Just Placed Your Baby Up For Adoption? 3 Ways To Take Care Of Yourself

Placing your child up for adoption is an emotional decision and process. Giving your child to their adoptive parents after you have gone through labor and delivery can be difficult on a practical and emotional level, even if it makes sense on a logical level. If you just placed your baby up for an open adoption, you need to take care of yourself.

Set-Up an Appointment with Your Adoption Counselor

After you give your child to their adoptive parents, you will experience a wide range of emotions, especially since you carried your child inside of your body for months and are now parted with your child. You will experience the normal post-pregnancy hormones, and your body is still going to be going through changes but without a child there. That can be a lot to handle, which is why you should set up an appointment with your counselor for the day you give your child to their adoptive parents, as well as a few appointments in those first few weeks as your body heals, your hormones change, and you start to feel the impact of the choice that you made. Your counselor can help you process your emotions in a healthy way and provide you with insight and guidance as you reflect and move forward from this experience.

Share Your Story

Next, you should share your store. You can write in a journal about your story. You can join an online support group for women who have given their children to adoptive parents and share your story and experience there. You can create a private video journal, or you can livestream what you are feeling to all your family and friends. Don't keep your story inside of yourself; find some way to let it out and share it with the world. What you went through and what you experienced has value to give the world.

Surround Yourself with Support

Finally, make sure to surround yourself with support. At this point, you more than likely know the friends and family members who support your decision to allow another couple to adopt your child. Set up your schedule so that you are around the people who support your decision; this is when you are going to need them the most — when the reality of your decision is so fresh and new.

After you place your child for adoption, schedule some extra sessions with your adoption counselor to help you process your feelings. Share your story, even if you just write it down for yourself. Surround yourself with people who support you and care about you. Take care of yourself and allow yourself to heal from this process.

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