“Open adoption is often presented to birthparents as a way to lessen the grief of losing a child to adoption. Being able to see your child, and eventually develop a relationship with him or her does not, however, change the fact that you are no longer the child’s parent. In fact, the loss of being Mom or Dad is often painfully obvious to us with each visit. Infants may only stop crying when the adoptive mother picks them up, and toddlers quickly become the adoptive father’s “Daddy’s little girl.”
Brenda Romanchik, author