For the past 9 years I have worked with an agency that strictly does newborn placements.  We work with expectant mothers who are considering adoption and we counsel them through their pregnancy and support them no matter what decision they make.  Many of the women we work with want to do a direct placement where the baby leaves the hospital with the adoptive family and this is something we support as well.  The reason I chose to write about this subject more extensively than I did before is that as I am writing this article I am working with a young mother whose child is in interim care with our agency while she makes a decision.  Without interim care, she would not have been able to revisit the idea of adoption after the baby was born because of the rush of emotions she felt when her daughter was finally here.

As an agency, we try to prepare a Birthmother for what the hospital stay will be like, the emotions she will feel the questions she might have. You can only prepare someone so much and the rest they have to experience themselves when the baby is born.  Literally, for most birthmothers, when a baby is born she will have to make her decision all over again.  Before, even though they loved the baby, the baby was just a concept.  When the baby is born he/she becomes reality.

When indecision comes into play, interim care is a safeguard for the adoptive family, Birthmother and the baby.  The adoptive family does not have to live with the fear of the baby being taken from their home, the Birthmother doesn’t have the pressure of making a decision during her short hospital stay and the baby doesn’t have to be moved from place to place.

In this case, the baby was born before the Birthmother had a chance to meet the adoptive family.  She wanted, understandably, to meet them before doing placement and she didn’t want to meet them in the hospital as she was dealing with her own feelings at the time.  Even though she feels like adoption is the best thing for her daughter, she would have opted to parent in place of adoption if she did not have the option of interim care.

Since the baby was born she has met the adoptive family and they plan to meet again to get to know each other before the placement ceremony.  In the meantime, she has allowed the adoptive family to visit the baby in interim care.  She recognizes the value of interim care and, although they would have done an at-risk placement, the adoptive family recognizes the need for it as well.  It has given the Birthmother some time to heal and feel ready to move forward instead of having the pressure to make a rash decision.

This is just one of many instances where interim care can be a good thing.  If we are contacted by a hospital social worker regarding a woman who just delivered and states she wants to make an adoption plan, we always do interim care.  This gives us an opportunity to do counseling with her, to get to know her and to get to know what kind of adoption she wants.  We would never show up at the hospital with a stack of profiles not knowing anything about the situation.  This would be a disservice to her as well as the prospective adoptive families.

A third scenario for the interim care option is when the Birthfather is contesting the adoption.  If he plans to go to court and we don’t know what the outcome might be, we talk to the adoptive family about doing interim care.  Court cases take time and if he has a leg to stand on, he could win the right to prevent the adoption.  This could mean removing a child that has been with a family for many months or even years.

There are other times and reasons that we have suggested interim care.  Anytime we feel like a Birthmother is having a hard time or really on the edge in making her decision we offer it so that she can have more time to make sure that she is making the right decision free of pressure.

Interim care can be a difficult time for adoptive families.  In your heart this is your child and you just want him/her to be home with you.  Instead you have to rely on the foster family to keep the type of schedule you would like or to feed them a certain formula.  If you have the opportunity to visit the baby in foster care, you have to do it on their schedule and you may feel like you don’t want to stay too long because you don’t want to be an imposition while at the same time you would love to pack your bags and move in.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding a specific situation, talk to your agency or attorney about their foster care option.  Ask them about their interim care guidelines and what protocols they follow regarding suggesting it to their clients.  You want to be sure that they are taking everyone’s feelings and rights into account.  As much as you would love to have a newborn in your home, you also want to be sure that they aren’t pressuring a Birthmother.  Pressure could cause her to do something she isn’t ready for or cause her to do the exact opposite because she is feeling too much pressure.

All this being said, I am still a big proponent of direct placements if that is what everyone wants and if the Birthmother feels ready to move forward when the hospital time comes.  I also feel that interim care is an excellent safeguard to have in place just in case.  Every situation and every person is so different so it is always good to explore both options and to know that, even if you have always leaned towards doing a direct placement, sometimes using interim care can be the best for everyone involved.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 3:46 am and is filed under Adoption. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.