Here’s the fourth post in our blog series, “Then and Now.” If you missed our past posts, you can read all of Lifetime’s Then and Now series here.

Single adoptive mother Theresa adopted her son Spencer through Lifetime 18 years ago. Both have stayed in touch with Spencer’s birth mother Laura throughout the years. They’ve enjoyed an open adoption, as they share their adoption experience in this video:

The video was shot at Lifetime Adoption Center in 2009, as part of a special about adoption curated by PBS.  Theresa shares about what helped her during her adoption wait, including becoming educated on open adoption. She describes the relationship she has with the birth mom, Laura, who chose her to parent her son. Laura talks about how she came to choose Theresa from a large selection of hopeful adoptive families.

When he visited us for the PBS special, Spencer was just a boy, shy and well-mannered. Today, Spencer is 18 years old and has enjoyed his high school football career. His adoptive mom Theresa writes, “We’ve stayed in such close contact with his birth mom and siblings that he is really close to his brother. It turns out they both play football and are somewhat shy, so they have really bonded and we go to each other’s football games now.

It’s truly a miracle how our families have really blended; we even went to his birth mom’s grandchild’s 1st birthday party. We’re very close and see his birth mom, brother, and sisters and see them at least three times a year. His siblings love Spencer so much!”

Written by Heidi Keefer

Heidi Keefer is a Content Creator for Lifetime Adoption and has 15 years of experience in the field of adoption. An author of thousands of blog posts over the years, Heidi enjoys finding new ways to educate and captivate Lifetime’s ever-growing list of subscribers.

Heidi has a keen eye for misplaced apostrophes, comma splices, and well-turned sentences, which she has put to good use as a contributor to Lifetime’s award-winning blogs. She has written and published hundreds of adoption articles which explore the various facets of domestic infant adoption today.