If You Are An Expectant Parent

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There are a lot of adoption options for expectant mothers.  If you are not ready to parent or if you feel you can't parent due to circumstances beyond your control such as:

Domestic Violence               Incarceration

Homeless                              Mental Illness

Addiction                               Financial Problems

Know that you have adoption options to make an Informed Adoption Plan for your child, please speak with a social worker, Adoption Agency or Adoption Attorney near you. If you need us to refer you to someone please ask, we are happy to help.  

We're glad that you are considering adoption, you are not alone.  Adoption is a selfless act of love for you to choose a loving family for your child. As of January 1, 2024 we will no longer be able to work with expectant parents. We can still help you by referring you to agencies or adoption attorneys we have worked with in the past.

Being pregnant and considering adoption can be an emotional roller coaster. If you are in crisis please you reach out to those around you and find a counselor or a local social worker in your area to help you. 

When you give your child up for adoption, you want to ensure the baby goes to a great home. We have a network of Adoption Agencies and Adoption Attorneys that we can refer you to. 

Beginning 1/1/2024, adoption facilitation services will only be provided by licensed California adoption agencies.  All registered Adoption Facilitators will need to cease operation by the end of this year, 12/31/2023.  Failure to cease operation may result in an investigation by Community Care Licensing Division for being an unlicensed community care facility. 

https://www.cdss.ca.gov/adoption-facilitators

You will be encouraged to pick an adoptive family that you feel is a good match for you and your child.

There are several future contact options to choose from.  You can have the adoptive family share photos and updates with you 1 to 4 times a year, keep in contact via phone, in person or over the internet, or you can set up in person meetings.  It is up to you and the adoptive family.

You are not legally required to tell your parents that you are pregnant or that you are planning an adoption. They have no legal right to the child. Often secrets cause lots of problems in families and can be very burdensome to a prospective expectant parent. There is help for you to work with your family during this difficult period. 

American Adoption Congress has a listing for adoption support groups for both Expectant Families and Adoptive Families by state

Concerned United Birthparents provides support for Expectant Families 

Community Baby Center has an online support group

A place where expectant parents can find support in each other and in a casual setting, not a therapeutic one.  Email thetabledfw@gmail.com for the zoom link

Author: Jennifer Bliss & Ann Wrixon
Another Choice is a step-by-step guide to the entire process of placing a child for adoption. It discusses everything you need to know to ensure that you are making the best decision for yourself and your child, including how to find an ethical and empathic adoption provider, how to talk to the birth father about adoption, and how to find the best adoptive family. Most importantly, the authors discuss the emotional journey of placing a child for adoption, and provide real life examples and quotes from women who have already traveled this path so that you know you are not alone. 

Author: Sharon Fox
This book is dedicated to reframing the role of a birth mother and is designed to provide support, understanding, and information to grieving birth mothers who have given their child up for adoption so that they may move from an emotional loss to a renewed spirit of hope, joy, peace, and contentment. For a mother to gift her child to another family through adoption is a brave action. All adoptions can be grieved in healthy ways. The grief of birth mothers may be magnified by the little contact with their children and the adoptive parents. No matter how the adoption was structured, the birth mother will grieve her loss. The choice for the child should be either gift or guide-by gifting the child to another family or guiding the child by parenting. This is a new choice that is realistic, healthy, and a blessed decision. Think of adoption as a way to “gift” a child through adoption. 

Author: Margot Starbuck
“Chosen.” “Special.” Those are the words Margot Starbuck used to describe herself as a child adopted into a loving family. And when her adoptive parents divorced, her dad moved east, and her mom and dad each got remarried, she told herself that she was extra loved, since she had more than two parents and people in different times zones who cared about her. But the word she really believed about herself was rejected. First by her birth parents. Then by her adoptive father when he moved away. Then by her stepfather. Then by her birth father a second time, when she tried to invite him into her life. Most of all, Margot felt rejected by God the Father, who she also suspected could not be trusted. 

Author: Amy Seek
This is a mother’s account of her decision to surrender her son in an open adoption and of their relationship over the twelve years that follow. Facing an unplanned pregnancy at twenty-two, Amy Seek and her ex-boyfriend begin an exhaustive search for a family to raise their child. They sift through hundreds of “Dear Birth Mother” letters, craft an extensive questionnaire, and interview numerous potential couples. Despite the immutability of the surrender, it does little to diminish Seek’s newfound feelings of motherhood. Once an ambitious architecture student, she struggles to reconcile her sadness with the hope that she’s done the best for her son, a struggle complicated by her continued, active presence in his life.