Lifetime Adoption is proud to be able to help military couples adopt. We’ve helped thousands of military adoptive families, stationed both in the United States and abroad. As you explore how you can adopt while you’re active duty, you’ll likely come up with lots of questions. We’re eager to assist you with your adoption planning and exploration, and have had great adoption success for our military families.
Here are three important questions military couples ask:
Question: Our deployment/rotation is coming up soon. What can we do now towards adopting?
Answer: We encourage you to complete our free application online, even though you have deployment or rotation schedules soon approaching. By filling out our application, you’re able to start communicating with an adoption coordinator to help you in your adoption planning. Your adoption coordinator will be able to provide you with information, get to know you, and customize the steps you’ll need to take to with the timing you have as a service member.
Military couples can fill out the online application and a have a one-on-one phone conference with one of our adoption experts. If approved for our program, you’ll also receive our contract packet to peruse. None of these steps require you to make any obligations to Lifetime. We can assist you in figuring out if you should start taking steps toward adopting now, or if you should stay in the planning phase.
Question: Do birth parents often pick military couples?
Answer: Military adoptive families have had great success with Lifetime Adoption! We’ve seen that military families have many of the traits that birth mothers usually look for in adoptive parents. Many birth moms like to see integrity, patriotic values, good work ethic, a diverse community, stable income, access to good medical care, and many other attributes commonly found in military families.
Lifetime has observed that military families are more likely to have a high level of adoption readiness, are able to follow the steps of our program, and have great communication skills. Just as with military service, the call that a birth mother is interested could come at any time. Military families are used to living “at the ready.” This greatly contributes to the success of Lifetime’s military families.
Question: We move every three years and may be stationed overseas. How can we make open adoption in-person visits happen?
Answer: The definition of “open adoption” includes that it’s agreement to stay in touch through the years. So, you can also email, send photos, post to a private Facebook page, text, or mail your birth mother. You’ll still want to make your best efforts to be available to her for visits. One method that military adoptive couples have used to make visits happen is to have a lunch date or play date while they’re in the U.S., visiting friends and family. If travel isn’t possible, you could also call your birth mom on the phone or have a video chat.
Birth moms are in charge of their own travel arrangements in open adoption. She’ll know when picking a military family that you may be stationed overseas in the future. Lifetime hasn’t noticed that this dissuades birth moms from choosing a military adoptive couple.
As we realize that there are many questions unique to military adoptive couples, we’ll cover more military-related adoption questions in a future blog post next week. Please stay tuned!
Founder of Lifetime Adoption, adoptive mom, adoption expert, and Certified Open Adoption Practitioner (C.O.A.P).
Since 1986, adoption expert Mardie Caldwell has been dedicated to bringing couples and birth parents together in order to fulfill their dreams.
“Many years ago, I was also searching for a child to adopt. We didn’t know where or how to get started. Through research, determination, and a prayer, our dream of a family became reality. I started with a plan, a notebook, assistance from a caring adoption consultant and a lot of hard work; this was my family I was building. We had a few heartaches along the way, but the pain of not having children was worse!
Within weeks we had three different birth mothers choose us. We were overwhelmed and delighted. Many unsettling events would take place before our adoption would be finalized, many months later. Little did I know that God was training and aligning me for the adoption work I now do today. It is my goal to share with our families the methods and plans which succeed and do not succeed. I believe adoption should be affordable and can be a wonderful “pregnancy” for the adoptive couple.
I have also been on both sides of infertility with the loss of seven pregnancies and then conceiving by new technology, giving birth to a healthy daughter. I have experienced first-hand the emotional pain of infertility and believe my experience allows me to serve your needs better.
It is my hope that for you, the prospective parents, your desire for a child will be fulfilled soon.”
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