In a domestic adoption, it is possible to adopt a newborn baby. Adoptive parents generally have some degree of contact with the birth mother, and often the birth father, during the birth mother's pregnancy. They can obtain background information and medical histories about the birth parents and can arrange for the birth mother to receive pre-natal care during her pregnancy. Most often, the adoptive parents take custody of the child just after the birth, often directly upon the discharge of the child from the hospital. The possible disadvantage in a domestic adoption is that a birth mother can decide not to place her baby for adoption for a limited period of time post-birth.. The laws of most states provide that a birth mother cannot formally consent to placing her child for adoption until after the birth of the child. Some prospective adoptive parents feel that the benefits of adopting a newborn baby and having as much background and medical information about the birth parents and the baby as possible outweigh the risk of a birth mother changing her mind about the adoption.

In an international adoption, prospective adoptive parents generally cannot adopt newborn babies. Generally, they adopt children who are living in orphanages and are waiting to be adopted. Sometimes there are children in orphanages eligible for adoption who are less than one year of age. However, they are not newborn babies at the time of the adoption. Generally, prospective adoptive parents are referred a child who is eligible for adoption and provided with a picture or videotape of the child and some medical records of the child obtained since the child has been in the orphanage. Adoptive parents are generally unable to receive much background and medical information about the child and often receive no information about the birth parents of the child. Some of the benefits of an international adoption are that adoptive parents are adopting a child living without parents in an orphanage. In addition, there is very little risk of a birth parent appearing during the adoption process and deciding to parent the child. Some adoptive parents may find it a benefit not to have any contact with the birth parents of the child they will adopt and feel that this outweighs the fact that they cannot obtain much medical history regarding the child or the birth parents.

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