Did you know that a woman considering adoption for her baby is in control of the adoption process? You’re in control over exactly how your adoption experience goes down. Here, we’ll talk about just a few of the choices you can make during the adoption process.
Type of Adoption
You can take as much time as you need to when you’re making an adoption plan. Along the way, you’ll determine if adoption is best for you and your baby, what kind of relationship you’d like to have with the adoptive family, what your hospital stay might look like, and other details that’ll make your adoption experience just how you want it to be. The steps you take to make an adoption plan for your baby will be customized according to your wishes.
Adoptive Parents
One of the best parts about open adoption is that you can decide who will be your baby’s adoptive parents, and choose how much future contact you’d like to have with them. Lifetime Adoption Agency works with adoptive couples across the US, so you’ll have a wide variety to choose from. There are adoptive couples of various backgrounds, faiths, and ethnicities. You can get tips on how to pick the perfect parents for your baby here.
Your Adoption Coordinator
During your adoption process, you’ll have a dedicated Adoption Coordinator who will work one-on-one with you. She’s here to help you navigate throughout your steps for adoption. If you ever have questions or concerns, your Adoption Coordinator is always just a phone call or text away at 1-800-923-6784.
It’s Never Too Late to Choose Adoption
The speed at which you work through each step of the adoption process is up to you. Your pregnancy will last around nine months, but that doesn’t mean your adoption process needs to. You can choose to make an adoption plan as soon as you find out you’re pregnant, after you have your baby, or any time in between. Some women decide to give parenting a try at first, and then later decide on adoption. It’s never too late to choose adoption.
You’re in the driver’s seat of your adoption plan, so you can work as slowly or as quickly as you’d like to. Some women take weeks or even months to find the right adoptive family. Others select one after their first day of searching.
Making Changes to Your Plan
Remember, this is your baby and your choice, which means you can change your mind. If after talking on the phone, you find out that the adoptive family isn’t quite who you hoped they were, you can look at others. If later on, you decide that you’d like more or less contact with the adoptive family, you can change that too.
“I want to give a gift to my daughter’s birth mother to honor her and the choice she made, and to thank her for her part in creating our family. There’s no possible way I can say thank you enough to her!
When I got pregnant, I was 19 years old and a freshman in college. I felt nervous, scared, and alone. I didn’t discover I was pregnant until six months along, leaving just three months to figure out what I was going to do.
As the first step in the adoption process, the home study can bring up many emotions, from the excitement of beginning the adoption journey to feeling nervous about the process. Typically, a home study includes paperwork and documentation, a precise background check, interviews with household members, and a visit to your home.
Once you’ve shared about your plans to adopt a baby with others, you may get asked, “Why does adoption cost so much money?” People who ask questions like this might pose it negatively, maybe even adding “Babies who need a home should be free!” How do you answer prying questions about the cost of adoption?
Wondering how you’ll afford adoption? Lifetime has several payment options. After you apply and become pre-approved to adopt, we’ll share payment options that could work for your family’s needs. In addition, we can provide ideas for an affordable adoption, including referrals for 
“Can I get money if I adopt out my baby?”
Many hopeful adoptive parents wonder what birth mothers are looking for in an adoption profile. They want to increase their profile views so that a birth mother chooses them. However, what to include in your adoption profile isn’t an exact science. That’s because every birth mother is different, and so there’s no single answer to what every woman wants to see. Because every birth mother’s preferences are different, so is what she wants to see in the profile of the family she picks.
Many hopeful adoptive parents find the home study to be the most time-consuming and nerve-wracking part of the adoption process. They wonder things like, “Will they find our home to be acceptable? What about our parenting approach?”
