And no, this post has nothing to do with Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and/or the United States of America.

.

As most people know, we chose open adoption to build our family.

When we first explored open adoption it scared the heck out of us.  We were nervous about too much input from the birth parents, we were nervous about too many visits, we were nervous about judgement over the parenting decisions we make.  (Now, we laugh at our original worries.  Too much input – not a problem in our circumstance.  Too many visits – even though we chose international in part to limit this, now we wish there could be more.  Judgement over our parenting decisions – everyone seems to judge parenting decisions regardless of adoption.  But I digress…).

When were doing our adoption research we met with an amazing couple who shared their adoption journey with us.  They said something along the lines of

We just take the approach that only good things can come from so many people loving one child.

Somehow, this was a lightbulb kind of moment.  As long as everyone is putting this child first, nothing else really matters.  In a way, this has turned into our motto.

To this day, people are shocked that we are in touch with his birthmother and that we want to be, and so we always explain it with our motto – only good things can come from so many people loving one child.
Needless to say this way of thinking also helped us realize that all of our fears were based mainly in the fear that too much contact would complicate our roles as parents.  Yes, that’s right, our fears were about us as parents, not about the child.  And so we realized one of the critical flaws in our fear based thinking – as parents our primary concern must be our child, not ourselves.

So, when we fully committed to open adoption we decided to hell with all our parenting fears.  When we chose open adoption and we were waiting to be matched we began hoping that the birth mother who would one day chose us would also want a long term open relationship so that she and our child would be able to know each other.  Really we just bought into the idea that love needs to come first.  And, so even before we knew Baby MPB we began to put our parenting fears aside and simply put our future Baby MPB first.  That said we do realize it is our role as parents to look our for his best interests.

All of thid is to say that we are firm believers in the power of putting love first.  Because seriously, how can love for a child be a bad thing? 

Now if only the whole world could get on-board with the greatness that can come from putting love first…

If you like this post, please feel free to share and please click the follow button on the side or return to myperfectbreakdown.com to follow my journey.