ADOPTION NOW

On this podcast, April Fallon, the host of ADOPTION NOW, shares an update from the summer and talks about what is to come with this podcast.

Last episode, we had Kelene on the show, who is a birth mother that made an adoption plan 26 years ago. That little baby girl, named Chrissy, was born early and was only 3 pounds. Kelene and the adoptive parents worked together to love this little baby and today she joins the show! This is the first ADOPTION NOW episode to have both the birth mother and the adoptee together sharing their journey. It's an incredible story and it's so helpful in understanding open adoption.

Kelene is a birth mother who placed her baby 26 years ago with a family she babysat for down the street. She had an open adoption with her daughter, Chrissy, and this week she shares what it was like to have a daughter she knows and sees but is not raising. This episode helps us understand how "open adoption" works as an adoptive family brings home a baby and a birthmother heals.

Chris Prange-Morgan wrote an article that was published in the Huffington Post on "Trauma" after she and her husband adopted two kids from China. She suffered from PTSD after bringing home their son who had severe medical needs and attachment issues. She started to rock climb to relieve stress. One day, overwhelmed with all that was going on, she climbed a wall but did not clip in. She fell 28 feet.... On this episode she talks about this accident that changed her life. She also gives her advice for adoptive parents who may need help during and after the adoption process.

Chris Prange-Morgan wrote an article that was published in the Huffington Post on "Trauma" after she adopted two kids from China. She suffered PTSD after bringing home her son who had severe medical needs and attachment issues. On this episode Chris talks to April Fallon about her journey and the accident that changed her life. She fell 28 feet, had multiple fractures, and ended up losing her leg. She is now a voice for adoptive parents getting the help they need through the adoption journey and after.

After Laura led a medical mission trip to Haiti she knew she wanted to adopt from there. The process took 3 1/2 years but finally they brought home their 5 year old little girl. On this episode Laura shares about what it was like to bring home an older child and how it inspired them to help other families in their adoption process by providing grant funding. Learn more about how you can apply for funding today at www.inspiringorphancare.com

April Fallon invites her mom, Mary, and her husband, Noah, to share what they have learned during their 7 adoption experiences. On this episode you will hear how to support your adult children as they fight to grow their family.

On this episode, April Fallon talks to Heather Clark, who fostered 22 children in 7 years. She gives us tips on how to prepare for the foster care journey and what to expect during the process. She is now a Community Leader for a group called "Friends of Adoptive & Foster Families" at Cherry Hills Community Church in Colorado.

Susan Mitchell shares what it was like to bring two children home from Russia. She shares how God brought her family together and how these two lives consoled her through great loss.

April Fallon talks to Republican candidate for Governor, Victor Mitchell, and his wife, Amy, about adoption and how to bring change to adoption law.

This episode has it all. Wendy talks to April Fallon about how she and her husband grew their family. They now have 6 beautiful children and a biological daughter being raised by another family through embryo donation. Don't miss this Adoption Story, you will be amazed at how it all comes together!

Here is part 2 of this incredible story! A perfect baby was born to a college athlete who was told 8 times she was not pregnant by a doctor. She thought she had a stomachache, ended up delivering a baby, then decided to place him for adoption. She had to pick a family within hours!

ADOPTION NOW was a part of this adoption story with Thurman Law firm in Florida. He was a perfect baby boy born to a college athlete who was told 8 times by a doctor she was not pregnant! One night, she ends up in a hospital with stomach problems and ends up delivering a healthy baby boy, and decides to chose adoption. This Adoption Story is so amazing and it all happened so fast!

37 years after her adoption, Sarah finds her birth family through ancestry.com. She flies to Texas to meet them and to hear the real story behind her adoption.

Dausi is a birth mother who placed her baby girl 2 years ago. On this episode of ADOPTION NOW Dausi talks about her struggle with addiction and how she became pregnant in rehab. It was the choice to pursue open adoption that changed her life. When she met Brandon and Corrine, she knew that they would love her daughter and protect her baby from the life she knew. What happened to Dausi through that relationship was a miracle.

