My Adoption Story

In the last 3 months, I have had at least 25 different people ask me if I was ever going to find my birth parents.  This question used to annoy the heck out of me, but for some reason, it seemed more like a gentle push toward beginning this new adventure.

I want to preface this with the fact that I have always known that I was adopted and it has never been a secret that my parents kept from me. 

 

These are my parents, Tim and Teri.  As you can see from the picture of my mom and I, I was adopted at a very young age.  In fact, they had worked out the logistics of my adoption before I was even born!

Last week, my mom and I sat down and talked about the details that went into adopting me and she said it was absolute chaos, but that she loved every minute of it.  My mom and dad tried for 7 years to have a baby and nothing happened.  She said that they tried everything from in vitro to hormone therapy and nothing worked.  When I asked her what she thought was the cause, she attributed the infertility to her missing ovary.  See, when my mom was in her 20s, they found a very large ovarian cyst, which ended up completely damaging the ovary.  As a result of this, she was only releasing an egg once every other month.

Well, in early 1989 my mom and dad moved back to Michigan from Massachusetts, so my dad could work with my grandpa at grandpa's business.  They got a new home, got everything settled, and that was when things had changed.  My mom received a phone call from her friend, Beverly, and Beverly told her that she knew of a young woman that was pregnant and was considering adoption as an option.  My mom was so excited, that she called my dad to tell him the good news.  Their conversation went something like this:

Mom: "I have some wonderful news Tim!"

Dad: "So do I! What is your wonderful news?"

Mom: "Beverly knows someone that is giving their baby up for adoption"

Dad: "Oh how wonderful! ...(Insert long conversation about the baby)... I got offered a really great job in Texas and I want to take the offer"

My mom and dad applied to be a prospective couple to adopt the baby, and were one of five couples that were in the running to adopt.  Fortunately for them (and me), my birth parents selected them to be the adoptive parents! They chose my parents because they wanted a family where the mom could be at home with the baby, and my parents could provide that type of lifestyle for me.

Now when you are selected to become adoptive parents, you must go through a screening process, and they do an in-home study to make sure everything is safe for the baby.  This became difficult for my parents because they were to move to Texas in early May 1989.  Unfortunately, right before they left my mom's grandmother Whittaker passed away and it was really difficult for her.  They attended her funeral and moved all of their things to Texas. 

The week after they moved to Texas, Beverly called my mom and said that I had been born.  My mom was so overjoyed at the news and was speedily getting the house ready my arrival.  However, three days after I had been born, my parents had not heard anything from the adoption agency.  My mom said that after a week had passed, she thought that the birth parents had decided to keep the baby and that she had closed the door to the nursery and mourned.  She mourned not only for the loss of a child, but for the loss of her grandmother.

What she did not know, however, is that in Massachusetts, the birth parents cannot sign the paperwork for three days.  This gives them a chance to really think about the decision to give the baby up for adoption.  On her 31st birthday, two weeks after I was born, my mom received a phone call from the adoption agency saying that she could come pick up their little girl.

And that is where my story begins.

I am telling you this story because I have decided to start the search for my birth parents and I want to share this journey with you in the hopes that someone else out there that has been adopted can take comfort in knowing that they are not alone.  As this story unfolds, I will begin to fill you in on the steps I must take and the processes necessary to hopefully find my birth parents.