Giving a Baby Up for Adoption: The 7 Steps

The first step to putting a baby up for adoption is one conversation. You call, text, or send the form at the bottom of this page, and an adoption specialist (a licensed counselor) listens to your situation and answers your questions. It is free, it is confidential, and it commits you to nothing. Many women call just to find out what their options are; some decide adoption is not for them. That is a good use of the call, not a wasted one.

You can reach out at any point: early in pregnancy, in your last weeks, from the hospital, or after you have already brought your baby home. A counselor is available day and night, and if you are already in labor, a plan can come together the same day.

Before anyone talks about adoption paperwork, your counselor talks through all of your options honestly: parenting with support, help from family, and adoption. Counseling is free whether or not you choose adoption, and it continues for as long as you want it. This is where you get to say the things you may not have said out loud yet, and feel what you feel, without anyone steering you.

You will also learn what practical help is available. Counseling, medical coordination, and independent legal counsel are always free. Depending on your state's law and your situation, financial assistance with pregnancy-related expenses such as housing, living expenses, and medical costs may be permitted. It is paid to providers rather than as cash, it is help through your pregnancy and never a payment for a placement, and you owe nothing back if you decide to parent.

If adoption feels right, you and your counselor build your adoption plan: the kind of adoptive family you want for your child, how much contact you want as your child grows up, and your wishes for the hospital. Nothing in it is decided without you, and nothing in it is final until after birth.

The contact decision is yours. In an open adoption you stay in touch with your child and the adoptive parents through visits, calls, and photos. In a semi-open adoption, letters and photo updates go through the agency. In a closed adoption there is no contact, and some women want exactly that. Most birth parents who work with us choose some openness, and it can be written into a post-adoption contact agreement. Our guides to the types of adoption and what an adoption plan includes go deeper.

You choose the adoptive family, never the other way around. You read the family profiles of screened, home-study-approved adoptive families, their letters to you, and their photos. You can meet a family by phone or video, or in person, or ask your counselor to suggest families that match what matters to you: where they live, their faith, whether your child would have siblings, how they talk about adoption.

Every family you see has passed background checks and a home study and has been waiting, often for years, for a child. Choosing a loving family is the heart of the whole plan, and you can take as long as you need. If no family feels right, you keep looking.

Before your due date, your counselor helps you write a short hospital plan: who is in the delivery room, whether and how long you hold your baby, who holds the baby first, whether the adoptive parents are at the hospital or down the hall or not there at all, and what you want the nurses to know. The hospital follows your plan. You are the patient and the parent, and you can change any of it in the moment.

If you are already at the hospital and have not called anyone yet, tell a nurse or social worker that you are considering adoption, then call or text us. A counselor will handle the rest from there. Our page on giving a baby up for adoption at the hospital or after birth walks through the first 24 hours.

In every state, consent to adoption is signed after the baby is born, never during pregnancy, and many states require a waiting period first. In Utah, where we are licensed, the earliest is 24 hours after birth, with a 72-hour revocation period after signing unless it is waived in writing. Until you sign, you can change your mind at any time, for any reason, and keep every service you have received.

Your own attorney, provided at no cost to you, explains exactly which rules apply in your state and handles the birth father's side. Whether he is supportive, against it, unknown, or cannot be found, you can still make an adoption plan; an unmarried father generally has to take specific legal steps within strict deadlines to preserve his parental rights, and your attorney manages the notice so you never have to contact him yourself. Read more on your legal rights and adoption without the father's consent.

Placement is not the end of the help. Grief is real even for women certain of their decision, and the days after placement can be the hardest of the whole process. Free counseling continues for as long as you want it, starting the same day if you need it, along with birth parent support groups and the contact you chose: letters, photos, calls, or visits as your child grows.

Many of the birth mothers we work with stay in touch with their counselor for years. Some go on to place a second child with the same family. All of them keep the right to the emotional support they were promised, whatever their adoption looks like. See free counseling for birth mothers.