Meg and Chris Nelson’s two daughters couldn’t be more different. Six-and-a-half-year-old Lizzie and three-and-a-half-year-old Kate each take after her own birth mother in looks and personality.

“Lizzie is a string bean, and Kate is our pumpkin,” Meg says. “Introverted, extroverted, blue eyes, brown eyes.”

The Nelsons always considered adoption an option and began the adoption process not long after they decided to start their family.

“My sister adopted all three of her kids,” Meg says, adding she was concerned about her chances of getting pregnant. “Chris said, ‘Why wait?’ So we started pursuing adoption early.”

They chose Catholic Charities’ Adoption Services because they felt it provided personal care in domestic adoptions. Adoption Services places 10 to 15 infants a year with local families. Neither adoptive families nor birth mothers need to be Catholic. Because the Nelsons planned to raise their children in the Catholic faith, they were drawn to Catholic Charities’ values.

“The two birth mothers chose us partly because they were raised Catholic and wanted faith and education to be important for the family they chose,”  says Meg.

The Nelson family sees each birth mother four times a year, even though one lives in Washington, D.C. They keep in touch through monthly e-mails and phone calls. Lizzie’s birth father came to two visits before the adoption and again when she was a year old. Ongoing communication between adoptive families and the birth parents, known as open adoption, has become the norm. Closed or anonymous adoptions aren’t common.

“When we started the process, we knew open adoption was common, but we were 100 percent against it,” Meg says. “We were willing to communicate for a limited amount of time. Open adoption was something we came to over time and now wouldn’t have any other way.”

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