Mom Breaks Down Her Unique Open Adoption Story and the 1 Rule She’s Established with Daughter’s Birth Mom (Exclusive)

• TikToker Chantel Dauster started sharing about her health journey and parenting experiences years before adopting her daughter Ivy Joy.
• The mom of two successfully opted for an open adoption, meaning she and her daughter, now 6, could keep up a relationship with Ivy’s birth mother, Savannah, now age 21.
• Since the mom-influencer already garnered a social media audience before the adoption, she’s continued posting about the dynamic between her, Ivy and Savannah over the years.

Ivy Joy sees her older friend Savannah at least once a year, usually in October, when the 6-year-old celebrates her birthday. Savannah — or “Nana,” as Ivy calls her — flies from her home in Seattle to Houston, where the young girl lives with her 11-year-old brother Knox and parents, Shaun and Chantel Dauster.

Savannah, now 21 years old, has known Ivy since the day she was born. One might even say the two were acquainted even before Ivy was born, though Chantel tells PEOPLE that Ivy started to understand her relationship to “Nana” as years have passed and questions have come up.

“She would see pregnant photos of myself,” Chantel, 43, says of her daughter’s growing curiosity. “I was like, ‘Knox, he grew in Mommy’s belly, and then Mommy gave birth to him. You grew in Nana’s belly, but then Mom became Mom.'”

These days, Chantel says Ivy understands the term “birth mom.” More recently, Chantel and her husband — with help from Savannah and her own mother — have taken further steps to help Ivy comprehend what it means to be adopted.

Chantel uses social media to give her thousands of followers a glimpse into their open adoption. The agreement keeps open lines of communication between the family and Savannah, who was 15 when she gave birth to Ivy.

This includes Savannah’s aforementioned yearly trips to see Ivy in Texas, and in February, Chantel decided to surprise Ivy’s biological mother and bring her out to Washington for a Valentine’s Day visit. Chantel documented their journey to see Savannah in two now-viral TikTok videos, and as seen in the vlogs, the whole group was glad to see each other.

Ivy and her mom had the opportunity to get to know Savannah’s relatives as well, and the two families merged for a “huge celebration,” as Chantel described in her video.

“[Savannah’s] whole family was so sweet, warm and welcoming,” the mom of two said in a voiceover that accompanied the compilation of clips. “They showered [Ivy] with so many sweet gifts. This was bigger than Christmas and birthday combined for this girl.”

In part two of the visit vlogs, Chantel showed her, Ivy and Savannah at the hospital where Ivy was born. In another voiceover, the Texan parent detailed how her daughter often asks detailed questions about the day she was born, and Chantel was thrilled to answer some of those queries as they walked around the space.

As she explained in the video, it was an emotional experience to walk through the hospital halls where she, Shaun and Knox once “prayed as a family and were so expectant for [Ivy’s] birth.”

Looking back, she tells PEOPLE exclusively that her heartfelt regard for Savannah only increased in the weeks after Ivy arrived safely. Chantel wanted an open adoption agreement from the very beginning, however she was sad to learn that Savannah wasn’t on board. That changed quickly after she met the people adopting her newborn.

“When we flew to Seattle upon Ivy’s almost birth, [Savannah] just wanted to hang out with us. I think she just liked us from our phone call, and she was young,” Chantel reflects. “I think she didn’t really know what she wanted … then it just became really natural.”

After Ivy’s arrival, Chantel had to remain in Washington for three more weeks before taking her newborn home to Texas. During that time, she bonded with a newly postpartum Savannah, working with the then-teen’s own mother — who is close to Chantel’s age — to help Savannah with nursing.

“It was just really natural relationship, and then we continued that relationship. When it came time for Ivy’s first birthday, I invited her to come,” Chantel adds of Savannah. “It’s become a tradition ever since.”

The TikTok creator describes Ivy and Savannah’s relationship as “very sweet” and “playful.” Chantel says that when Savannah isn’t showering Ivy with gifts, her adoptive parents keep her biological mom updated on major milestones. They called her when baby Ivy sat up for the first time and when she lost her first tooth, and Savannah FaceTimed in to watch Ivy during a special church dedication ceremony.

“We just try to include her in things like that. So Ivy knows, it’s not like any other friend,” Chantel adds. “We say that: ‘Nana is very special. She’s your birth mom. We’re so grateful for her.’ We speak highly of her … It’s almost like an auntie relationship.”

Savannah may play an aunt-like role in Ivy’s life, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to Savannah feeling like a sister to Chantel. Instead, they also have more of an aunt-niece dynamic. The content creator credits the success of their relationship both to her own set boundaries and to Savannah’s respectful approach to playing a role in their lives.

