3 Steps To Adopt A Baby
There are so many choices to make in the adoption process that it can often be hard to know exactly where to start. Many women tell me that they just aren’t where to start and what steps to take in what order to take to reach their goal of adopting a baby.
After years of people asking us how we adopted our children I decided to formalize our process to help our friends navigate the world of adoption. After all we have survived it all, a disrupted adoption at 7 days of parenting, several almost matches, and even a couple of failed matches but we managed to navigate the system with very little support to find our way to our daughter and son.
After surviving all of this I vowed to not let another woman walk through this journey alone. To share what I learned to help save you time and heartache. Let’s get started with the three basic steps that you will need to take to adopt a child.
3 Steps to Adopting a Child
Define Your Journey
Share Your Story
Become a Mother
Define Your Journey
Within this step there are three substeps to take. First, as with any journey you need to have a vision of where you are headed, second, know the different paths to take along the way, and third pick a path to adopt your child.
First step to defining your journey, casting your vision of what your life will look like at the end of the journey. Imagine this in great detail, where do you live, what do you work or do you work, who are your kids, what do they like or don’t like, where do they go to school, what does their room look like. The more detail you can think of at this stage the better, it will help you so much on the different parts of your adoption journey ahead.
There are a couple of different ways you can really capture this vision. If you are a writer, you could grab a scrap piece of paper and just write until your heart's content, until your can clearly see the vision. If you are more visual you could open up PowerPoint and just copy and paste images to a page that really are the pictures you see in your mind. This could also be a really fun exercise to do with your partner as well, it would serve as a great gut check to ensure you are on the same page on what you see as your future family.
Jump into the Facebook Group for help with writing your story!
The second step in defining your journey is to understand all of the possible paths to adopt a child. Do you want to adopt a baby or an older child, do you want to carry the child yourself, do you want to adopt a child from the United States, do you want to adopt internationally, do you want to adopt privately or through foster care, what type of contact do you want to have with the birth families after the adoption is final? Really the list of questions goes on and on, but answering these questions becomes so much easier once you have a clear vision of where you want to be at the end of this journey. It is important that you and your partner discuss this together and list out all of the questions you have after doing some initial research. Be sure to check for additional articles that I have written on all of these options in more detail.
The final step in defining your journey is to pick a path or paths, because let’s face it when your doing your initial exploration it can be a good thing to weigh a couple of options in more detail to help you make a decision. It can even be helpful to discuss the options and your questions with an experienced adoption coach to help you decide how to adopt your child.
Share Your Story
Now that you have written the vision of what your life will be like at the end of this journey and picked a path it is time to tell your story to potential birth families. This will happen in different ways depending on which path you picked for your adoption journey.
If you decided to choose a path that would leverage an agency you will need to follow what they require. Some agencies require you to make physical storybooks here is my favorite one that I have found because you can customize it so much, https://www.shutterfly.com/sitesearch/adoption+photobook. They also tend to have great sales from time to time which will come in handy if you need multiple copies of these. I make a version of this for our family every year as our family yearbook, so if you need help in making your profile book just send me an email, I would be happy to help! amanda@myadoptioncoach.com
Other agencies will have particular questions for you to answer that the might pair with a video or a letter you write, really there are so many different ways that they leverage that I simply couldn’t write about them all here or you would read forever. The bottom line is that they all leverage the story you write, so being super descriptive and detailed in the vision you write will help you in this version of sharing your story. Again if you need help with your profile I am happy to help, that is one of the most fun aspects of adopting!
If you decided not to use an agency for your adoption journey and instead are going to leverage a private attorney to complete your paperwork and either find a birth family on your own or through the attorney you will still need to tell your story it will just happen in a slightly different way. You could find potential birth mothers through social media, your doctor, your church, or even a local non profit no matter which way you get introduced your story will be a crucial step in the conversations you have with the birth family.
Telling the story of your life and the life this child will have with you is critical to the overall adoption journey. The birth family is getting to know you and telling your story in great detail will help them decide if that is the same vision they have for this child’s life as well. The story my husband and I told about our lives and the life our child would have with us is what allowed us to adopt so quickly both times. The agency had warned us that the wait would be between 2-3 years but each time we adopted within 1 year. And when you are waiting to adopt a child each day can feel like a month, so the clarity of your story matters.
Become A Mother
The final step is actually becoming the mother, and here too there are many substeps to take depending on the route you choose for your adoption journey. The basic things in common are getting picked by a birth family, communicating with the birth family and agency during the pre-hospital time period, communicating at the hospital, waiting through the revocation period, the adoption becoming “final” or legal and adhering to the agreed upon communication after birth.
All of these steps can be very nerve wracking because emotions will be running on high, so it is very important to stay as level headed and non emotional as possible during these steps. Having a coach during this time is critical because you will need someone to help you process and deal. I remember during this time was when I needed the most support because I second guessed everything I did or didn’t do when it came to communicating with the birth family. It felt like I was dating but magnified to the millionth degree because this was the thing I wanted more than anything else in life.
It is very important that you understand the laws, rules and any agency procedures during this time. Knowing where the boundaries exist during this step will give you a sense of comfort to be able to operate within the framework as it is your protection. You are your only advocate in this entire process, unless you have a coach that is, so it is up to you to ensure that your agency/attorney is looking out for you and explaining everything to you. Asking detailed questions about each step and what comes next would have helped my husband and I understand that the birth parents of our first match could change their minds up to 30 days after placement. Asking that one little question would have helped us avoid a disruption after parenting for 7 days. That one question would have changed everything for that situation but I just didn’t know to ask it.
Adoption is one of the most difficult things to accomplish but hands down one of the most rewarding things in life. Having a coach in your corner will help you understand the steps in the adoption process, be a sounding board as you make life changing decisions, and having someone that has walked the same path is a critical step to help you achieve your goal of motherhood.
Remember you can do this and I have your back!
I help women build their families through adoption by giving them the step by step guide to adopt a child and support on their journey
