In the United States, 19% of people of childbearing age are unable to get pregnant after one year of trying. This can be a confusing, frustrating, and devastating time, especially when it seems as though everyone around you is getting pregnant or posting their baby bump photos online.

If you are trying to get pregnant to no avail or are struggling with infertility and your partner’s infertility has been ruled out, there are several types of fertility treatments available to assist you in growing your family.

The post What Are Different Types of Fertility Treatments? appeared first on Mom.com.

Fifteen years ago, my husband and I decided to grow our family by adoption. We had no idea how arduous the homestudy — that’s the getting-ready-to-legally-adopt—process — would be. When we got through the interviews, background checks, training, and home inspection, our social worker handed us some checklists, asking us to make our selections.

I often refer to these as the “dreaded checklists,” because they can a hopeful adoptive parent feel conflicted and downright rotton. These checklists ask what a parent will and won’t be open to in a child they will adopt, including medical conditions. Another thing hopeful parents have to select is what type of adoption they will consider: open, semi-open, or closed adoption.

My husband and I, completely new to adoption, tried to be as middle-of-the-road as possible, checking all the “middle” boxes which mostly indicated “maybe” or “will consider.” As far as how much communication we wanted to have with our child’s biological parents, we checked “semi-open” or “open.” We knew from talking to other adoptive parents and adoptees — that’s people who were adopted — that having some access to a relationship with their birth parents could be healthy — even happy.

The post This Is What Open Adoption Is Really Like appeared first on Mom.com.

We have adopted four children, and each adoption was special in its own way. But the joy we experienced didn’t cancel out the complexity. There were times I felt horribly guilty and sad, because I knew my happiness came at a cost to my children’s biological parents — and my children, who had no choice in the situation. The more I shared my feelings with fellow adoptive parents, the more I realized that post adoption depression can hit many parents.

The post Post-Adoption Depression Is a Real Thing — And It Can Hit Adoptive Parents Hard appeared first on Mom.com.

Today marks one year since our children officially moved into our home via fostering. One year since we par-officially became a family — a birthday, or anniversary, of sorts. What our little Miss calls “Love Day.”

The post Fostering Brought Our Family Together and I Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way appeared first on Mom.com.

Andrea, a successful single woman from Maryland, was in her mid 30s when she made a decision. “I wanted to be a mom, and I got to an age where I thought it wasn’t going to happen in other ways,” she told Mom.com. She looked into international adoption and also domestic adoption, but “didn’t think it was a good option given how expensive it is. I’ve since learned that maybe wasn’t true….” She instead looked into becoming a foster parent and now, more than a decade later, she has a 12-year-old daughter she adopted from foster care and is in the process of trying to adopt a baby through domestic adoption.

The post Considerations for Single, Unmarried, or LGBTQ Prospective Adoptive Parents appeared first on Mom.com.

More than 100,000 children are adopted in the United States each year, according to statistics compiled by the US Department of Health and Human Services. About 10% of those are international adoptions. The majority of those occur between the US and countries in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia, creating families that are both transcultural and transracial.

While it’s important for kids to be welcomed into a loving home environment, experts have also pointed out the importance of kids keeping a connection to their cultural identity and ethnicity. There are many ways adoptive parents can foster that connection, even before they bring a child home. In addition to learning more about their child’s culture beforehand, here are more ways that parents can make sure they bring respect and understanding when adopting outside of their race or culture.

The post How to Respectfully Adopt a Child Outside of Your Race or Culture appeared first on Mom.com.

There are many things to consider when taking the first steps to adopt a baby through domestic adoption or adopting a child in foster care. One important question prospective parents may ask is: What is the best kind of adoption – open or closed? But what does it mean to have an open adoption and how does one figure out which option is best for them? Here are some things to keep in mind when considering open adoption vs. closed adoption.

The post What’s the Best Kind of Adoption for Your Family — Open or Closed? appeared first on Mom.com.

From the earliest I can remember, I was always told the same story by my family, friends, teachers, and society: &our mother loved you so much she gave you up to have a better life. That could be true. The reality is, I may never know the truth.

While I held onto that story when I was younger, I am now 26 years old and more aware of the strict family planning policies and circumstances under which babies were adopted out. I was born under China’s "One Child Policy." I have no information about my first (biological) family, and I do not know a single person with whom I share DNA.

When I was 6 months old, I was adopted into a loving family in the United States. My parents provided everything they could for my adoptive sister and me. They still do. For all intents and purposes, our family was just like all of the other more "traditional” families in our town.

The post No One Ever Talks About All the Loss That Comes With Being a Transracial Adoptee appeared first on Mom.com.

The decision to adopt is a big one, and for those new to the process, it can definitely be more than a little overwhelming. There are so many different types of adoption, various costs associated with it, and research to be done. But first, it’s important to make a decision about which path to take: Should you adopt through an agency or use a private attorney?

Both methods of adoption are very different, and there are pros and cons that come with each. Before you make your final choice, here’s everything you need to know about the difference between these two types of adoption so you can find which one might be right for you.

The post What is the Difference Between Adopting Through an Agency or Private Attorney? appeared first on Mom.com.

November is National Adoption Month. Started as Adoption Week, it began over 45 years ago as a way to shed light on the need for families to adopt children in the foster care system. In 1976, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis spearheaded the idea in hopes to connect children in need of forever families with foster parents who had it on their heart to grow their families through adoption.

Eight years later, Ronald Reagan officially proclaimed the week before the start of the holidays as official National Adoption Week; the holidays being a time when children are longing for a home and a sense of belonging. In 1995, President Bill Clinton expanded the week and proclaimed November as National Adoption Month to highlight the increasing need for matching children and youth in foster care with forever families.

One of the ways of growing your family is adopting through the foster care system. “There are several different ways to get started in the adoption [sic] process. One of the ways is through the Department of Social Services (DSS). From time to time you’re called on to be a foster parent, sometimes those foster parent situations turn into permanent situations, sometimes they don’t,” South Carolina family court lawyer Nancy Jo Thomason explained in a YouTube video. “It’s a lot of hard work; a lot of meaningful work.”

The post What to Know if You’re Adopting Through Foster Care appeared first on Mom.com.