Brandon and Corrine have 5 adopted children and 2 biological. They just recently brought home twins! On this episode Corrine returns to ADOPTION NOW to update us on their new adorable additions, and to talk about her passion for open adoption. Corrine is a huge advocate for birth parent support. "You can't always open up your home but you can open up your heart." She has just launched a new business helping adoptive families make profile books as they prepare to be matched to an expectant mother. Let her experience help you in your adoption process!

John DeYoung returns to ADOPTION NOW. He was adopted from Korea and has now started Shift Freedom Conference. On this episode, April Fallon talks to John about Adoption and Human Trafficking. If you are in the adoption world, this is something you must be aware of.

James and Noell adopted through the foster care system. This family said yes to two brothers and later found out a biological sister was born! They have gone through so much, including dealing with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). Noell shares on this episode how they had to make some very hard decisions to get their oldest adoptive son the help he needs.

New ADOPTION NOW Podcast! April Fallon, the Host of ADOPTION NOW, opens up with her husband about the journey of adoption they have been on. Adoption has changed their lives. They talk about the joy and challenges that has brought them closer in their marriage and increased their faith. This season they are on a new station in Denver, 94.7FM!! This podcast is for anyone who is thinking of starting the adoption process, in the middle of the process or someone who just needs encouragement! Noah and April have been through the process 7 times and it has not always been easy, yet out of their experience, they started ADOPTION NOW.

When the host of ADOPTION NOW, April Fallon, started this show she had no idea that she would be in the middle of an adoption while interviewing other families on this topic. When she and her husband got a call about a biological sibling to their youngest daughter, the journey began. It was not easy and seemed very hopeless at times. Today Christine Thurman, their Adoption Lawyer, joins the show to help them tell the story of how they brought baby Maliyah Kate home. If you've ever felt overwhelmed during the adoption process, we hope this episode can give you some hope to keep fighting.

We are finishing National Adoption Month with this great interview about Foster Care! Meaghan Nally from Nightlight Christian Adoptions and Shelly Radic from Project 1.27 discuss the extreme need for foster families across the USA, and the sense of urgency in Colorado in particular. Meaghan breaks down exactly how the process works and what it is that they look for in a family. Shelly is President of Project 1.27 and has been a foster parent, adopted through foster care, and has a brother who was adopted through foster care as well. Project 1.27 is a Biblically based, state-approved training program for families looking to get certified. The need for foster families and respite care is far greater than you think, and through volunteering or fostering you can be the person that changes a child's life!

If you were with us last week, you heard Katie and Scott's story about being embryo donors. Today we have a story about an adoptive family that has 3 beautiful children, 2 from traditional adoption and one through embryo adoption. Charis and her husband battled for years with infertility, and tried everything including IVF, IUI and countless tests and diagnostic procedures to find out the cause of their struggles. After realizing that this was not the way they were going to grow their family, they attempted both foster to adopt and agency organized domestic adoption on three different occasions, all which failed, leaving them heartbroken and with empty arms. After all the heartbreak however, Charis met with a lawyer who led them down the path of private adoption, ultimately resulting in the birth of their first daughter. They were looking to grow their family further when a friend introduced Charis to the idea of embryo adoption, and while her husband took some convincing at first, the rest is history. Charis is now the co-founder of the National Registry for adoption with her friend Katie (last week's guest), which is as they describe it, "the Match.com of embryo donors and waiting families". NRFA allows both donors and waiting families to find and connect with possible matches, a process Charis can vouch for herself after finding a donor family through the service she helped create.

