My husband and I are in the process of domestic infant adoption. As part of the process we were required to participate in an infant care course at the local hospital.

Oh my, what an experience. I have never before in my life felt more discriminated against. It was awful. The instructor was a Labor and Delivery nurse and even though she could obviously see that I was not pregnant, and we told her after the dreadful introduction (which gave us two ways to introduce our selves (1) tell an unexpected positive surprise of pregnancy or (2) tell one trait of your spouse that you hope your baby gets) that we were adopting, she continued to act as though we weren't even in the room -- focusing the content completely on the birth experience.

Well, the experience really got me angry and motivated me to do something about the bias adoptive families experience in the hospital setting. And so for the Capstone course for my EdS I am developing a social change plan called: "Family is an Inclusive Word: A Vision for Social Change in the Hospital Setting." First I want to focus on infant care courses, and then on the actual experience for birth and adoptive families in the hospital.

I have put together a survey to better understand the scope of the problem, and to begin working toward creating an inclusive infant care curriculum for the hospital setting.

I would be eternally grateful to anyone who would be willing to complete the survey and share their experience. After all of the stigma I experienced with IF I suppose that I should have been prepared to face stigma with adoption, however I wasn't, and such blatant bias was seriously shocking.

Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/S38HK3Q