When I started this blog, I mentioned the New Forever Family living happily ever after. After all, that is the goal of adoption. A family having the chance to be just that: A Family.

Contrary to news story adoption headliners, most adoptions do result in a happy family. Sure, they may have different challenges along the way, but what family doesn’t? Adopted children will love, joke and argue with their parents and siblings the way every child does.

Arguing with their parents and siblings doesn’t mean they aren’t a happy family. It means they’re a normal family.

Happily Ever After isn’t a goal reserved only for the forever family, it’s also a goal for the birth parents. As previously mentioned, it’s a difficult decision to make, but it can also be a difficult decision to live with after it’s all said and done.

That is why counseling birth moms throughout their pregnancy is so important, and why we at CFS take things slow and meet with them about once a week. If a birth father is involved, we want to meet with him too, whether that means meeting them together or separately.

We want to explore the different options a mom has, which includes her support system and financial help she may be able to receive if she chooses to parent. If she does ultimately decide to parent, CFS continues to work with her and help her come up with a parenting plan.

CFS is a ministry committed to helping moms facing an unplanned pregnancy. We care about her, not just the baby.

If she decides to proceed with adoption, we regularly ask what characteristics she is looking for in a family and what sort of ongoing communication she hopes to have. This is important so we can show her profiles of families based off of the information she has given us, rather than every family’s profile when they may not match what she is wanting.

We also do our best to make sure she understands just how difficult placing a child for adoption will be and the different emotions she may have after giving birth. No, we aren’t trying to scare moms away, but we don’t want to deceive them either.

We never want her to regret her decision.

We want her to feel at peace with herself, knowing she looked at every possibility and this was the best decision she could make for herself and her child. However, being at peace doesn’t mean easy. It will still be difficult and emotional with good days and bad days. That’s why Post Adoption Counseling is important.

After a mom places a child, we continue meeting with her regularly to help her process her decision and all the emotions that come with it. We don’t have a timetable or number of times we meet because every mom is unique, so we will meet her as long as she needs and is willing to meet with us. Every loss in life comes with grief, and while that grief never fully goes away, it can get easier as time goes on. Our goal is to help moms cope with her grief, so that it does become easier.

She deserves peace. She deserves happiness. She deserves support. She deserves to know her child is thriving.

She deserves her Happily Ever After.