We are SO excited to be featuring our first embryo adoption donor family story today on the podcast! Katie and Scott were a bit older when they decided that they wanted children, and after researching both fostering and adoption, they were heartbroken and discouraged. After a fateful lunch with a good friend, the idea of surrogacy and IVF was planted, and ultimately proved to be the correct path for them. They ended up being blessed with a set of twins, but also had another set of embryos which they knew they would not be using. Katie and Scott faced the choice that a lot of IVF parents face: Either donate your extra embryos to science, keep them frozen in storage, or discard them. They felt uncomfortable with each of these choices and ended up doing some research of their own. Out of this research came the National Registry for Adoption, which Katie created with her friend Charis, to help pair embryo donors with waiting adoptive families that wanted to carry their adopted children. As she puts it "It's like the Match.com of the embryo donation and adoption world". They decided to donate their embryos to an adoptive family that successfully carried twins. Katie and Scott gave their embryos life and blessed a family with children!! Today they tell ADOPTION NOW about that journey.

We often hear the stories of adoptees, birth mothers, and adoptive parents on this podcast, but it is very rare to find ALL THREE in one person! Today's guest Kitty however, has experienced the triad of adoption and today she walks us through the struggles, heartbreak, and happiness she has felt in each of the roles. Kitty Ravert was adopted as a baby into a loving home, she placed a baby in her early 20's and later adopted an African American son. She has found her birth parents, found her biological son and has an open adoption with her son's biological family. This is a must listen to podcast as she is uniquely positioned to speak to every aspect of adoption with the clarity and grace that we all wish we could possess during the difficult and wonderful times that we experience throughout the adoption process.

Michelle Madrid Branch understands adoption in ways that most others do not. She is both an adoptee and an adoptive parent. She was adopted in the U.K. as a toddler, found her biological family as a teenager, and after she got married and had one biological son, she and her husband adopted two children internationally. They brought home a son from Russia and a daughter from Ethiopia. Michelle has great insight into the struggles and triumphs that adoption can bring to all those involved. She is truthful about her journey and so inspiring!! She is an author, speaker, and global advocate for women and children. Her books include "Mascara Moments," "Adoption Means Love," and "The Tummy Mummy," which was voted one of the top 25 adoption books for children. She is also the Executive Producer and Host of "The Greater Than Project," which is a documentary web series exploring the intrinsic greatness within women.

We have all heard stories of people who adopt children from abroad and of people who adopt children with disabilities, but today we have a story with both. Sara Berry and her husband were parents to 5 beautiful children when their faith lead them on a path that resulted in the adoption of two children from China. From the start they knew that both children had disabilities but their immediate love for them, made the decision easy, even if the process wasn't always. Sally was their first adoption and underwent surgery within weeks of arriving in the US, but it was Charlie that proved to them that miracles can and do happen. On this podcast Sara discusses how her faith has influenced her decisions throughout life and especially when adopting, and the importance of redefining things for your adoptive children whether they are from the US or abroad. Sara is the author of A Cord of Three Strands and A Broken Mirror, which are adoption based and must reads if you enjoy adoption stories.

Today on the podcast we have a birth mother story from California. Angela Rushing shares her story of how she was brought up in a traumatic household with an alcoholic father and passive aggressive mother, and how this situation ultimately led her to feel unwanted and unnurtured. Before she knew it, she had undergone 2 abortions, and when she found herself pregnant once more, she knew she couldn't do it again. This is where she began to look into private adoptions and discovered the couple who would become the adoptive parents of her child. Angela gets very honest about the whole process and how it wasn't until after she gave birth that the depression and suicidal thoughts triggered her to look into her past to be able to deal with her feelings and come to terms with her life. We also dig into her current life and her relationship with her daughter and how that reconnection has helped her become the woman she is today.

There are few more challenging achievements that the average person looks up to more than summiting Mt. Everest. Now imagine doing it blind. That's what today's guest Erik Weihenmayer did, becoming the first blind man to do so, along with summiting the rest of the Seven Summits, and kayaking the entire 277 miles of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. But his greatest challenge, as he writes in his latest book "No Barriers," was adopting his son Arjun from Nepal and finding a way to fight through the bureaucracy, corruption, and unknowns that can accompany international adoptions. This week on ADOPTION NOW, Erik shares the crazy story of the circumstances around the adoption (there was a civil war in the country at the time), some of the challenges of adopting a 5 year old from a foreign country across the world, and how they were able to integrate Arjun into their family.

