Welcome to the wonderful world of domestic adoptions!

Once your Home Study is complete, we will ask you to write your Birth Parent Letter and Profile.

Birth Parent Letter and Profile
Birth parents ordinarily request an opportunity to participate in the selection process of the home for their babies. This is most often accomplished by allowing them to view a short “scrapbook” (your profile), which includes a letter addressed to the birth parent and pictures along with short journal entries.

We would like to assist you in putting your best foot forward; therefore, we request that you send the final rough draft of your Birth Parent Letter and Profile to our office for previewing and editing. Once A Chosen Child, Inc., has reviewed your Profile, we will ask you to make any necessary revisions and make color copies of your Letter and Profile. It’s a good idea to start with five to seven letters and profiles.

Your Profile will be shown until you are matched with a birth parent.

Open Adoptions/Closed Adoptions
A Chosen Child, Inc., typically works with cases that are partially open. In this type of adoption, identifying information such as last names, addresses and employment are kept confidential and will not be revealed to either birth parents or adoptive parents. Adoptive parents and birth parents may also request to meet before the baby is born and letters and pictures are often provided by the adoptive parents to the birth parent(s) after the placement for an agreed upon period of time. At the request of adoptive parents and/or birth parents A Chosen Child, Inc., will also handle fully open adoptions or fully closed adoptions.

In a fully open adoption, both sides exchange full identifying information and make direct contact with each other. Typically, post-adoption contact is handled in accordance with the agreement of the parties.

In a fully closed adoption, there is no exchange of information at all, and no exchange of updates or photographs.

Meeting of the Adoptive Parents and Birth Parents
This is one of the many decisions that you will make. If you have strong feelings in one direction or the other, it will be necessary to match you with a birth parent with similar feelings. It is similar to “smoking, nonsmoking, or first available” in that if a hard line is drawn one way or the other, opportunities might be missed.

Anticipated Waiting Time
Dr. Seuss wrote of waiting time in his book Oh, The Places You’ll Go: “some wait for the train to go…some wait for their hair to grow.” It is similar in adopting in that there is no typical waiting period. While some adoptive parents are matched within 90 days of applying to the agency, some wait a year or more for the right placement. There are many factors that can affect the length of your waiting time, including the stage of pregnancy of the birthmother, the criteria that you are looking for in a birth parent/child, and the connection that is made with the birth parent looking at your profile. You will also want to see our Tips for keeping busy.

Costs
Domestic adoption costs can vary significantly from case to case. There are some costs and expenses that are consistent from one adoption to another, but several types of expenses are unique to the circumstances of a particular birth parent.

Birthmother expenses tend to fall into two main categories: living expenses and medical expenses. If the birthmother is working or living with family, her living expenses may be negligible. If, however, she is on the street with no money, no car and no job, her expenses could be quite significant. She may even need maternity clothes, which she can't afford. Normally, birthmother living expenses range from $4,000 to $7,000 through the pregnancy and post partum period (6 weeks after delivery). Expenses, which are more or less than this, are certainly not uncommon, but fall outside of the average range.

Medical expenses can also vary greatly. If the birthmother is unemployed or seriously under-employed, she will likely qualify for Medicaid coverage, which would all but eliminate her medical expenses. If she has health insurance through her employment, depending upon the quality of the coverage, she may be fully covered or she may have significant deductibles and co-pays, for which you would need to be responsible.

Most birthmothers qualify for Medicaid or have private insurance. Should she not, you can anticipate total medical expenses for an uncomplicated vaginal delivery that includes some prenatal care and testing to range from $7,000 to $9,000. Beware, however, even minor complications can greatly increase this bill if there is no insurance. After including fees, the cost of your Home Study and post-placement visits, court costs and legal expenses, etc., the domestic adoption of a healthy newborn child typically cost $18,000 to $24,000.

Older children, special needs children and some hard-to-place children can be adopted much less expensively as most agencies donate services to assist in these placements.

For more detailed information, we invite you to attend our Adoption Seminar.