On my post, Adoption Profiles: Can Your Pet Help You Adopt Faster?, Jenna, our birth-first mother blogger, left the following comment:

I think waiting adoptive families should show their pets. It would help an expectant mother who has allergies or a family history of allergies make an appropriate decision!

I never thought about this issue, but Jenna is absolutely correct. The risk... more

People who decide to adopt after infertility have issues to work through that are not experienced by those who never tried to conceive a biological child. While adoption cures childlessness, it does not cure infertility. Many couples who decide to adopt after infertility are not aware of this very important distinction, and they can be blindsided by the pain of their infertility even after they become parents through adoption.

No matter how wonderful your adopted child will be, he is not a replacement for the biological child about which you dreamed.... more

As I shared in my last post, Using an Alias in a Semi-Open Adoption, because of my very unusual first name ("Faith" is a pen name), my husband and I chose to use an alias when I met my son's then-expecting mother. I believed this was the only way to protect our privacy, and that is definitely true if my son's birthmother wanted to track us down. However, I regret having made this decision, and it has resulted in some complications.

Before you decide to do the same... more

The adoption agency through which we adopted our son mostly handles semi-open adoptions for domestic adoptions. For a number of reasons, the agency believes that semi-open adoption is the best option for all members of the adoption triad.

As part of a semi-open adoption, the agency encourages the expecting mother to meet the hopeful adoptive parents before the baby is born. If all parties want to see each other again, such as after the baby is born, then the agency will... more

In my last post, When Should Extended Family Be Told About Adoption?, I talked about delaying telling family members about a pending adoption when you fear that they will not be supportive. I did this with my grandparents because I was determined to adopt and did not want to have to listen to them try to talk me out of it. The upside is that you shorten the amount of time you have to listen to their complaints. The downside is that you lose the opportunity to get... more

I was talking with a friend whose adult child has decided to adopt. The hopeful adoptive parents decided to adopt and even went through the home study process before letting their families know about their plans to adopt. They had already made decisions about the ethnicity of the child and the type of adoption they were seeking. By the time the extended family knew about it, the adoption was well under way.

I can see how the extended family could feel shut out when they find out well into the process that their loved ones plan to adopt a child. I can also... more

On my post, Facing Parenting a Child with a Special Need, a reader left the following comment:

Can anyone suggest an objective criteria for choosing a child and/or birthmother? I should be approved to adopt (open-adoption) in Feb 2008. I'll be a first-time father. Naturally, there is the healthy / problematic-baby choice, and the prenatal care / no prenatal cared-mother choice, but is that the only criteria I should be using? I'm... more

If you are waiting for your first child to join your home, you might wonder how different your life will become once you are a parent. I do not believe there really is a way that you can prepare yourself other than just by diving in when it happens.

Parenting books are a good idea because they give you an idea about what to expect. With adopting a newborn, I had basic questions about how frequently to feed the baby and how much sleep he needed. I am not sure if there are book references available regarding these kinds of questions for older children,... more

If you have a pet, then he has a big change coming when your adopted child joins your home. In most cases, you will not really know what to expect from your pet. Some pets will ignore the new addition. Others will be afraid. Still others will be oblivious. Until you know how your adopted child and the pet will act around each other, make sure that all interactions are closely supervised. This is for the protection of both your adopted child and your pet.

When I brought my 18-day-old adopted son home, both of my dogs were curious. I allowed them to... more

When my husband and I were going through the home study process, we received mixed advice about whether or not to include information about our dogs in our profile. On the one hand, we did not want an expecting mother to reject us as adoptive parents solely because we had dogs, but on the other hand, our dogs were a part of our family.

When we put our first profile together, we chose to leave the dogs out. We never lied about having pets: We simply did not... more