Needing advice

There are a couple of ways you can start. You can focus on possibly adopting this woman's child, or you can look at adopting in general. Either way you will need a homestudy to be able to adopt. The reason I would not suggest you start with a homestudy is that 12 weeks is VERY early in a pregnancy, and she may likely end up not placing at all, let alone with you. Do you know if she is working with an agency and currently intending to make an adoption plan, or is she currently considering adoption among other options? Has she had any unbiased counseling around her pregnancy to help her work through her options? In addition, think about where you are coming from. What do you know about adoption in general? Do you know adoptive families and/ or birth families and/ or adoptees in real life? If so, have you talked with them about their experiences? Have you researched the different types of adoption, needs in parenting adopted children, relationships between birth families/ adoptive families/ adoptees? Have you thought through what level of openness you are looking for, and does that level match the expectant mom's desires? Also the more mundane issues, such as costs (can you afford not only to raise a child, but the cost of the adoption itself), maternity leave (if you work for a company that does not provide paid maternity leave, but relies on people using short term disability, this will not cover in the event of adoption), and your childrens' reaction? How big an age gap would there be with your other children, and how will you manage that? If the child will not be of the same race as you and your other children, what do you know about transracial adoption? I would start, if you are not there already, with educating yourself more about adoption in general. I know it seems like a lot, but the more you learn and think about the process, the better prepared you will be. Then contact an agency to start a homestudy. Certainly keep in touch with this emom if that is what you want, but I would advise against thinking of this child as even potentially being your child at this point. There are so many ways that could end in heartache right now.

Thank you for your advice. We have been doing a lot of research on adoption. I have talked to some friends and I just want to make sure we have our ducks in a row. We have talked to our 3 kids and they are all for it. They are older 19, 18 and 16. Race of the child is not a problem for any of us. We have talked many of times (years) of becoming foster parents. The problem with that is we all know that we would get to attached and that when they would have to leave it would be to hard on all of us. I am a stay at home mom, so I don't have to worry about maternity leave. The finiacial part we can work through. We have had to cut expenses for other things, we can do it for this. The birth mother and I have talked and we talked about counseling and she said she is willing to go and talk. As well as my husband and I, to go and talk to one to make sure we are not just doing this for the wrong reasons.