Heather Avis and her husband are parents of three adopted children, two of whom have Down Syndrome. At the start of their adoption journey, they set out to adopt a healthy baby, but after meeting their future daughter Macy, a baby girl with both Down Syndrome and a congenital heart defect that would require surgery and medication, they found themselves in limbo. Unable to say no to this little girl who needed parents, but unable to say yes to the effect this would have on their lives, they struggled with the decision to adopt her before finally realizing that while it might be a challenge, it was the right step for them to take. Heather is the author of "The Lucky Few" based largely on her experiences adopting children both healthy, and with special needs. On this podcast she shares some of that insight with us, as well as what a blessing it's truly been for her and her family to take the leap and say yes to stepping outside of their preformulated ideal of what their adoptions - and family - would look like. This journey caused them to be one of "The Lucky Few."

Today on the podcast, we are so excited to feature Renee Hettich's story of her experience adopting 4 children internationally. One of her children is from Guatemala, and three of them are from China, our first Chinese adoption story on the podcast! Renee shares how none of the four adoptions went exactly according to plan, with undisclosed health difficulties of which she was unaware at the time, developmental delays and a host of other issues. She knows better than most the challenges of adopting internationally, but she also shares her joy at being able to give lives to these kids who may otherwise have been stuck in the terrible conditions of an orphanage.

ADOPTION NOW has our first story from Canada! Andra and her husband, Chung, were our first family to apply from a different country. Tune in this week to hear about the Canadian foster care system and how this family found their daughter!

Do you have questions about PTSD related to adoption? Do you struggle as a parent to understand a child that has experienced early childhood trauma? On this episode of ADOPTION NOW, April Fallon talks with Carrie O'Toole about how to deal with a challenging placement and how to see signs of trauma in the brain. Carrie is an author and life coach with a Masters Degree in Counseling. She now works with adoptive families who are on the brink and trying to put their family back together.

Beverly Boerner-Reynolds is an adoptive mother from Texas who wrote a book about the love a birthmother has for her child. When she first met her son's birthmother she thought maybe she was a scam artist! When you hear this story, you might think so also!! But what started in doubt, turned into a beautiful friendship and placement of a healthy baby boy.

Stephen and Natalie had dreams of adopting from the foster care system but the process was not as easy as they had hoped it would be. By a miracle they heard of an infant situation on Facebook and they decided to apply. On this episode of ADOPTION NOW we hear about their rushed journey to bring home a baby through private infant adoption. They had only 6 weeks to get home study ready and figure out how to pay the agency. Their journey still continues as the birthmother is pregnant again! Are they ready to bring home another baby?

This week on ADOPTION NOW - "Telling Your Adoption Story," Annie Peguero joins the show! Annie was adopted as an infant, and though she loved her parents very much, she wondered about her birth family. This year she decided to go live on Facebook to find them. Her video got 70,000 views and she received a message from someone who thinks they may be related to her. The journey she goes on answers the questions she has had for years and brings her to a place of wholeness.

Ashley is a birthmother who placed her son 11 years ago and is navigating through open adoption. She talks very openly about the pain she went through the years after placement and now she is an advocate for other birthmothers. She has just released a new curriculum for adoption professionals to help other birthmothers in their journey of healing.

This week on ADOPTION NOW, April Fallon interviews Victor Mitchell, candidate for Governor of Colorado. It's important when you start the adoption process to know your state law on adoption and foster care. Victor and April talk about what every family needs to know before they say yes to adoption.

This week on ADOPTION NOW April Fallon interviews her social workers from Nightlight Christian Adoptions. Meaghan and Corie talk about their four adoption programs at Nightlight and how to get started in the adoption process. We cover costs, the homestudy process and questions you should be asking your agency. It was because of these two and Thurman Law Firm, PLLC that April was able to bring home baby Maliyah from Florida.

