Phone calls, birth names, and adoptive names

I’m going to just write a short post --  I really need to be writing my lesson plans for next week!  I seem to run out of time when I’m at school, so I brought my plan book home with me.  I wanted to answer a couple of questions that were asked in the comments from my last post, though.

Patti asked if we’ll get to talk to Zoe’s birthmom (Z) over the next few days.  We hope to possibly talk to her tomorrow, but in case she’s not home/or busy, we’re sending her a bouquet of flowers.  We added a note that we’ll be thinking of her.  We also invited them to Zoe’s birthday party on Saturday and Z said that they are planning on attending.  We’re very excited for them to see how much Zoe has grown since our trip to the zoo with them in June!

Anonymous wrote:  “I didn’t realize Zoe had a "birth name" and an "adoptive name". Can you please explain?”  Before Zoe was born, her birthmom asked us if we had thought of any names for the baby.  We had thought of 2 girl names and 2 boy names.  She said she liked them all, but she mentioned that of the girl names, she preferred Zoe.  We liked “Zoe” before we had ever met Z (her name is not Zoe, by the way.)  We loved that she liked the name, and we loved that it started with the same letter as her name.  Her middle name is also in honor of her birthmom and her birthgrandma.

As far as her birthname is concerned, Zoe’s birthmom chose a name that she wanted to give to her.  At the hospital all of the paperwork for the original birth certificate is filled out by the birthmom or birthparents, and the name that she/they want to give the baby is filled out by them.  Sometimes a birthparent will choose to name the baby the same name that the adoptive parents chose and that name will be on the original birth certificate.  Sometimes adoptive parents choose to not change the child’s name (I think this probably happens a lot in the case of adoptions of older children, in particular.)

Zoe’s original birth certificate has her birth name (this includes her birthmom’s last name) on it.  Her more recent birth certificate that we got after her adoption was finalized has her adoptive name on it (including our last name.)  We are in the process of changing things over and filing paperwork to include her adoptive name (such as health insurance and social security.)

Hope that all makes sense.  I’m not working on much sleep at the moment!