Who this is for
Any member pursuing adoption (foster, domestic, international) or surrogacy (gestational or traditional). Members carrying complicated infertility grief paired with LCSW from day one.
What brings people here
Adoption or surrogacy decision; transition from infertility; member request.
Clinical framework
OneVillage-developed.
How the 8 weeks run
Baseline assessments, your first SMART goal, and the 1:1 that sets up everything after it.
Specialists and clinicians rotate in, and sessions come thickest here. One change at a time, in the domains your baseline flagged.
Re-score, refresh the care plan, and check in 1:1 on what is and is not working.
The remaining domains, at a lighter cadence, and the work of making the early weeks hold under pressure.
Final re-score, relapse prevention, and the plan for what happens next.
When your sessions fall
The program is built in four-week modules. Sessions come thickest at the start, when what you decide matters most, and step down as things settle. That is 5 sessions of 45 minutes across 8 weeks, counting the visit before week 1.
| Module | Weeks | Sessions | Cadence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Module 1 | Weeks 1 to 4 | 2 | every other week |
| Module 2 | Weeks 5 to 8 | 2 | every other week |
Week by week
- Before you beginBefore you begin
This is the reading before your first visit. It explains what this pathway measures and why, and it starts with the finding the whole program is built around: most adoptive and intended parents do well, and a minority struggle badly enough to need help at a point nobody warns them about.
- Week 1Grief and hope, at the same time
If you arrived here from fertility treatment, you are carrying a loss into something that is supposed to be good news. This week is about not skipping that, and about what is actually known about distress through infertility and what helps it.
- Week 2The people going through it with you
This week you meet Conrad Chrzanowski, a relationship clinician. Adoption and surrogacy put two people on the same long process at different speeds, and there is research on which kind of coping between partners tracks with staying close through it.
- Week 3What is actually known about these families
You will be handed a lot of opinion about how children in these families turn out. There is real research, it is mostly reassuring, and it has limits the people quoting it rarely mention. All three of those are in this week.
- Week 4Halfway: expectations, checked against what is happening
This week you see Cindy again and repeat the questionnaires from week 0. The reason expectations get their own midpoint is that they are the one thing measured before and after placement that moved with how parents felt afterward.
- Week 5Money, coverage and leave
The practical track is not a distraction from the emotional one. In the study that measured it, post-adoption depressive symptoms tracked with environmental stress and adjustment difficulty rather than with psychiatric history, which is why this week is here and not at the end.
- Week 6Getting ready to parent this child
This week you meet Yasmin Dera, a maternal health clinician. Readiness is the part of this process with the best intervention evidence behind it, and it is worth knowing which parts of that evidence are strong and which are still open.
- Week 7Telling
How a child learns where they came from is one of the few questions in this field with a decade of data behind it. This week is what that data says about when families tell, what makes telling harder to start, and why it is a series of conversations rather than one.
- Week 8After the yes
This is the last session in the eight weeks and it is a handover, not a finish. The months after a child arrives are where the measured risk actually sits, so this week is about what to watch for, and who to call, once the structure of the program stops.
Who you will work with
Your Whole Health Coach takes your first visit and closes every module, so it is the same person from the first session to the last. The specialists and clinicians below lead the weeks where their work is the focus.
Cindy is a Whole Health Coach with a background in clinical nursing and more than a decade of experience in healthcare. Her experience working closely with patients and multidisciplinary teams has given her a deep understanding of the many factors that contribute to overall health and well-being. Cindy believes that health is about more than any one diagnosis, symptom, or lab result.
Conrad Chrzanowski, PhD, ACC, is a dedicated Relationship Coach with OneVillage, bringing over 15 years of experience as a clinical psychologist specializing in couples therapy and relationship coaching. Throughout his career, Conrad has worked extensively with couples in various clinical settings, offering guidance and support through challenging times, including navigating health crises like cancer.
Yasmin Dera is a passionate and experienced birth professional who began her journey into maternal health through her own personal experiences as a mother. The birth of her first son inspired her to dive deeply into birth work, leading her to become certified as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant Examiners (IBCLC), Full Spectrum Doula, Afterbirth Restorative Therapist, Childbirth Educator, and Perinatal Bereavement Specialist.
What we work on
| Domain | What this pathway does |
|---|---|
| Nutrition & Metabolism | Self-care during long process. Sleep + meals as foundation. |
| Movement & Mobility | Movement as mood regulation through long uncertainty. |
| Sleep & Recovery | Sleep regularity; insomnia during waiting periods. |
| Stress & Resilience | Long uncertainty is its own stressor. Daily relaxation; partner alignment. |
| Mind & Mood | PHQ-9 + GAD-7 monthly. Grief + hope co-existing. PG-13 if loss involved. |
| Relationships & Purpose | Partner alignment central. Family of origin conversations. |
How progress is measured
These are the validated tools this pathway uses: at your first visit, at the mid-program review, and at the end.
| Tool | Cadence | Owned by |
|---|---|---|
| PHQ-9 + GAD-7 | Monthly | WHC; LCSW reads |
| PG-13 (if loss involved) | Onboard, q4 weeks if PG-13>=20 | Grief specialist |
| PSS-10 | Onboard, q4 weeks | Stress specialist |
| Parenting Sense of Competence (PSOC) | Post-welcome, q4 weeks | Maternal clinician |
| Relational map / partner check-in | Onboard, q4 weeks | Relationships clinician |
| Decision-readiness inventory | Onboard | WHC + LCSW |
The research behind this pathway
Your clinician playbook was built from the guidelines and studies below. They are listed so you can read them yourself: every one is a real, published paper and the number at the end of each line is its PubMed ID.
Guidelines this pathway follows
- OneVillage-developed · OneVillage
No professional body publishes a clinical guideline for supporting adoptive and intended parents. This pathway is built from the empirical literature below and says so.
Key studies
- Foli KJ et al. (2016). J Affect DisordPost-adoption depression: Parental classes of depressive symptoms across time
Followed adoptive parents' depressive symptoms before and after placement and found five distinct trajectories. Most parents were fine, but some crossed the threshold for depression at placement and others only at six months. PMID 27155072
- Foli KJ et al. (2017). Res Nurs HealthLongitudinal analyses of adoptive parents' expectations and depressive symptoms
Followed 129 adoptive parents before and after placement. Expectations that did not match the reality predicted depressive symptoms, which is what this pathway works on before placement. PMID 29112297
- Golombok S et al. (2011). Dev PsycholFamilies created through surrogacy: mother-child relationships and children's psychological adjustment at age 7
Compared 32 surrogacy families with egg-donation and natural-conception families at age 7. No differences in children's adjustment or in maternal warmth. PMID 21895360
- Söderström-Anttila V et al. (2016). Hum Reprod UpdateSurrogacy: outcomes for surrogate mothers, children and the resulting families-a systematic review
Reviewed outcomes for surrogates, intended parents and children. Most arrangements go well and there is no evidence of harm to the children, and the authors are blunt about how limited the studies still are. PMID 26454266