Post Placement Feelings to Expect: Positive Emotions after Adoption

The adoption process is a life-changing event and comes with a lot of emotional baggage to unpack when it’s over. When you think about post placement feelings to expect, you probably think of the regret, guilt, and overwhelming sadness. The good news is, there are actually a lot of positive emotions after adoption. The adoption journey can be long and rough, but the view at the top of that mountain can be beautiful and worth the hardships. Yes, you’ll have to work through a lot of feelings, but you don’t have to do it alone.

Through the good and the bad, Adoption Choices of Kansas is here for you when you’re considering adoption. We work with hundreds of women each year, and every experience is different. Even more challenging than working through the bad feelings may be just letting yourself feel the good ones. Remember, you deserve to feel good about your decision to choose adoption. Learn to recognize the positive emotions after adoption and let them encompass you.

Positive Emotions after Adoption

1. Relief  

Being relieved when the papers are signed and your baby is safely in the arms of the adoptive parents is not something to feel guilty about. Carrying a growing human inside of you for nine months causes a lot of physical and emotional stress, and going through the process of adoption at the same time is no small feat. Mothers will say that pregnancy is beautiful, but maybe not as beautiful as when the baby is born and no longer sitting on your bladder and causing your vital organs to shift. Being able to finally take a deep breath and know that everything is settled and finalized is a wonderful feeling.

2. Hope

There’s a lot about adoption that can elicit feelings of hope. Seeing your baby be placed with a loving adoptive family, watching them grow and thrive, and seeing their potential. Feeling hope for your baby’s future as well as your own is fantastic! Let yourself feel hope when the moments come to you and embrace that. You deserve to feel hope for both you and your baby. Adoption is surrounded with hope and is, in fact, the very foundation and ethos.

3. Joy and Excitement

Those emotions you probably didn’t have when the strip turned pink. An unplanned or unwanted pregnancy can be scary and come with a lot of uncertainties, but adoption breathes new life into it. You can come out the other side of the adoption journey ready and excited to see what the future holds. Feel excited to continue your education or travel across Europe, and joy, knowing there is even more excitement to come seeing what adventures and opportunities await your baby.

4. Pride

Pat yourself on the back and hold your head up high. You deserve to be proud, and you should be! If choosing adoption seemed like more of a means out of an unwanted situation than a noble deed, you might feel conflicted with pride. It doesn’t matter what your reasons were. What you did was hard, and not everyone can make the decisions you did. Intentions aside, allow yourself to be prideful. It’s not a sin to be proud of yourself. Be proud that you chose a better life for your baby and the best option for yourself. Be proud that you came out the other side a little stronger.

5. Peace

Part of choosing adoption is having the peace of mind that your baby is safe, and you made the right choice. After a long journey and battling through a gauntlet of negative emotions, you deserve to feel some peace finally. Even if it doesn’t seem like it now, the restless negative feelings will be replaced with positive ones, and you can breathe a sigh of relief and quiet your anxieties. Finding peace may not come easily, but it will come.

Feeling Guilty about Feeling Happy after Adoption

Everyone’s journey to and through adoption is different and unique. Some may struggle more than others, and there’s no correct way to feel. In any situation where you feel like you should be feeling a certain way, you may be wrestling with feelings of guilt. Allow yourself to feel whatever it is that’s happening in that big, beautiful heart of yours. Be angry and sad and cry and scream but also be happy and proud and smile. Grieving for the living is hard. You deserve any positive emotions you have, no matter when they happen. Laugh and have fun and let yourself be happy.

Adoption Choices of Kansas serves birth parents statewide and beyond, please call us or text us to learn more!
Call Us 877-903-4488 or Text Us 316-209-2071

Meet the Author: Michelle Brugioni is a practiced, well-versed college-educated writer and avid coffee drinker. She has ten years’ experience as a freelance writer, and has written for an alarmingly wide range of clients and publications. She has written on topics like: life science, biopharmaceutical company acquisitions, dealing with anxiety, and creative drinking games.

As a fearless writer and masterful researcher, each time Michelle is approached with the question, “Can you write this?” she responds confidently with, “When do you need it?”