The Domestic Adoption Process [Complete Guide to How Adoption Works]

Step 1: Decide that Adoption Is Right for You

How can you know if adoption is right for you? Look at your life, and dream of not only your future, but the future of your child. What do you see? How do you get there?

You may come to adoption after a painful struggle with infertility. Or perhaps you feel a sense of calling — something you always knew you would want to do. The one thing that unites all hopeful parents is that they want nothing more than to provide a loving family for a child.

Women who are considering adoption for their babies always want the same thing — to provide a loving family and a bright future for their child. If you are a woman considering the infant adoption process, you are not “giving up” at all. You are making a brave, loving decision.

“I knew that what I was doing in placing in Charlotte for adoption was 100% out of love,” Lindsey, a birth mom who worked with American Adoptions, said. “I loved her so much that I had to be selfless.”

We can provide you the services you deserve on your journey to give a child a life full of love and opportunity. If that’s what you want, then you can start your newborn adoption process today.

When it comes to starting your journey, the most important thing you need to know is in the next step.

Step 3: Find the Perfect Adoption Match to Create Your Best Future

Cassidy knew that adoption was the best way to respond to her unplanned pregnancy, but she was worried.

“I was worried that I wouldn’t find anyone that I really loved,” she said. “I was looking for parents that I could see my own parents in, and that I could kind of see myself in, and my values. And 

What Cassidy experienced is something you can experience, too. This is a new type of relationship, and it’s normal to feel nervous at first. But, finding the right adoption opportunity means moving from fear to hope as you realize the possibilities that exist for everyone involved in the adoption. Together, you can empower each other and create a better future for the baby.

Here’s how this part of the adoption process works.

• First a prospective birth parent sits down with an adoption specialist. She lays out her hopes and dreams for her baby, and starts coming up with a picture of what type of family would be best.
• Second, the adoptive parents make a profile full of photos, letters and even a video. As an adoptive family this is your chance to share your hopes and dreams about the type of family you will be, and the type of life you’ll provide for a child.
• Third, the prospective birth mother will look through as many of these profiles as she needs to until she finds the right family. When she thinks she has found her baby’s parents, she tells her adoption specialist, who will take it from there.

Many birth parents, like Cassidy, have found that the best way to make sure their child has the life they want for them is by working with American Adoptions. And with more prospective birth parents choosing American Adoptions, our hopeful families can expect lower wait times for their perfect opportunity.

Step 5: Complete the Hospital Stay with all the Support You Need

The hospital stay is — in many ways — the culmination of the adoption journey.

With heightened emotions and the knowledge that your life is about to change forever, this might be one part of the child adoption process that you’re most worried about. That’s totally understandable. Labor and delivery can be daunting.

But, one great thing about the adoption process is that it ensures you will have the support you need. When you’re a woman placing a baby for adoption, your adoption plan puts you in control of what happens at the hospital, and your adoption specialist will be there to guide you every step of the way. The adoption specialist will also coordinate with the adoptive parents so that everyone will be on the same page.

We will protect you, support you and do everything we can to make your hospital stay as easy as possible.

Sometime after the baby is born, the prospective birth parents can complete the legal adoption paperwork — which your specialist and attorney will help you with.

Once the official consent to adoption has been given by the birth parents and everything is cleared from the doctors, the baby will be placed in the adoptive parents’ arms, and the lifelong journey of adoption will begin.