Planning Checklist

planadoption.com - for those facing unplanned pregnancy

Your Guide to Making an Adoption Plan:

  1. Contact AAI.

    • You can call any of the offices to receive a packet, or request an information packet from this web site.
    • Look through the information in the packet or on this web site to discover the process of adoption. Then talk with one of our pregnancy caseworkers to decide if adoption is the best option for you and your baby.

  2. Plan.

    • Meet with a caseworker
    • Discuss your needs and desires with the caseworker or case aide; she will know exactly how to help you and make sure you feel comfortable with your decision.
    • Select an adoptive family.
    • Decide how much contact you would like with the adoptive parents you’ve selected.
    • Meet the family, if this is your desire
    • Speak to other birth mothers through the agency who have already gone through the process.
    • Prepare for giving birth by making a simple hospital plan that expresses your needs and wishes at the time of delivery.

  3. Place your baby with the family you selected.

    • The baby often goes to the adoptive family from the hospital.
    • You then go to court and sign the legal documents placing the baby for adoption.

  4. Use post adoption services.

    • Get information from AAI about what you can expect to feel after the adoption.
    • Meet with a caseworker for counseling if needed.
    • Attend a birth parent support group where people share similar experiences.
    • Receive regular updates about the child through pictures and letters.
    • Attend additional outside counseling provided by AAI
    • If you’d like him/her to have the opportunity to contact you in the future, you can keep your address current with the agency.

Under Michigan law, after the release is signed a birth parent is given another form to sign if they do NOT want contact from their child in the future. If she does not sign, a child can have legal access to his birth certificate at the age of eighteen. He can then contact his birth mother. The birth parents, however, can never legally contact the child on their own, but can initiate contact through a confidential intermediary program at the court where the adoption was filed. Adoption Associates, Inc. can assist with this.