Mardie Caldwell is a nationally recognized adoption expert, Certified and Bonded Open Adoption Practitioner (C.O.A.P.) through the National Federation for Open Adoption Education, and founder of Lifetime Adoption, which has been helping families grow through adoption since 1986. In over four decades of work, she has guided thousands of birth parents and adoptive families through one of life’s most meaningful journeys. This is her story.
I remember when we decided to adopt. My personality was and is, “I’ve made the decision, so let’s do it – NOW!” In my life, if I wanted something, I could pick up the phone and call in an order, sign a check, or ask my secretary to have it on my desk by noon. So here I sat with this overwhelming desire to be a mother and all this love to share with a child, asking, “How do I complete this ‘task’ of parenthood by my deadline?”
My path to parenthood began after going through miscarriages and failed fertility treatments, which made the desire to adopt all the more profound. 40 years ago, my husband and I didn’t know where or how to get started. Through research, determination, and prayer, our dream of a family became a reality.
I started with a plan, a notebook, assistance from a caring adoption consultant, and a lot of hard work. This was our family we were building, after all! We had a few heartaches along the way, but the emotional pain of not having children was more painful.
My Path to Becoming an Adoption Expert
The first week into our journey, I drove myself crazy spending hours per day researching the process of adoption. Agencies often slammed the door shut because we were too old. My husband was 40, and I was 30! Agencies turned us down because we were overweight or not married long enough. Others denied us because I owned my own business and wouldn’t be a “stay-at-home Mom.” Sometimes it was that our income wasn’t high enough, we weren’t the right religion, we lived in the wrong county, and the list went on.
Nothing seemed to work. I had never had so many rejections in one week. Despite the initial setbacks, I refused to give up. I decided to take matters into my own hands and network to find a solution. Within weeks of starting our adoption search, we had three different birth mothers choose us. We were overwhelmed and delighted.
Through my persistence, I found and contacted sources that led me to other sources until I found my precious son. Many unsettling events would take place before the courts finalized our adoption, many months later.
My Adoption Quest
During my quest, I maintained a detailed spiral notebook, chronicling the doctors, attorneys, counselors, and other professionals who helped me. I even recorded every step I took to reach my goal.
Along the way, I met dozens of others trying to adopt who also met with roadblocks put up for seemingly ridiculous reasons. As I held my son in my arms, calls poured in from other couples who were also striving for parenthood. Soon, I became an adoption coordinator by default. I handled many of my early adoptions while cooking dinner.
Upon selling my manufacturing and wholesale company, I went full steam ahead as an adoption coordinator. I applied my marketing background and the same research techniques I had used for my own adoption in 1986. Little did I know that God was training and aligning me for the adoption work I now do today.
I opened Lifetime Adoption, which became a member of the Better Business Bureau. I also became a Certified and Bonded Open Adoption Practitioner through the National Federation for Open Adoption Education. This credential reflects my commitment to ethical, informed, and compassionate adoption practice.
That season of waiting I endured — the uncertainty, the hope, the perseverance — became the very foundation for the program of success Lifetime Adoption offers families today, 40 years later. Every family I work with, I understand from the inside out.
Over the years, my commitment to education and advocacy for adoptive families grew beyond the work we do at Lifetime. I’ve channeled nearly four decades of experience into six books on adoption, each written to give birth parents, adoptive families, and professionals the guidance I wished I’d had when I started my own journey:
- Called to Adoption: A Christian’s Guide to Answering the Call
- So I Was Thinking About Adoption…Consider Your Choices
- The Healthcare Professional’s Adoption Guide
- Adoption: Your Step-by-Step Guide
- AdoptingOnline.com
- Adoptive Breastfeeding: the Ultimate Guide
Writing these books has been one of the most rewarding extensions of my work as an adoption expert, because the more informed families are, the better the outcomes for everyone, especially the children.
Coordinating Adoptions
As an adoption coordinator, I found that each morning could see me in a sudden flight to pick up a baby or on the telephone handling a birth mother in crisis. It has been an eventful and rewarding career, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
At Lifetime, we’ve had adoptive families who have welcomed with open arms babies born to drug-addicted mothers, and even a family who adopted their child from an HIV-positive birth mother. We help with biracial adoptions and with single women adopting. We have one birth mother who chose adoption for her baby, then wrote a book to share her story with the world. We have an adoptive father who, after adopting a child through us, became an adoption attorney, and the list goes on.
I know firsthand that the waiting is hard. But I also know from experience, and from thousands of families I’ve walked alongside, that there is real hope on the other side.
Finding fellowship with other adoptive parents who once sat in your shoes can renew your faith and remind you that you are moving closer to the child who will become a blessing to your family.
Adoption Today
Today, hopeful parents can complete all of the legal steps, the home study background check, and the necessary paperwork online, which has really sped up the process.
Birth parents and adoptive parents can take an active role in pursuing their goals. A birth mother has the opportunity to look at profiles and watch videos of available adoptive families in complete privacy.
The Internet has helped put birth mothers in direct contact with adoptive parents and vice versa in a way that was simply not possible when I first started. This speeds up the selection process enormously. Waiting in obscurity has become a thing of the past.
Today, Lifetime Adoption completes over 120 adoptions per year. We have in-house, 24-hour phone lines and receive over 300 calls a day.
At Lifetime Adoption, we are driven by our love for what we do. The joy and contentment we see on the faces of the families and birth parents we work with keep us going, even through the emotional ups and downs of our profession. We cry and laugh every day, but the fulfillment we derive from our work is immeasurable. We are committed to answering your adoption questions with honesty and transparency, because I’ve been in your shoes and I know it can be done.
My First-Hand Experience as an Adoption Expert
It is my goal to share with birth parents and adoptive parents our resources and to help you make the right decision for your life. I believe adoption should be a fulfilling and well-thought-out plan for the birth parent and the adoptive family, with the best interests of the child as our focus.
I have also been on both sides of infertility, with numerous pregnancy losses and failed fertility treatments, and then conceiving through new technology and giving birth to a healthy daughter. That first-hand experience of infertility’s emotional weight is something I carry into every conversation with the families I serve. It allows me, as an adoption expert, to meet clients not just with knowledge, but with a genuine understanding.
It is my hope for you, the prospective parents, that you will soon adopt the child you’ve been dreaming of. It is my hope for you, our beloved expectant mothers, placing your babies for adoption, that the immeasurable love for the child you are carrying will be returned to you over your life again and again. God bless you both in your search for the best for this precious child.
Mardie Caldwell, C.O.A.P., Adoption Expert & Founder of Lifetime Adoption
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on February 8, 2020, and has since been updated.
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