Designing a life book for your adoptive child or foster child may seem overwhelming, especially when you don’t have a lot of information about your child’s life before he or she became a part of your family. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is getting past the feeling over being overwhelmed.

Adoptive families vary in the extent of information they may have about birthmother of their child. While some families actually have the birth mother over to baby sit the child occasionally, others meet at a park for a few hours each year. Other families have no relationship with the birth family, perhaps even nothing more than a name on paper if that.

Many families have two or more adopted children and the relationships of the different birthmoms with the family vary. One birthmom may be very involved, while others have no contact at all. When this happens, oftentimes a birthmom of one child will go out of her way send notes or small gifts to the sibling of the child to make sure each child feels included and loved.

When you have a relationship with a birthmom you may have any information you want for your child’s adoption book. She may be eager to help out to make sure the child has a wonderful book.

If you don’t have very much information about your child’s birth or birth family-if any at all-don’t worry. You can still design an incredible book that helps your child understand his or her history.

For example, though one of the most important parts of the life book is about the biological mother, you may not even have a photo. You may want to include a poem about how a birth mom feels or write something like, “Did you know that your birth mom and birth father passed along a lot of physical traits you to in their DNA. I bet you got your pretty blond curls from your birth mom!”

It’s hard for most people to imagine, but many adoptive parents don’t even know the birthdate of their child or where he or she was born. Rather than writing, “We don’t know the date of your birth” in your child’ adoption album, journal something along the lines of, “We believe you were born during the winter of 2005 some time because when you came to the orphanage you weighed about the same as the other children born about that time.”

Understand that it’s the amount of love and effort that you put into the life book that will most impress your child. As he grows older and starts to ask more questions, plan to do some of the research together to help answer the questions that arise. Until then, get started and don’t let a lack of information thwart you from crafting a loving adoption scrapbook album for your child. Kids love reading stories about themselves and they have the best imagination, having fun make up their own stories to fill in any blanks.

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