Brad Pearse shares his adoption story. He was found as an abandoned baby in the Philippines and was severely underweight. A family from Denver wanted to adopt a baby from that country and were waiting for the call to be matched. God brought them together and by a miracle, Brad would be the one to save his Father's life.

Carrie O'Toole experienced the pain and suffering of infertility, miscarriage, and an international adoption that went painfully awry. Nothing could have prepared her for the decade-long journey of trying to love her little boy, who struggled to trust and connect after leaving the only home he'd ever known, a Vietnamese orphanage. This week on ADOPTION NOW Carrie sits down with April Fallon to share her adoption story.

Bethann was raised in an adoptive family. She was the only biological child out of five siblings. This week on ADOPTION NOW she talks about what it was like to grow up in an interracial family. She shares her own journey growing a family with her husband Zach. After they had two miracle sons, Bethann could not have any more children. They decided to start the adoption process and had no idea the rollercoaster they would be on to finally bring home Baby Vera.

Jen Milian was adopted from Colombia into a loving family as a baby. She had no idea that 6 (maybe more!) of her biological siblings were also given up for adoption. One of her biological brothers grew up just miles from her in New York. On this episode of ADOPTION NOW, Jen talks about what it was like to be adopted, her struggles as she found herself, and her recent incredible story about her biological family.

Heath and Laura's Story by April Fallon

Corrine Hellyar Christian is the Director of Colorado United for Adoption. She is passionate about all aspects of adoption. She is an advocate for birthmother care and open adoption. Corrine shares her journey through miscarriages, adoptions, and pregnancies. She speaks on how she has kept her heart and home open to her children's birthparents and even their extended family. Her story is so inspiring!

Ashley is an birthmother whose adoption story started in an abortion clinic. She shares about her life changing moment and how she placed her baby 11 years ago. Ashley Mitchell has shared her story all over the country through nationally acclaimed writing series, award-winning service, television + radio interviews and hundreds of blogs + business sites. She is known for her vulnerability and realness through her speaking, writing, mentoring and advocacy work for the adoption community. She is the owner of Big Tough Girl™, serving women world wide in their desire to live life as a Big Tough Girl™. She believes strongly in the power of sharing your story, educating yourself on the issues, and providing the resources so that women can feel empowered and successful in their journey. Ashley and her husband now have 2 children. She is learning daily how to navigate open adoption and how to create a life after placement. www.bigtoughgirl.com

Lauren Stokes, M.A., L.P.C., is a licensed professional counselor at Create Connectivity Counseling PLLC. She is also a writer for Adoption.com. She is an adult adoptee who was raised in an open adoption. This means that after she was adopted at 2 1/2 weeks old, her adoptive parents allowed her biological parents into Lauren's life. In this interview Lauren shares the great benefits of open adoption, while also emphasizing the need to embrace the complexities of the emotional journey through adoption.

April Fallon talks with Brittany about her and her husband's journey adopting their son Connor. After a very difficult road and months of waiting for finalization, the couple wanted another baby, but could not afford (financially and emotionally) another traditional adoption. Chris and Brittany discovered Embryo Adoption! She is now 6 months pregnant with a baby girl that the couple adopted. Tune in to this episode to hear this remarkable story!

Noah and April share their current adoption journey. They invite their lawyer, Christine Thurman from Thurman Law Firm, to share her insight on adoption. She has placed 22 babies in the last year and she is fighting to keep the costs low.

Jessica shares Scott and her journey through several failed adoptions, bringing home their first baby Ty, their plan to try embryo adoption, and the phone call that brought baby number two!

Jessica shares her journey to adopt as a single woman. She always knew she wanted to be a mother, but had no idea the process would be so challenging! Two years ago, Jessica was matched to an expectant birthmother in Florida. She shares what she went through to bring home baby Maryn.