private adoption? how?

Typically this would fall under networking. This is when you let anybody and everybody know that you are looking to grow your family thru adoption. You have to be careful because some states will not let you advertise yourself like thru a website or newspaper as so you need to know the laws in order to know what kind if media you can use. I know some people made business cards that had their demographic info and website address. There they put together a profile for those to view. But be careful bc in some states you can't do that! But for the most part, at least from my experience, private adoptions come from someone who knows someone and outs those people together. For example, most recent case that I personally know is a two women from the same church, one woman knew a grandmother raising two grandchildren and bio mom wanted grandma to take a newborn as well. She simply couldn't handle it so woman reaches out to that family about the woman wanting to adopt and few months later that woman adopted the newborn in an open adoption. The other case that was recent is a distant cousin wanting the friend of another cousin to consider letting her adopt due to substance abuse problems. So to answer your question let EVERYONE know you are looking to adopt. Hairdresser, employee coworkers, neighbors, church members, your physicians and let it play out. You must hire attorney regardless - and typically have a home study prepared.

You need to look for an attorney, which you can do either by finding one through a local adoption support group or through the yellow pages. When you call, ask what their fees are. If they are not willing to give you any kind of figure, then call someone else. Adoption attorneys are approached regularly by expectant moms. This will also help you avoid any possible fraud problems.

Also just because you identify an expectant mom outside of an agency, doesnt mean you get around using one. We knew our daughters birthmom and we still had to use lawyers, agencies, have homestudies, etc. Even though our adoption was a designated independent adoption, it still cost us around 10K for various agency fees and what not. I thought we could just go to a lawyer and sign here, sign here...nope. Now though, I wouldnt have it any other way.