According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, 641,000 children lived in foster care in 2012. Even with 52,000 adoptions in 2012, 102,000 were still legally ready for adoption with no parental rights' strings attached.

When a woman places her baby up for adoption, she isn’t making the choice to give up. Instead, she’s choosing a life for her child, according to the American Adoptions website. The decision for a mother or birth parents to place a baby up for adoption isn’t always simple.

The decision to search for a child you gave up for adoption can be challenging, both emotionally and practically. Some birth parents prefer to conduct a passive search.

Independent adoption is the term for adoptions arranged between birth parents and adoptive parents that already know each other or found each other without agency help. Adopting a friend's baby is a prime example of independent adoption.

When a child is adopted through a closed adoption, the records of that adoption are sealed by a judge to make the transaction private.

Gay adoption is also referred to as same-sex adoption. It allows couples of the same gender to be legally recognized as parents of a minor. In some situations, the child may be the biological child of one of the parents.

Miscarriage, or the death of a child in utero, is one of the worst fears of an expectant mother, and unfortunately a common occurrence. According to the American Pregnancy Association, as many as one quarter of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage.

Mirena is an intrauterine device, or IUD, produced by Bayer Pharmaceuticals. It is a soft plastic IUD that slowly releases a hormone called levonorgestrel into the uterus for up to five years.

Unless a surrogate mother intends to use her own egg (and thus be biologically related to the child), pregnancy can only occur through in vitro fertilization, or IVF. The first step in the process: creating and retrieving the egg.

Nutrition during your pregnancy is critical to maintaining the health of both you and your developing fetus.

If you want to adopt a child, you must make a candid assessment of your particular circumstances. You must consider whether you possess the financial ability to raise a child. You need to appreciate whether there are elements of your history that may render adopting a child difficult or even impossible.

If you are searching for your birth mother, you may have lost contact when she gave you up for adoption, lost a custody battle, surrendered you to foster care, went to jail, was deprived of you through a parental child abduction by your birth dad, or your adoptive parents backed out of an open adoption agreement to kee