American Adoptions -- America's Adoption Agency
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Living Expenses - Why?
For some adoptive families, the concept of financially assisting their future baby’s birth mother is, at first, hard to fully embrace. You may find yourself wondering why you should be expected to help her pay for her medical or living expenses. This is a completely normal, understandable reaction.
But before you think of a birth mother’s expenses as rightfully hers, consider this: If your baby were inside of you, instead, what would you do?
The birth mother who has chosen you has also made the selfless decision to choose adoption for her child. While the decision to place a child for adoption is as unique as each individual, financial inability to adequately provide for a child is often a major motivation. Through the decision to adopt, some women realize they have the potential to choose for their child the type of life they could only dream of providing.
While babies are unfortunately raised worldwide in less-than-adequate conditions, and many amazing women somehow find the means to do so, it takes resources and access to proper care to provide for a child.
Raising a baby begins long before birth, in utero. In fact, this most critical time of development is more important than perhaps any other point in a child’s life.
That’s why many pregnant women make an extraordinary effort to ensure that the baby within is receiving every possible nutrient required to build a strong, healthy baby. She may research and read or even hire a specialist to assist in finding this nutritional balance.
But when a pregnancy comes at an unexpected or even unwanted time, many women do not have the means to seek out and act on this type of information. It would be counterintuitive to assume a birth mother’s ability to procure these resources on her own … if she could, she would likely not choose adoption in the first place.
When an adoptive birth mother chooses you to raise her child, she is entrusting her child’s safety, love and entire life with you because she does not have the ability to provide one or some of these herself, but loves her child more than anything.
Therefore, a birth mother rightfully deserves assistance while serving as a vessel of protection, growth and love for your future child. You may have the ability to nurture a baby physically and emotionally following birth, but a baby’s nature – her body and mind – are what she will have for the rest of her life.
