Adoption Records Opened in Ontario

Finally. As of June 1, 2009 if you were adopted in Ontario – or if your child was placed for adoption – you can receive information from your birth and adoption records through Service Ontario.
Prior to locating my birth parents the only information I had was the initial of my birth surname, my first name [...]

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Celebrity Adoption

When I heard Madonna was hoping to adopt internationally again, I immediately had my concerns. Some people think such celebrities should focus their attention on adopting within their own country, while others believe the fact that their desire to adopt brings adoption into the spotlight is a positive thing.
In the April 2009 Adoption Council of [...]

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Adoption Connections

I don’t think I fully understood open adoption until I began researching open adoption online. Through the magic of the Internet I was introduced to a remarkable woman who was not only a birth mother, but who has opened her heart and talents to other birth parents and adoptive parents in Canada through her website [...]

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Breast Feeding as an Adoptive Mother

Occasionally I take a look at online waiting parent registries for no other reason than because I am curious. Recently I came across a posting in which an adoptive mother offers to breast feed their adopted baby. Apparently hormone pills can be administered that assist in the production of breast milk. This particular adoptive [...]

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Ten Confessions of an Adoptee

I often wonder how different I would have turned out had I been raised by my birth parents
I often think my birth parents are still hiding some information regarding my birth from me
My adoptive parents are my parents and it [...]

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The Confusion and Guilt of Being a Sister by Birth

My first face-to-face meeting with my half-birth-sister on my birth-father’s side was when she was fifteen years old. She was full of attitude and spunk and my initial impression upon seeing her was that she is very pretty, has nice long legs (must be from her mother’s side) and that she looked like a nice [...]

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Unsuspecting Twins Marry – Another Reason Open Adoption is a Good Thing

There are many downsides to closed adoptions, but the recent story of twins unwittingly marrying one another because they didn’t know they were siblings (read story here) is definitely a strong argument in favour of open adoption. Some people may laugh at the twins’ misfortune, but as an adoptee of a closed adoption I empathize. [...]

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The sad side of adoption.

Over the holiday season I witnessed many friends and colleagues celebrating their first Christmases with their new sons or daughters. It was a special time for them filled with many family, friends and copious posing with babies for pictures. It struck me then that I spent my first Christmas on earth alone. For reasons I [...]

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Is it Ironic?

The one thing that makes an adopted child different from other children is that an adopted child, such as me, knows (or should know) they are adopted. They know someone other than their parents gave them life (and for all intents and purposes my adoptive parents are my parents, after all I grew up calling [...]

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Meant to be

The most surprising information my birth mother shared with me shortly after our reunion was that she met someone a few months after my birth, married within the year and had her first child two years following my birth. At first I was unsure how I felt about this. I had fully expected my birth [...]

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