Adoption Information

There is a lot to think about when considering adoption and we’re here to help you get answers to all of your questions.

1. Can I pick the family my baby will go to?
2. Will I be able to stay in touch with my baby?
3. What if I want my baby to never find me?
4. What if I change my mind about contacting my baby?
5. Who will pay my medical bills?
6. What will people think of me?
7. What will my child think of me?
8. What about those bad stories about adoption on the news?

...and so many more questions. We can answer many of your questions right in our office, or we can put you in touch immediately with one or many different adoption agencies that you can choose from.

The beautiful thing about modern adoptions is that YOU ARE IN CONTROL. You get to call the shots and decide every detail.

It isn’t like the old days. You can insist on how you want the adoption plan to look.

THIS IS YOUR GIFT that you are giving your child, and you can determine their future…and yours.

For more information, please also check out these websites:

Adoption Minnesota - FAQs
Children's Home Society of Minnesota
Adoption Support Groups For Birth Mothers in Minnesota

We get that. A lot of people feel this way, and we can understand why. Adoption has gotten a lot of bad press over the years, and maybe you even know someone who wasn’t happy with their adoption situation. But that doesn’t have to be your story.

Just like every mom is not the same, neither are adoptions.

There are tons of ways to approach adoption, but no matter how you do it, IT IS A GIFT.

You have the choice of giving your child a chance at life; a future.

Isn’t that amazing?!

Maybe you still think that adoption is rare and it would be weird to consider, but look at these statistics:

1. There are currently around 7 million adopted people in the U.S.¹
2. Nearly 100 million Americans have adoption in their immediate family.
3. Today, between 60-70% of adoption in the U.S are “open adoptions,” meaning that you choose the terms, but in someway the child is able to know or contact you after the adoption, according to your wishes.
4. One out of every 25 U.S. families with children have an adopted child.
5. Experts estimate that somewhere between one and two million couples in the U.S. are waiting to adopt a child. The desire is great.



¹https://adoptionnetwork.com/adoption-statistics

Maybe you think you couldn't "give your child up,” but you are not giving them up. Instead, you are giving them life, giving them to someone, and making a plan for their future. With open adoptions, you are not giving up on your child or casting them aside, you are giving them two moms and two families that love them equally. You are letting your child know that you loved them enough to place them in a home that was ready and waiting for them and able to give them the future you can’t right now. But you can give your child life, and that is something that NO ONE ELSE can do! Adoption is empowering!

When you’re facing an unplanned pregnancy, you know that you have three options: to parent your child, to terminate your pregnancy or to place your child for adoption. The decision of what to do will always be up to you — and you alone.

However, we want to walk you through each of these processes to help you determine what’s best for you and your pregnancy.

But in the meantime, while you are waiting for an appointment with us, here are some links to check out:

You Are Not "Giving Up" by Choosing Adoption
Open Adoption Pros and Cons
Designing an Open Adoption Plan
The Pros and Cons of an Open Adoption
Open, Semi-Open, Closed Adoptions

No. it really usually doesn’t end badly.

In fact, the stories you might have heard on the news are extremely rare. Most of those unstable situations occurred either from closed adoptions that were done prior to the 2000’s, from international or foster adoptions where the adopted child is either older than 1 year’s old when adopted or has mental disadvantages to start with, due to things like fetal alcohol syndrome or abuse.

• According to a review of American adoptions in the book Clinical and Practice Issues in Adoption (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998), the success rate of legalized adoption even back then was at 98 percent. And it raised to 99%, if the child was under the age of 1 when adopted. So any setbacks are rare.
• The other good news is that recent research debunks many of the myths that once stigmatized open adoption. Instead, they are finding that children in open adoptions have no confusion as to who their parents are and birth mothers do not have trouble moving on.
• If anything, openness appears to help kids understand adoption; relieve the fears of adoptive parents; and help birth mothers resolve their grief, according to researchers Harold D. Grotevant and Ruth G. McRoy. “Many of the fears about open adoption do not seem to be a problem,” said Grotevant, a professor at the University of Minnesota and co-author with McRoy of Openness in Adoption: Exploring Family Connections.

That said, adoption is not perfect. Nothing is. But with a 99% success rate, are you willing to not give your child that chance? Children in ANY family can have less than perfect outcomes, but that’s the beauty of life... it’s surprises. If everyone's lives were always the same and always without unexpected change, not only would it be a little boring, but none of us would grow as humans and see what we’re capable of!

So we hope that you'll reconsider the bad image you have of adoption. After all, if you based your ideas of what's a good or bad idea on everything that you saw on the news, then we’d never drive a car, take a bus, or walk across the street! Life is full of challenges, but it’s also full of opportunities to leave our mark and make things better.