such a big heart. (I promise that while this comes across as me being the reason why birthmothers get so hurt, please just know that I just wasn't educated. I NEVER imagined what I could be doing to her or to my twins for that matter. I'm not a bad person, I just made a mistake.)

Do I think EVERYONE should have an open adoption, nope, it's just not possible. I know that sometimes it's not even an option. We all have unique situations and we shouldn't feel guilty if one is not like another. What do I think? I think if you're waiting to adopt or even considering it, decide what your comfortable with and then be ready to follow through. I caused our birthmother SO much pain because I said I'd do one thing and then I didn't do it and not because I had intent to hurt but because I was so scared that I wouldn't be able to bring my babies home if I told her how I really felt! Has she forgiven me? I think so. When you know better you do better, right?! I also think if there are others out there, like me, who for one reason or another aren't living up to your end of the deal, please re-evalute why and if you think it's something you could change go for it. Follow your gut. Mine told me I needed to fix things with her...and that I needed some chocolate. =0)

let the race to the race begin

there are a few things i know about the canyonlands half marathon.

1) i will not be wearing ugly shorts like these poor little lambs have to wear.

2) we will look a lot cuter in our matching running shirts than these guys.

3) yes, matching running shirts. photos coming soon.

4) boys do not look cute in running apparel. (unless you are jacob black. forgive me ...i just saw new moon. holla!)

5) registration opened today. you can register as a group, but only 6 people can be in each group. r little group is full. r group is "r house runs for adoption." if someone wants to create an additional group called "r house runs for adoption 2" when they register, let me know and i will tell people to jump into your group too. does that makes sense?

email me if you have any questions or problems.

click HERE to register.

to visit other r house runs for adoption "members" (it is in no way exclusive), go here. interested in becoming a "member"? email me.

guest blogger: memms

memms is the daughter of one of my besties, kim (aka sensei). here she is kissing her brand new little sister, millz.

kim and her hubbs have had a hard time getting their sweet babies here. they recently enjoyed the safe arrival of millz.

the arrival of millz has made us all baby hungry. i cannot believe that gavin is the age that tyson was when gavin was born. i am looking forward to a new baby in r home ...hopefully in the near future. i am already gearing up and organizing my finding efforts.

millz's older sister memms is apparently baby hungry as well.

memms: mom, i wish it would rain babies from the sky.

kim: don't we all.

seriously ...don't we all!

oopsie. i forgot to do this yesterday. lol.

a special "thank you" to all of those involved in getting approvals to feature children. it would take forever to do it without you.

want to help?
check out this post to see our progress
and
this one to see what you can do to help.

for those that will be featuring utah children....please email brenda at {cutefamilyof5 at gmail dot com.} she needs to get a list to the Utah Adoption Exchange. they have been very supportive--they just want to see where the children are being featured.

don't see your state on our list?
that means we need you to help us contact them. jump on into the advocacy!

thanks for all you do to advocate adoption.
xoxox

Utah
Josiah age 8.
Friendly Josiah is greatly anticipating being adopted and having a stable, loving family of his own. This kind kid loves to ride his bike but one of his greatest passions is for football! Josiah is a people person and likes to mingle with those he meets. He is veryadaptable and is a fun boy to be around. Josiah is currently attending the third grade. He is benefiting from counseling, which will need to continue after placement. A nurturing home that can prove to be caring and secure is what Josiah needs most. This young guy is waiting for a forever family who can offer him the great home he deserves. It is very important to Josiah that his forever family be supportive of contact and visitation with his biological siblings.

Wisconsin
Frank age 12.
Frank is described by others as an attractive young man with expressive, brown, sparkling eyes. He is outgoing, loving and enjoys helping around the house. He also enjoys shooting hoops, meeting new people, playing with cars and drawing. Frank is very active, energetic and loves hugs! He would prefer living in a home and community with children he can interact with. He also likes animals and has a cat, dog and two birds in his current foster home.

Academically, Frank describes himself as a “smart kid.” He is in the sixth grade and will need help catching up in math and reading. In addition, he will need support in meeting his academic potential and a structured school plan that will address his behavioral issues which include being physically and verbally aggressive toward his peers and authority figures at school. Currently, Frank is continuously working on his behaviors in school and learning to accept direction from authority figures.

Oregon
Austin & Jacob ages 15 & 9.
Austin and Jacob are typical boys, who enjoy rough housing, playing sports, and playing video games. Both boys have bright blue eyes and sandy brown hair, which is kept short.
Austin is reserved and can be soft spoken. He enjoys cooking meals and is learning a variety of life skills. He loves going to school and being 'one of the guys' with his peers. He also enjoys being read the Harry Potter series.

Jacob is outgoing and is often more dominant than Austin. Jacob has a funny sense of humor and isn't afraid to tell it like it is. He enjoys dressing up on a daily basis and loves his suit jacket and tie combination. He can be a very smart boy and is able to maneuver situations to his benefit.

Alabama
KJ, Robert & Markala ages 11, 8 & 2.
KJ loves sports and basketball is his favorite. KJ enjoys playing video games and swimming. He does well in school and makes good grades. KJ has a hearing deficit and requires the use of a hearing aid. He also has a slight speech impediment due to this. He will thrive with love and support.

Robert enjoys playing video games and playing with his brother. Robert will require ongoing help in school. He has difficulty with reading and will need structure to help him achieve educational success. He enjoys participating in church.

Markala is a beautiful little girl. She is very quiet and does not talk much until she feels comfortable. Markala enjoys playing with other children and giving hugs. She will require a nurturing family that can work with her on developing emotionally.

guest blogger: renee'

for this last full week of national adoption month, i thought we should enjoy a week of guest blogging. i have people lined up from all sides of adoption with interesting, entertaining, thought-provoking and tear-jerking messages to share.

each of their stories has touched me in a profound way and i felt like i needed to share them with you ...with their permission, of course.

this is renee' with her birth mother, linda and her daughter, ali. this was their first meeting, 15 years ago when renee' was 30.

to kick off the week, i want to share with you an incredible interview that one of my tweeps (twitter peeps) did. renee' deluca was adopted as an infant in a closed adoption. she shares her story of what her parents did right, what she wishes went a little differently, what she wondered about and how she went about finding her birth family.

she makes many profound points that gave me goosebumps:

• tell your children they were adopted as early as possible ...and be honest.
  
• families are made in many different ways.
• there can't be enough people in this world to love and care about you.
• don't be threatened by openness.
  
• those urges to search, to find out who you are ...is the most normal thing.
• "where did i come from" is one of the most basic questions.
• share age appropriate info.
  

powerful.
very powerful.

click HERE to enjoy the whole interview. it is fantastic.