Our Blog

  • Is Adopting The Second Time Easier Or Harder Than Adopting The First Time?

    Is adopting the second time easier or harder than adopting the first time? Is every adoption unique or are there lessons from one situation that you can learn and apply to the next one? Stacy and Guy are about to find out. The Newark, California adoptive parents from our Find A Family page are no strangers to adoption, and especially to the benefits of open adoption.

  • Unplanned Pregnancy? 7 Reasons To Consider Open Adoption

    Unplanned pregnancy? Unsure what to do next? Have you thought about open adoption? Adoption, and open adoption, may not be the first option that comes to mind when you’re looking for a solution to an unplanned pregnancy. But once you find out a little more about it, you may surprised by what open adoption has to offer and how different it is from what you may have thought.

  • Covering The Costs Of Your Open Adoption: Tips and Tricks

    For many hopeful adoptive families, finances are the biggest barrier to adopting. But for Julie Gumm, the cost of an adoption should never stand in the way of giving a child a loving family. Drawing on her personal experience and those of 30+ adoptive families, Julie is the author of Adopt Without Debt: Creative Ways to Cover the Cost of Adoption — a hands-on guide that contains more than $80,000 worth of creative fundraising tips and ideas, plus loads of

  • Prospective Birthmother Not Connecting With You? Here’s Why

    Every day it’s the same: you wake up in the morning full of hope that this will be the day when you finally connect with a prospective birthmother. It’s been months since you first sent out your adoption profile and you still haven’t received a response. Not a peep. But as another day goes by without hearing anything, you start to wonder how much longer can you go on like this. Why aren’t prospective birthmothers clicking with you? What’s wrong

  • 3 Must-See Birthmother Videos

    Did you catch Katie Couric’s adoption special the other week? Heartfelt and uplifting, it showcased the story of three celebrity moms — — Nia Vardalos, Jillian Michaels and Kym Whitley — and how adoption and motherhood have changed their lives for the better. It’s rare to see a prime time show take such a positive and in-depth look at adoption. Rarer still, however, is seeing the stories of birthmothers who have recently placed their babies for adoption. You won’t find them

  • How Not To Put Up Your Baby For Adoption

    Unplanned pregnancy? Thinking of putting up your baby for adoption? If you’re new to the process — and the truth is, most people are unless they have a personal connection to it —  adoption can seem pretty scary and confusing at first, especially when you’re just looking into it. From deciding on how to break the news to your family to finding the right adoptive family, it feels like there are a million things to get your head around.

  • The Key To Connecting With Prospective Birthparents? Start Dating!

    I was never any good at dating. I was too introverted, too self-conscious to ever master the rules and rituals. So when I discovered early on in the open adoption process that the key to becoming a parent was in “connecting” with prospective birthparents, I was ready to throw in the towel.

  • 12 Places To Post Your Open Adoption Profile Online For Free

    If you visited our new adoption profiles page lately, you might have noticed a few changes: larger photos of our hopeful adoptive parents; a simpler, cleaner layout; and improved search and navigational tools. It’s all part of our new state-of-the-art look and design aimed at giving our hopeful parents maximum exposure. With up to 30 photos, home page placement, visibility to our 30,000 followers on social media, and a limited number of other profiles, our profile plans let you stand

  • A Birthmother, Social Worker And Author On What Makes A Successful Open Adoption

    Normally when you see a headline like this, you would expect to see three different views from three different people. But in this case, the birthmother, social worker and author in question all happen to be the same person: Jennifer Pedley. Jennifer began her adoption journey more than 20 years ago when she placed her son, Grey, at birth in an open adoption. Since then, she has gone on to have careers as a licensed social worker, an adoption advocate,

  • How To Find The Perfect Adoptive Parents For Your Baby Online

    ,At first glance, finding adoptive parents for your baby online is a breeze. Simply type “open adoption profiles” or “adoptive parent profiles” or “Dear Birthmother letters” into a search engine like Google and hundreds of results will instantly show up. Finding the right adoptive parents for your baby — now that’s a whole other story. With so many potential parents to choose from, how do you know which ones (or one) are right for you and your baby — especially