Introducing America Adopts! An Open Adoption Meeting Place

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of America Adopts!

Over a year in the making, America Adopts! makes it easier for prospective birth parents and adoptive parents to share, connect and bond.

Our goal is to give you the information and tools you need when you need them, allowing you to make informed decisions quickly, conveniently and confidentially.

America Adopts! was inspired by two events that forever changed our lives: a website in Canada and a family in the U.S.

First, the website. Thirteen years ago, our adoption journey had hit rock bottom. An “amazing birth mother” in California that a facilitator put us in touch with turned out to be neither a birth mother or, more accurately, a prospective birth mother. In fact, she wasn’t even pregnant.

Devastated and with nothing left to lose, we took a chance and posted our parent profile online. Late one night, a few weeks later, something totally unexpected happened.

A woman with an unplanned pregnancy called to say she had found our profile and wanted to place her baby with us. Here we go again, we thought, another scam. But it wasn’t. A short time later, we became parents.

We soon discovered that hopeful adoptive parents weren’t the only ones who wanted more control over the process. Prospective birth parents wanted it, too.

And so in 2001 we launched an online open adoption meeting place that let expectant parents and adoptive parents to reach out directly to each other and connect. The concept was so new at the time that it made the front page of the newspapers.

Today, more than ten years later, that site is still going strong and has led to dozens of successful adoptions.

America Adopts! builds on the lessons we’ve learned over the last decade and harnesses the latest leaps in online networking and social media. It also taps into our own experiences, including our second open adoption in Washington state–the other event that inspired us to create America Adopts!

You can find out more about why we’re here and what sets us apart on our website.

Thanks for visiting! We look forward to you sharing your story and feedback in the space below.

[Photo credit: iantho]