Coping with Stillbirth After Adoption Match - Weekend Wisdom
Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care
03/01/25
•7m
About
Comments
Transcript
Featured In
Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!
Question: I've been an adoption social worker for almost seven years and just experienced my 2nd situation where the birth mother in a match had a stillbirth after selecting a family through our agency. Both situations were such a difficult loss for both parties. I'm curious if you've heard of others who experienced this unusually tragic type of loss during adoption. I'm not sure how common it is, especially given the rate of stillbirths is 1 in 175 births in the U.S. How can adoption professionals (on the adoptive parent AND birth parent side) best walk through such a situation with their clients?
Resources:
- Creating a Family Online Support Group
- How can you deal with your feelings of grief after a stillbirth? (March of Dimes)
- Stillbirth: Surviving Emotionally (American Pregnancy Association)
- Find a Local Chapter - The Compassionate Friends
Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
- Weekly podcasts
- Weekly articles/blog posts
- Resource pages on all aspects of family building
Previous Episode
Evaluating Risk Factors in Domestic Adoption
February 26, 2025
•64m
Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!
Are you thinking about adopting a baby? Are you worried about what risk factors exist that you should know about? Join us to talk about these issues with Dr. Lindsay Terrell, a pediatrician at Duke University Medical Center and an Assistant Professor in their Department of Pediatrics. And James Fletcher Thompson, a South Carolina attorney with extensive experience in adoption.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Lack of prenatal care.
- What is covered in prenatal care and how might a lack of prenatal care impact a baby?
- Prematurity
- What causes a premature birth?
- Prenatal exposure
- Alcohol
- What are some red flags that a mom might have abused alcohol during her pregnancy?
- Does the degree of impact differ depending on when in the pregnancy alcohol was consumed?
- What are the long- and short-term impacts of alcohol consumption on a child exposed prenatally?
- Creating a Family’s Prenatal Substance Exposure Workshop for Parents
- Opioids
- List of opioid drugs in increasing degree of strength
- Codeine.
- Hydrocodone (Vicodin, Hycodan)
- Morphine (MS Contin, Kadian)
- Oxycodone (Oxycontin, Percoset)
- Hydromorphone (Dilaudid)
- Heroin
- Fentanyl (Duragesic)
- Methadone, Suboxone
- Does the degree of impact differ depending on when in the pregnancy the opioid was used?
- Does the degree of long-term impact differ depending on whether the baby was born dependent or with a diagnosis of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) or Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome (NOWS)?
- What are the long- and short-term impacts of opioid exposure on a child exposed prenatally?
- List of opioid drugs in increasing degree of strength
- Cocaine
- Marijuana
- Methamphetamine
- Polysubstance abuse
- Creating a Family has extensive resources to help parent a child exposed to opioids prenatally.
- Alcohol
- Sexually Transmitted Infections
- What are the common STIs?
- What are the risks of each of them to the unborn child or newly born child?
- Mental Health Issues
- What is the genetic connection for the following mental health disorders? How heritable are these mental illnesses?
- Anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and phobias.
- Mood disorders: Depression, bipolar disorder
- Personality disorders (antisocial, borderline, narcissistic)
- Psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia
- ADHD
- What is the genetic connection for the following mental health disorders? How heritable are these mental illnesses?
- Legal Risk Factors
- What are the most common legal risk factors when adopting an infant through private adoption?
Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
- Weekly podcasts
- Weekly articles/blog posts
- Resource pages on all aspects of family building
Next Episode
Help, I Don't Think I Can Continue With This Adoption!
March 5, 2025
•44m
Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!
Are you really struggling with your adoption and feeling you've made a huge mistake? Listen to this interview with Lindsay Lanham, MSW. She works at Holt International and is the author of the online article “Predictors of Adoption Disruption and Dissolution: A Literature Review.”
In this episode, we cover:
- Difference between an adoption disruption and adoption dissolution.
- What causes an adoption to fail? What causes parents to say: “Help, I don’t think I can continue this adoption?”
- Child-related factors:
- Child’s age
- Child’s behavior
- Aggression or children who sexually act out
- Are sibling placements more stable?
- Adoptive parent-related factors:
- Demographic characteristics? (age, marital status, parenting experience, income, race)
- Parental expectations
- Parenting style
- Relationship prior to the adoptive placement
- Characteristics of parents in successful adoptions
- Adoption professional-related factors:
- Identify problems quickly and provide support
- How to address children who have experienced sexual abuse. “It is recommended that social workers universally prepare families for behaviors associated with sexual abuse trauma and the possible impact of sexual abuse. Adoptive families should have the language necessary to speak about child sexual abuse and know how to access supportive resources in their community, such as child advocacy centers, prior to placement.”
- What should parents do when they realize that the adoption isn’t going as they had hoped/planned?
- Identify the problem quickly and get support.
- Reset expectations
- Self-care
- Get help
- What should parents do if they are reaching the point where they want to dissolve an adoption?
Resource: Predictors of Adoption Disruption and Dissolution: A Literature Review
Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
- Weekly podcasts
- Weekly articles/blog posts
- Resource pages on all aspects of family building
If you like this episode you’ll love
Promoted