Who is a Typical Birth Mother in Colorado?
The best part about this question is that there is no right answer. Birth mothers come in all different shapes and sizes, and from all different walks of life. Their common bond is that they’ve made the difficult choice to place their child for adoption. Adoption Choices of Colorado embraces birth mothers of every type and works with them to advance and excel their lives during the adoption process in Colorado, and in post placement.
Married or Unmarried Women Who Choose Adoption
A preconceived idea or assumption that some people may make about birth mothers is that they are single women. This can sometimes hold true, and a birth mother may choose to place a child for adoption because she feels like she cannot provide them with the best life possible if she’s on her own. However, this is not always the case, and that’s important to consider when thinking about what a typical birth mother looks like. Some birth mothers have children of their own, from a marriage or a long-term relationship. Yet, just because they have that relationship as a part of their lives, doesn’t mean that they will be able to provide a child with the loving home that it deserves. That’s perfectly okay, and it should be normalized.
Military Women Who Choose Adoption
Finding yourself unexpectedly pregnant while serving in the military can be jarring. You have a duty to the United States military, but you also have a responsibility to the child you’re carrying. Many military branches allow officers a period of deferral in the wake of a pregnancy.
If you are considering placing the child for adoption, it is necessary that you return to the United States to give birth and to facilitate the adoption processes. We are happy to work with active members of the military. We understand the sacrifices that are made by members of the service, and we hold them in the highest regard. However, if the birth mother in question feels that the child’s needs will be better met and supported with an adoptive family, we want to do our best to support that.
Teen/Younger Women Who Choose Adoption
Another common trope that comes to people’s minds when considering what a typical birth mother looks like is young or teenaged. This has been played up constantly in the media, with books and movies that have oversatured our mind with images of young girls who find themselves pregnant, and feeling like they are alone. Some of this is dramatized television. But, for the girls that this rings true for, just know you’re not alone. If you’re not even a fully-established adult yet, it’s perfectly understandable that you’d have to learn to take care of yourself before taking care of a child.
Adoption is a loving response to an unplanned pregnancy. It allows you to ensure that your baby will have a great future, with a wonderful adoptive family to care for them. It also allows yourself the opportunity to move on with your own life, and elevate your own happiness beyond the adoptee that you placed.
Homeless Women Who Choose Adoption
If a woman finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy and they are also experiencing homelessness, adoption may be a viable option for them. It may be very difficult to care for a child while being homeless, because it is difficult to establish a social safety net for yourself. There isn’t a great deal of stability in that life, and it may be in the best interest of you and the child to strive for safer options and ways of living. We don’t underestimate the difficulty of this.That is why, Adoption Choices of Colorado is more than willing to help you find low-income housing during your pregnancy and help support you with rent. An unexpected pregnancy would impact a homeless birth mother at a disproportionate rate, so that reality must be acknowledged in any attempt to define “birth mothers.”
Addicted Women Who Choose Adoption
This is another trope. Struggling with an addiction predisposes a difficulty with managing other parts of life, making an unexpected pregnancy far more likely. If a birth mother is pregnant and addicted, she should aim to seek treatment immediately.
We support birth mothers fully in this pursuit, because it is for the betterment of them and the child. As a birth mother, you still get full autonomy over the child’s future with an adoptive family, and get to facilitate the adoption process to the best of your ability.
Stable and Established Women Who Choose Adoption
Something that is forgotten is that birth mothers can often be stable and established members of society, who simply don’t envision motherhood as a part of their lives. They are not willing to mother a child and, as such, they are not able. Thus, they decide that their child will be better off with a loving adoptive family, because they’re are many who are eager to parent.
Birth Mothers are Atypical
Atypical is defined as being not representative of a type, group, or class. This is the perfect word to describe birth mothers because they aren’t either. They are groups of women, who may be as different as different could be, but are like minded in their choice to separate from the child they carried, because they believe that they can find a better home with an adoptive family. They can come from different backgrounds
If you are facing an unplanned pregnancy and want to learn more about your adoption options, contact Adoption Choices of Colorado by email, phone, or text: Email Us, Text us: 720-371-1099, Call us: 303-670-4673 (HOPE). If you are hoping to adopt, please contact us here.
