We had denied the biological mothers request for visitation with any of the three children so we were thinking the mediation was not going to come to any sort of agreement. We are prepared to go to court but we are hoping that this would not happen.
Prior to the mediation meeting we had decided on what we would and would not agree to. We knew visitation with any of the kids was out; there was no doubt that visitation was never going to happen. When we told her that visitation was out she truly looked disappointed. I totally understand her wanting it I cannot even imagine not seeing my kids ever again.
When we denied her visitation request we nicely explained that it was not in the kid’s best interest. We asked her if she had any other requests for us to consider but she said no that was the only thing she wanted. We told her that we would send her quarterly updates on all three kids and once a year we would send her a picture of all three kids once a year. Although the boys were legally ours and she had no rights to them we thought including updates on them would be beneficial for a few reasons. The first was that if she wanted to know anything about the boys she would have to accept our offer and second we really felt it was the right thing to do. Why should we deny her the right to know what is happening with her biological children?
We told her we would set up a post office box where she could send letters to the kids if she wanted to. We also told her that if she agreed to relinquish her rights we would set up a video camera during her last visit with Rebecca so she could record a message for the kids to watch when they got older.
She requested a break to think about it and she would let us know shortly.