My Baby-Our Baby-Your Baby

EXPECTANT PARENT

ADOPTIVE PARENTS Pre-Placement

My Baby

Your Baby

Seek counseling to get life in order. Through the Spirit, decide whether to parent, marry, or choose an adoption plan. Determine what is best for the child.

Prepare for adoption by completing adoption education course, reading books and articles, resolving infertility issues.

Select Family. If adoption is chosen, review and select an adoptive family Make announcement. Invite adoptive couple into expectant parent’s circle of acceptance, trust, and sharing of some personal information

Give Respect. Enter the expectant mother’s circle of acceptance by extending trust and sharing of some personal information. Invite expectant parents into your circle of acceptance. Send letters, pictures, small gifts Accept her parental role. She decides what is best for this baby, even if she decides to keep it at the last minute.

Face-to-Face My Baby-Our Baby

Your Baby-Our Baby

Extend trust to the adoptive couple, even though you do not know them.

Give trust by being honest about your intended name of the child, how often you will communicate. Say what you will do and then do what you say.

Endorse entitlement. Extend permission and encouragement for the adoptive couple to assume the parenting role. Voice confidence in their parenting skills for your child.

Give respect by expressing gratitude. Stand when the expectant/birth parent enters the room. Bring gifts to the expectant/birth mother, expectant/birth father if he attends, and flowers for the mothers of expectant/birth parents who may attend.

Placement of Child My Baby-Our Baby-Your Baby

Our Baby

Statements of Entitlement. Once again, give permission and encouragement for the adoptive couple to receive and parent this child.

Show appreciation. Be prepared to send flowers to the hospital, stand when they enter the room, exchange hugs, present gifts, send the birth family the number of pictures, letters agreed upon.

Surrender parental role to the adoptive parents.

Accept parental role to do what is best for the child. Reinforce birth mother’s trust by continuing to live up to all promises made about correspondence, pictures, letters, contact, etc. Be respectful, especially in the hospital or at placement. Remember that the birth mother may be physically and emotionally exhausted. Your excitement at receiving a child into your family may need to be tempered to show respect for her loss. This does not mean you act cheerless and morose, but that you focus on her feelings even after the baby is born.