Meet the Author: Katherine Burns is a journalism student at Loyola University Maryland with plans to pursue a career in the news and magazine industries. With over three years of experience writing for the Greyhound Newspaper at Loyola, Katherine specializes in Op-eds. However, she has recently branched out to cover a variety of topics, including education and sports journalism. She also has ample experience with travel blogging.
Katherine has conducted a variety of interviews in her time at Loyola and has displayed her stories through differing forms of media. In addition to her studies at Loyola, Katherine spent the fall of 2019 studying communications at the American University of Paris.To learn more about Katherine, be sure to check her out on social media.
Stephanie joined the Adoption Choices family in 2014 as the Child Placement Supervisor. Her love for adoption began in first grade when she made friends with twins adopted from Vietnam. Her heart grew strong over the years for adopted children and ultimately led her to graduate school where she continued her focus to her dream of working in the adoption field. Stephanie earned a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Denver in 2001. Over the past 15 years, Stephanie has worked as a pregnancy counselor and as an adoptive parent counselor for foster care, international adoption and domestic adoption, writing hundreds of home studies for families, and helping build their forever families. Stephanie is married and has three boys ages 12, 9, and 5. Together with her family she enjoys riding bike, playing games, watching her three sons compete in their various sporting and musical activities and go on vacations.
Christy Ikeler, is our Executive Director and Birth Parent Director. Christy has been with Adoption Choices Team for 18 years, since opening the doors in 2002! Christy has a true passion for what she does and her true love is working with and helping each birth parent. Whether she is up all night on the phone talking with them, taking them to doctors appointments, out for their favorite treat, providing counseling or at the hospital during labor and delivery, Christy is very involved every step of the way. She has a contagious laugh and a spunky personality that our birth moms all can bond with and relate to. As an adoptive parent herself, adoption holds a very special place in her heart and she can relate on every level with both birth parents and adoptive parents. In her free time Christy loves spending time with her daughter, gardening, baking and taking vacations with her family. Christy is an excellent leader for our team at Adoption Choices and is truly one of a kind!! As Executive Director, Christy spends time with the staff, birth parents and adoptive families in order to ensure that the agency is running smoothly. She has placed a huge emphasis on community outreach and programs for birth parents. Christy loves the opportunity to lead the agency into a brighter future.
Ms. Mackenzie has built a successful counseling career over the past 20 years, supporting mothers and families, people of all ages and genders, students, community professionals and fellow clinicians. Liv values a diverse professional focus, including the entrepreneurial life of a sole proprietor, the evaluative process of certifying foster/adoptive homes, the insightful and mindful one-on-one one work with enthusiastic clients, and serving as an advocate for underserved populations. Liv is a Licensed Professional Counselor and holds a BA in Pre-Law and Economics from American University, an MA in Counseling from Adams University and a certificate in Human Resource Management from Villanova University. Away from work you will find Liv spending time in nature, biking to the farmer’s market and adventuring with her family.
Catherine A. Madsen, joined the Adoption Choices family as legal counsel in 2013. Catherine is responsible for providing legal guidance to the Agency, training and updating staff on developments in adoption law and legislation, and program development. Catherine
Virginia Frank is an adoption attorney accredited since 1991 with the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys. Ms. Frank is a leader in the field of private adoption and has completed over 4,000 adoptions in her career. Ms. Frank has a law degree from Oklahoma City University and a BA in both Political Science and Communications from the University of Oklahoma.
Cassidie has been with Adoption Choices since 2015, she has her bachelors in Interdisciplinary Affairs with concentrations in both Sociology and Business Management. Cassidie has additional training in Victim Advocacy, foster care and has been working in women’s services for over 10 years. Cassidie has always had a heart for adoption and it was her career dream to work in adoption. She started off doing volunteer work for advocacy programs, adoption organizations and worked in High Risk Maternal Fetal Medicine through the University of Colorado Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Colorado. Cassidie is also blessed to have personally experienced an adoption of her own in 2012, completing her family of five! Cassidie loves what she does as a case worker from initial phone calls, meetings, doctor appointments, interaction with the adoptive families to delivery and counseling. Cassidie has a passion for those in need and strives to help make a difference in the lives of the people she meets. She is a firm believer in being kind, compassionate and open minded in all situations. “Unless you’ve walked in their shoes, there’s no place for judgment. A kind word or compliment can go a long way!” The bittersweet moments in adoption reminds Cassidie each and every time, why she loves what she does!