In my last post, I ranted about an adoption agency website that boasted their luxury living quarters complete with a swimming pool and twenty four hour state of the art exercise facility for expectant mothers making adoption plans.

On that same agency website was a page that listed the “possible benefits of adoption for birthmothers.” Some of them were basic “benefits” that I’d read before like the ability to continue your educate without juggling a child and... more

If you are pregnant, your due date is getting closer each day. You should begin thinking about your upcoming labor and delivery and hospital stay. If you are making an adoption plan, you still call the shots in how you want things to play out in the hospital.

1. Begin to think about who you’d like in the labor room with you and ask them. Discuss plans and your wishes for the experience. Also discuss how you will be able to find your support person should your labor start in the... more

Below are some warning signs, if you will, of things expectant mothers considering adoption should be on the look out for regarding the potential adoptive parents you may be matched with.

1. Adoptive parents that do not have a home study. You can not adopt without an approved home study. 2. Adoptive parents who give you money and the money comes straight from them to you. Any money the adoptive parents may provide you with for living expenses, medical... more

I decided to compile a list of big red flags – things that ought to make you run screaming for the hills if your adoption worker suggests them.

They want to isolate you from friends or family They encourage you to lie to loved ones or conceal your pregnancy They offer to move you to another state to have your baby They pay your expenses while pregnant but you have to pay them back if you choose to parent They encourage you to sign the papers in the hospital They call you a birthmother the minute... more

We hear a lot in the media about untruthful birthmothers (as the media calls them) who most of the time are not even really pregnant but are just scamming prospective adoptive parents. But what we don’t hear about very often is the untruthful prospective adoptive parents, who may be so desperate to adopt a baby that they are dishonest or misrepresent themselves to expectant mothers considering adoption.

Granted, there are more couples hoping to adopt that are sincere, respectful, and honest, than not, but if you are considering adoption and looking for... more

What’s one phrase you can hear from potential adoptive parents that may serve as a giant red flag?

“I could never do that.”

(Sometimes this is prefaced by a softener, such as “I admire what you are doing…I could never do that.”) But still it’s a warning sign. Why?

If the hopeful parents don’t have the ability to picture themselves in a place of great pain, facing a terrible decision and struggling to determine what’s best, then they aren’t terribly imaginative or empathetic people, and you probably don’t want to place your child with them.

Adoption... more

I once got a newsletter from an adoption agency that claimed to practice open adoption. Their publication, however, showed the opposite of everything they said they believed.

There were no pictures or mentions of birthfamilies, just plenty of adoptive families with glowing descriptions of how they "got" their babies...as if those babies had materialized out of thin air. Birthparents, when mentioned at all, were referred to in derogatory ways, and those women who had changed their minds about relinquishing were heavily castigated for doing so. Adoptions that were mostly closed were referred to as "open," on the basis that pictures and letters were sometimes... more