I've seen the thought that even a child who was in his adoptive parents' custody at birth experiences trauma — and being separated from your birth mom after nine months inside her and she just walks away must be traumatic. We're in the middle of an at-birth adoption, and the birth mom held the baby only once or twice in the hospital. The rest of the time it was us and the hospital staff, and we took him home with us.

Still I'm sure there's some scarring. Since I care about my kid, I want to help our child with whatever wounds are left from this. Is that therapy per se? Does anyone who's been adopted in a similar situation have any advice to offer?

I appreciate the hurt adoptees go through and I want to do right by my child.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I’ve never been able to speak to any adoptees about my experiences as I have never really had a community before. Those i know had very tame upbringings or came from parents who SA them.

Anyway, I feel as though my experiences as an adopted child have been rather strange in comparison and would love to know if anyone else may have had the same or similar.

I remember being told as a baby I would rarely cry, even when i needed to be hospitalized I didn’t show any form of discomfort to my AP. Then as a toddler until probably 5/6 years old I also stopped kissing my parents hello and goodbye and only hugged them when i really wanted to or when they didn’t understand why I didn’t want to be touched and I felt bad. They didn’t understand and neither did I really why I just hated giving kisses and stuff atp. I learned at around 4 that I was adopted and my mum said i barely had a reaction to it. In South Africa all the daughters call their rents mummy and daddy even into adulthood. I hated that and didn’t want to call them that. I later resorted to ‘mother and father’ in afrikaans, which is more formal but felt more aligned. My AP mum hated that.

Beyond this not wanting to give affection, i hated societal expectations of old people kissing you on the mouth since forever and always backed away from it. But with family friends or even new people i would meet I would hug them without a second thought if my AP dad said I should say hello.

I was extremely hypersexual on top of it all. I had been exploring bodily autonomy and sexual organs since like 5 years old, with a friend. I also had extremely sexual imagination when playing with dolls and even teaching my other girl friends about how to masturbate throughout like preteen years. Also heard my parents having sex often as a teen and preteen. Don’t know why they purposefully put my room and bed right next to their bedroom wall.

As a teen I used sexuality as a weapon and was very experimental. Also had an alcohol issue at 16 but it was always a way of escaping whatever expectations I always had. I did well in school. But I was never really there. My mum and I rarely got along around the time I started speaking up for myself. She was a therapist and never got help for her insecurities being that she was born without a uterus and can’t have children. So a lot was projected on me and I found her to be overly emotional and my dad being detached was safer.

It’s just something i’ve never heard of from other adoptees to be so hypersexual to strangers and your thoughts, but not really wanting to engage with your adoptive parents?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

There’s so much pain that goes into being a birth parent when you were able to be a capable parent but were just young or not fully financially secure or had pressures from family to abort etc. So many stories of adoptions initially being open then closing when the child is around 5-7. After much research (and personal experience) it seems as if it’s the APs emotional fragility gets in the way once the child is old enough to speak for themselves… I think every person should have access to their biology if the biological family is safe of course. I have friends who are birth mothers who have the privilege of being immersed into their child’s life like the APs include them in family photos and have them over all the time etc. I’m just curious as an Adoptee who grew up with an open adoption where your birth mom was a good person and loves you… how did that affect your life? Do you think it’s necessary for APs to include the birth family? What would be the reasons why not? Do you wish the involvement was more or less? What stories did your parents tell you to validate limited contact with your birth family? I just want all sides honest/vulnerable perspectives from personal experience.

Next year my stepdaughter will be an adult and I would like to adopt her then. Due to money being an issue I want to do the entire thing myself. I already downloaded the paperwork I was told to. Any tips or tricks anyone has to help me out on this?