One of Chantel’s main rules is that Ivy only refers to her as “Mom,” whereas Savannah is just “Nana” to the kid. She appreciates the 21-year-old’s complete willingness to abide. As for enforcing other major relationship-defining regulations, Chantel says the distance between Houston and Seattle has aided them in avoiding possible conflicts.

“She hasn’t tried to have a mom role, and so there really wasn’t a whole lot of boundaries that I needed to set. She just respected naturally and … it happened from the beginning,” Chantel continues to PEOPLE. “We live across the country, and so it’s a little different when some families that are managing an open adoption and they live in the same city.”

If Savannah was only a few miles away, Chantel says she could see things getting difficult if Ivy’s birth mom wanted to spend longer periods of time with the girl, like weekend-long sleepovers. If that were the case, Chantel would probably draw a line.

“Even though I love and trust Savannah, you never know. She does have a boyfriend. I really like her boyfriend, and he has a little boy, but I don’t know him all that well,” she explains of the hypothetical hurdle. “And so I would not feel comfortable with [Ivy] spending the night and just stuff like that, but it’s a non-issue since we have the physical distance as well.”

In her first video about their surprise Seattle visit, Chantel addressed common questions people pose about her pursuit of an open adoption.

“I often get asked if I get concerned or insecure about the close relationship that I try to cultivate between Ivy and her birth family,” she said in the voiceover from February. “My answer is no. Of course, this isn’t the case for every adoption, but for ours, we feel like the more love, the merrier. The more secure and wanted we can possibly make our daughter feel, the better.”

She elaborates on such feelings while speaking to PEOPLE, noting that her confidence and sense of security date back to “the very beginning,” when Savannah was freshly postpartum. The birth mom held then-infant Ivy and gave her a bottle, but Chantel maintains that she never wavered in her role as the baby’s mom.

“There wasn’t a part of me that was just fearful. I don’t know. I just had a lot of peace,” she says, adding that her faith played a part in reassuring her that she was making the right decision.

“We also had several failed adoption matches, or we would get matched with a birth mom, and she would choose to parent. Before things happened with Savannah, it was painful,” Chantel adds. “But we just had this tremendous sense of peace from the very beginning, specifically with the match with Savannah.”

The influencer built a following over a decade ago, when she opened up online about her breast cancer diagnosis. Since 2014, she has brought her viewers along her health journey, including her chemotherapy treatment and six surgeries to treat her illness.

After she went into remission, she continued posting and documenting her motherhood experience, both in parenting her two kids and trying to grow her family.

Chantel tells PEOPLE she and her husband, Shaun, always wanted to adopt. Their initial plan was to conceive two kids and then look to adoption for their third, but their options narrowed after her cancer. At that point, the mom had already garnered enough of an audience that she felt compelled to share their adoption journey.

Fortunately, her fans paid it forward. “I had a fundraiser. It was very expensive adoption,” Chantel recalls. “So people helped with that. It was just this really sweet, really communal thing … I wasn’t just like, ‘Oh, I’m going to share just about my adoption.’ It was just a continuation of our journey.”

For as long as she’d been inclined toward adopting, she also wanted it to be an open process that posed no barrier between her adopted child and their birth mother. She acknowledges that open adoption isn’t always “the safest option for a child,” but she knew that if they felt it would be right, then that’s what she and Shaun would pursue.

She clarifies that she doesn’t at all “judge or blame parents that are choosing to close their adoption or to have a lot of boundaries within.” Chantel knows full well that even in situations like hers with Ivy and Savannah, “openness” can manifest in various degrees.

“When you have an open adoption. It’s not like you have a contract and you’re just like, ‘We can do this and this and that.’ It’s not co-parenting. It’s just basically a verbal agreement,” she shares. “Some birth moms are in deep grief, and they don’t have or don’t respect boundaries.”

“The reason why I wanted [an open adoption] is because I didn’t want Ivy to just wonder and to have to go on this hunt if she ever wanted to,” she continues. “Some adoptees don’t, but a lot of them do, and they have questions, and I wanted it to be open. I wanted it to be a safe space for her. And if it was a relationship that … my husband and I could cultivate with them, that felt safe for Ivy.”

Chantel admits she and Shaun aren’t sure how Ivy will respond to her situation when she’s a grown adult, but they ultimately sought open adoption to broaden the girl’s options in the future. So far, it’s worked out for both Ivy and Savannah.

“I want to do whatever is within my control to make [Ivy’s childhood] the safest, most loving space for her,” Chantel tells PEOPLE. “I just really feel blessed that that is even an option because like I said, the relationship felt really natural, and I know that’s not always the case.”

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