Are you sabotaging your adoption? This is a true story about how an adoptive couple caused their birth mother to choose another couple…

Adoptive couple Mike and Candi were enraged when they learned that the birth mother they had been matched with for 3 weeks shared she couldn’t put her baby into their arms. She wanted another couple to adopt her baby girl who was due in eight weeks instead of them. Mike angrily demanded, “How could she do this to us? I just knew she was too good to be true!” Candi spewed lots of words filled with negativity, anger, and denial. Neither one of them wanted to face the fact the sweet birth mother that they were matched with had had enough of Mike’s verbal attacks. And she couldn’t handle Candi’s daily phone calls to ask if she was sure she was going to go through with her decision.

This couple had sabotaged their own adoption! They had sent the very woman who could have made them parents in eight short weeks to another couple who understood how to be kind. The adoptive family she ended up placing with treated her like a human being. They understood that she was facing one of the most difficult decisions of her life. They were kind, understanding, and patient.

The key to a successful adoption isn’t being lucky enough to find the “perfect” adoption situation. It’s more. It’s up to you as prospective parents. It means that you actually have a lot more control over the outcome of your adoption experience than you may have realized by how you view your adoption, a birth mother, the adoption process and how you get along with others in your life.

For more than 30 years, I have worked with thousands of waiting adoptive parents. I have seen the good, loving, the bad and the ugly enter the adoption process. There are families that I can spot right away who have all the ingredients to be successful with little effort. These families project what a birth mother wants and yearns to hear: honest acceptance of herself whatever the circumstance are, kindness, and love for her child.

The ingredients for a healthy adoption are simple and include some of the most basic relationship skills, acts of kindness, a sense of compassion, patience and listening skills. These are all you really need to get started. Mike and Candi came into the adoption process unfamiliar with some of the skills needed to be successful. They didn’t read the recommended books on adoption. They couldn’t put themselves in the shoes of a woman facing the life-altering task of making an adoption plan.

A baby is the birth mother’s until she relinquishes it to the adoptive parents and she has a right to choose whom she feels would be the best parents for her child. Mike didn’t understand that very statement, and it was just one indicator that he wasn’t ready to be a parent. He believed he had a right to this child and that he had a right to make demands on the birth mother.

Their marriage had struggled through infertility and now was very strained. Both were verbally abusive to one another; blaming each other and everyone else. I knew we were not going to be able to help them until they helped themselves through counseling. They would only continue to scare birth mothers away from them, and set up a horrible home life for a baby to grow up in.

Learn from their experience; it’ll help you avoid making the same mistakes they did and sabotage your own success. Break the vicious cycle of constant worrying, of wondering when and how your adoption match will happen. Hand it over to God, for He has plans for your life. If the birth mother has shared with you and your coordinator she wants to go forward, worrying is not going to help you. Faith and being a friend to the birth mother will get you further.

Put yourself into a birth mother’s shoes by reading birth mother stories and listening to interviews of birth mothers on AdoptionTeleconference.com.

Take a class now on effective communication, either one-on-one with a counselor, or though a well-written book, audio program, or a group setting. Whatever you do, learn to communicate now. It is what we all need and it is a skill you will use over and over again as a parent and in all your relationships.

I am wishing you a wonderful adoption experience. Be prepared and aware and then focus your energy on your child and your family!