Are you Pregnant? Searching for Open Adoption Options?
If you are looking to adopt a child, please click here
What is the Adoption Process in Colorado?
Step 1. Contact Adoption Choices of Colorado
We want you to feel comfortable and confident as you move forward with your adoption decisions. Our local, private adoption agency in Colorado can help now! Please feel free to speak with an adoption professional about any of your questions. Adoption Choices of Colorado is available 24/7 via email, phone, text, chat, video, or in person!
Text now: 720-371-1099
Call now: 303-670-4673(HOPE)
Step 2. Schedule an initial meeting
Meet with an adoption specialist to go over your unique circumstance and specific needs. You will complete paperwork and begin developing your adoption plan. We want to understand where you are in your pregnancy and how comfortable you are with your adoption options. We can meet in-person or virtually. We can video chat, call, or text.
Step 3. Pre-natal care, financial assistance, select type of adoption, and begin reviewing family profiles.
We want to make sure you are well supported, comfortable, and confident with your decision to choose adoption. Our agency will provide court approved living expenses for birth mothers who need the help. We will help you find assistance in paying the medical expenses that are a result of your pregnancy and delivery. We can help you find or apply for housing, and help with paying your rent during your pregnancy and up to four to six weeks after your delivery.
Step 4. Choosing an Adoptive Family
- Religious preferences
- Parents’ ages
- Length of marriage
- If existing children are in the home
- Personality traits of adopted parents or their current children
- Professions
- If one parent will be a stay-at-home parent
- Location of the family’s home
- Extended family
- Living in a multi-cultural community
We will bring you family profiles to review! At this point you can choose open adoption, semi-adoption, or closed adoption. Open adoption is more modern and more widely accepted. In an open adoption, birth parents can meet the adoptive family, get to know them, and keep in touch once the adoption is finalized. This means an opportunity to watch your child develop and grow.
Step 5. Pregnancy, Birth, and Hospital Plan
- Who do you want to be present during the birth?
- Do you know your state’s wait time for consent for adoption?
- Will you want alone time with your baby post-birth?
- Do you want to take pictures with your baby? With the adoptive family?
- Do you want visitors during your hospital stay?
- Are you going to want to name your baby?
- Are you prepared for emotions post-adoption?
Step 6. Post-Placement Support
Through each step of your adoption journey, Adoption Choices of Colorado is here to help. You don’t have to face an unplanned pregnancy alone. Although placing a baby for adoption may be a difficult choice, we will be there to provide support, including counseling if you would like.
We understand how important it is for you to stay healthy and well taken care of, and we are here to support you through your adoption plan. We want to help you customize a plan that you are 100% comfortable with. Counseling and legal representation are provided to you at no cost. We also have many resources to help you during and after the placement of your child.
We provide counseling to you as the birth mother, the birth father if he is interested as well as your family and other children. We want you to have a great support system and we believe that helping others around you understand adoption and what the future brings sets you up for success.
Open Adoption
It’s your choice! As the birth mother (parent) you choose the level of communication you wish to have with the adoptive family and your child. If you are pregnant and considering placing your child for adoption , you may want to consider open adoption. Ask yourself,
- Do I want to choose who will raise my child?
- Does it matter to me to know if my child is safe and healthy?
- Do I want to watch my child grow up through photos, phone calls, letters, or visits?
- Do I want to be able to tell my child about his or her family background or other important information in the future? Y
- Do I want my child to know, for example, if he or she looks or acts like someone else in the family?
If your answer to any of these questions is “yes,” open adoption may be the best choice for you and your baby. Open adoption can give you peace of mind by knowing your child will have information about his or her family history, identity, and background.
There is no right choice that works for everyone. But learning more about your options will help you figure out what’s right for you and your child.
What is Open Adoption?
Open adoption is a form of adoption that allows birth parents to know and have contact with the adoptive parents and the adopted child. Adoption agencies or professionals you talk with may describe open adoptions differently. But in open adoptions, usually,
- Expectant mothers may take part in selecting the adoptive parents who will raise their children.
- Birth parents or other birth family members have some level of contact with the adoptive parents and the adopted child in some way depending on what feels comfortable for everyone.
- Adopted children know they have been adopted and may have relationships with one or more members of their birth families.
- Communication between birth mothers (and sometimes birth fathers, grandparents, or other relatives) and adoptive parents may take place through letters, phone calls, e-mails, or visits.
- Families communicate in ways that feel comfortable to them. Some send pictures and brief notes. Others celebrate holidays together.
The type of contact and how often it happens will depend on the needs and choices of everyone involved, and may change over time. Open adoption does not mean co-parenting or parenting your child together with the adoptive parents. Like all forms of adoption, the adoptive parents will have all permanent legal rights and responsibilities for parenting and raising the child.
Benefits of Open Adoption for Birth Parents
Choosing adoption is a loving decision that shows you care for your child and want to take control of your unplanned pregnancy. The benefits for you of placing your child through open adoption might be,
- A sense of control over decisions about placing your child with adoptive parents
- Comfort in knowing your child is growing up safe, healthy, and loved
- Support in dealing with your feelings of grief and loss that can come up after placement
- Personal relationships with the adoptive parents and the child
- Greater satisfaction with the adoption process
Birth fathers, grandparents, and other members of the birth families also can benefit from communication with the adopted child and/or the adoptive family.
Benefits of Open Adoption for Your Child
Open adoption can provide your child with a sense of connection and completeness. Openness may answer many of the questions that adopted children in closed adoptions often struggle to answer such as:
- Who am I?
- What are my birth parents like?
- Why was I placed for adoption?
The possible benefits of open adoption for your child might include,
- Links to his or her birth mother, and possibly birth father, brothers, and sisters—doing away with the need to search for them
- Removal of the feelings of secrecy and shame that can come up at different points in his or her life, although not all of the time
- Increased self-worth, and a sense of identity and security that comes from firsthand answers to identity questions
- A sense of belonging, which may lessen his or her feelings of abandonment
- Connection to his or her cultural and ethnic background and ancestry
- Better access (than would be possible in a closed adoption) to important medical information, such as factors that can lead to disease, or medical conditions that exist in the birth families
- Better understanding of the reasons for placement
- A sense of knowing that he or she looks like someone else or has characteristics that come from a blood connection
Benefits of Open Adoption for Adoptive Parents
Adoptive parents, who may be frightened at first by the idea of an open adoption, may come to realize, once they are comfortable in their new parental roles, that they also benefit. Some of the benefits for them might include,
- Access to one or more birth family members who can answer background and other questions that the adoptive parent cannot
- Access to important medical information
- Warm relationships between birth and adoptive families that can create uplifting and valuable lifelong connections for the adopted child and lessen the sense of loss he or she may feel
- Delight in being “chosen” as adoptive parents and more confidence in parenting that comes from being chosen
- Less fear of birth parents reclaiming their child because they know the birth parents and their wishes