More Questions

Since I recently posted on questions I’d ask the Holt nannies, it got me thinking about the questions we asked Judah’s birthmom. Having never been through an adoption before, I had no clue what questions to ask or what that might look like. In the months leading up to travel, I started a list of questions that I might ask his birthmom.

Maybe you’re just going through the process of adoption. Maybe you’re considering adoption or maybe you’re just curious what kind of questions get asked. For those who’ve been through the process, please comment with any additional questions I didn’t know/ask. I’ll share the questions I had written down to give you an idea of the questions we put together. If you’re adopting through Holt, they will also give you a list of potential questions to ask. Please know that we didn’t ask all the questions we had written down. In fact, I had to re-create my question list as we drove to Durame because my questions were part of the “packing list” that was left in the states.

Why did you name him Asfaw?
What would you like us to tell him about his brothers?
What would you like us to tell him about his father?
What would you like us to tell him about you?
What skills/special talents does your family have?
Can you tell me about his birth?
Who does he look like?
How did you decide to relinquish him?
Can you tell us about your village?
Can you tell us about his birthmarks/scars?
Write down some family names and history to talk to his mom about
Ask her how you can be praying for her.
Take photo album
Show her pics on the digital camera
What do you want me to tell Asfaw about why he was adopted?
What do you want Asfaw to know about you, his father, his brothers?


We also wanted to bring back something that Judah could see and touch that would relate to his birth mom. I traced her hand with the intent of writing her name or something meaningful inside of it for later on (ie her name or “love” in his original language). I also thought that I could use her traced-hand next to my traced hand with her hand having the wylotinga “love” in it and mine having it in English. As a side note, if you’re going to do this, I would suggest that you show her by example first so she’ll be more likely to hold still. The other thing we did was ask her to dictate a letter to Judah that he can be given later on. This got mixed up in translation a bit so we ended up with a dictated letter to us which is pretty special. She then followed it with a letter to Judah which we don’t have in our hand. It had not been translated and the nurse Tesfaw took it home to translate and bring back the next day. Well the next day his mom was sick and he took her to the hospital so he wasn’t there on our last day to give us the letter back. I do hope that he sends it to Holt in Oregon so they can forward it to us! The last thing we did was take pictures with Judah’s birthmom. Every family did this. After the pictures Ryan turned our camera around and began showing her pictures and video of Judah. Her entire deameanor changed and we asked a friend (thanks Jayme) to take pictures of Judah’s birthmom’s reaction to his pictures and video. Those pictures that Jayme took are pretty special!