A Lifebook for adoption is a scrapbook that details how your child came to be with you.  It is their history and past as well as their present and future.  It is an awesome way to open the door of communication with them to talk bout adoption and also helps them to better understand how they came to be with you.  It also helps them form their identity as they learn where they came from, who they look like, why their birthparents chose adoption and the journey they made to come to you.

You can start a Lifebook in a number of ways.  You can either start from when you met the birthparents, when your child was born or even go back to when the birthmother was pregnant and started considering making an adoption plan. A Lifebook acknowledges that your child’s history did not begin with adoption.  There is a whole story about their lives that happened before they were even born.

If you have a relationship with the birthmother and/or birthfather ask for their help with the book.  Include pictures of them and their families in the book and pictures of the birthmother pregnant as this will help your child understand where they came from, especially when they begin to understand that babies grow in tummies.  I primarily work with birthparents at the adoption agency where I work and I always try to get some pictures of them while they are pregnant (with their permission of course) to be able to give to the adoptive family.  Have the birthparents write letters to add to the book.  I worked with a birthmother who created a Lifebook for her child that was a labor of love for her.

Get your family involved as well.  If you have other children, have them draw a picture or write something in the book.  Your extended family can write letters or well wishes to your child and they can add to the story of how you told them that you were going to be a Mommy and Daddy.

Write down details as they happen, even if you just jot them in a notebook for now and add to them later.  Things happen so fast and it is often hard to keep up with everything.  You might think that you will remember exactly how you felt or what you were going when you first learned about your child or got the call to go to the hospital, but you might forget an important detail such as what the adoption worker said to you or how your spouse and family looked when you told them.

I worked with a birthmother from Guatemala who found out she was pregnant after an unfortunate event.  She WALKED all the way from Guatemala to the US/Mexican border, endured 5 days locked in the back of a truck and walked from Texas to Tennessee to be with her husband and make an adoption plan.  The adoptive family was able to chronicle the journey for their daughter, even though they did leave out some parts of the story to be able to share with her when she was older.

Even better than a child’s book about adoption, your child’s Lifebook will detail their own adoption experience.  It will allow them to have their questions answered and it will also open the door for them to ask you other questions in the future.  It is a way for you to celebrate your child’s story and what makes them so unique and a way to celebrate adoption as well.  I would encourage you to begin the Lifebook even while you are in the waiting process so that you are able to share everything about your child’s story with them and write it down as it happens so that you don’t forget to share even the simplest details with them.  Sometimes the fact that you were planting flowers when you got the call or rocked them all night in the hospital wrapped in the blanket their birthmother made for them end up being the most important details to them about their story.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 27th, 2006 at 12:57 am and is filed under Adoption. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.