[sanc_mn]

Me and my husband are working with an Adoption Agency in MN to adopt infant domestically. We attended an adoption outreach program yesterday where we were told to make our own profiles online and keep networking. Birthmoms, please advise what you might be looking for in an adoptive parent profile. Do birthmoms look for only christian families?
Adoptive parents, please advise where exactly do you suggest posting our profiles?
We are really excited and looking forward to having an open infant adoption.
Any help will be highly appreciated.

[Jillie_sweetheart]

Be who you are. If you try and say just what you think birthmothers want to hear it will sound fake and birthmothers may shy away from your profile.

Also no not all birthmothers are looking for christian families. It all just depends on the birthmother. There is not set formula because it depends on the birthmother. Pictures are really important because it gives us a glimpse of your life together. I would shy away from not having any candid photos. I love to see real moments.

Just be who you are and write how you really feel.

[sanc_mn]

Jillie, Thank you for your advise.
Where exactly do you suggest posting profiles, other than the Adoption agency website?

[Jillie_sweetheart]

I have no help on that one. I went entirely through my agency.

[HopingGA45]

Youtube slide show video is popular with our agency. It's basically your profile book set to music.

[Jillie_sweetheart]

Originally Posted by HopingGA45

Youtube slide show video is popular with our agency. It's basically your profile book set to music.

I think we may have used the same agency mine seemed to like to do that to although to be honest I never really watched the videos when I was selecting a couple for little man because I liked reading what they wrote better. With that said though Not all birthmoms are the same and there is no perfect formula. Just as all adoptive parents are different.

[RavenSong]

The things that I would want to know as an expectant mother considering adoption for her baby would be kind of a snapshot, per se, of you and your husband. What hobbies do you enjoy? What rocks your world...what are the things you are passionate about in life?

I'd want to know what your educational background is and how you feel about higher education. Would you encourage Baby in the academic subjects he or she enjoys, with the ultimate goal of attending college?

Do you love animals? If you have pets, what kind of pets are they, and what are their names? Do you have favorite vacation spots? Do you enjoy the ocean or the mountains?

Do you have extended family members living in the same area as you do? Are you a close family...do you attend family gatherings? What kind of relationship do you have with your own parents? (I'd probably ask that question when we meet in person, rather than expect to see it in your profile.)

I'd probably want to know what political leanings you have...but I most likely would ask that of you in person, rather than read it in your profile.

The religious question....hmmm, there is no standard answer for this. Some birth/first moms want their babies raised in the same religion they practice in their own lives. Usually the preference is either Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. I have seen some expectant mothers here on the boards, though, who prefer nature-based religions, like Paganism or Wicca. I haven't seen too many Muslims, though, probably because Islam encourages legal guardianship over adoption. I haven't seen many expectant moms who are Buddhists or Hindus either.

Be honest with the religion thing, though. Honesty is always the best policy when it comes to matching PAPs with emoms. Don't make yourself out to be someone you're not. Kind of look at it the same way you would approach a performance appraisal at work. What are your best qualities...what are the qualities you need to work on a bit?

Gosh, I'm sure I could come up with a hundred different things to put in your profile, but my mind is kind of foggy at this hour of the night. I guess the most important thing is to just be yourselves. If you try to be anybody else, you won't be doing anybody any favors in the long run.

[adriennemarie]

Be as open and honest as you can, and just write and show pics about you are and your hubby really are.
We had to do an 8 page profile. I used tons of pics showing what we did in our everyday lives with our (then) 4 year old son. Stuff like going to the beach every year, making goofy hats out of construction paper and crafts, etc. When it rains the sidewalk outside of our house fills up with water and we “puddle jump”..it’s fun and we’re goofy like that…so I put it in our profile.
I am sure some may have thought we were wacky, but my youngest son’s bmom says that pic if what made her want to meet us 

Be yourself, be honest, don’t try to “sell” yourself.

[Sunshiny]

Please be yourself. You may find that when you child is grown they will be reunited with their natural family. You want everything to have been honest from the point of the first "meeting".

[JustPeachy]

I typically don't care for these "marketing tools" and the idea that if they are worded just the right way, it will increase the odds that an expectant mother will make her choice based on that. But I also realize nowadays, women do pick from these profiles and want to have much more information available to them then they were allowed to have in the past. Given that, my advice is to simply be honest, and be yourself. Not all expectant mothers are looking for Christian families. FWIW, that is not something I would be looking for in a profile if I were placing today. For starters, I'd want to know about your personalities, your hobbies and interests, what type of careers you had, education, what your everyday life was like, how you handle conflict or difficulty when it arises, how you planned to raise my child, including how you would handle discipline, and what your feelings were regarding openness and maintaining a relationship over the course of my child's life.

Rather than having the perfect "resume" (anyone can look good on paper), I'd be more interested in someone who was up-front, direct, honest and down-to-earth, as opposed to someone who was just trying to woo me with a pretty package.

[jeffandnana.adopting]

Originally Posted by JustPeachy

I typically don't care for these "marketing tools" and the idea that if they are worded just the right way, it will increase the odds that an expectant mother will make her choice based on that. But I also realize nowadays, women do pick from these profiles and want to have much more information available to them then they were allowed to have in the past. Given that, my advice is to simply be honest, and be yourself. Not all expectant mothers are looking for Christian families. FWIW, that is not something I would be looking for in a profile if I were placing today. For starters, I'd want to know about your personalities, your hobbies and interests, what type of careers you had, education, what your everyday life was like, how you handle conflict or difficulty when it arises, how you planned to raise my child, including how you would handle discipline, and what your feelings were regarding openness and maintaining a relationship over the course of my child's life.

Rather than having the perfect "resume" (anyone can look good on paper), I'd be more interested in someone who was up-front, direct, honest and down-to-earth, as opposed to someone who was just trying to woo me with a pretty package.

This is excellent and its why we decided to speak with birthmothers ourselves. I want them to hear and know really who we are, not just pixs. I believe profiles give a glimpse but can't tell the birthmother who you are. birthmothers have a hard decision to make and we would that decision made on genuineness.:clp:

[JaguarShadow]

Originally Posted by sanc_mn

Birthmoms, please advise what you might be looking for in an adoptive parent profile. Do birthmoms look for only christian families?

I am a little slow on answering this (just joined today) but just wanted to say no, no, no. Birthmothers look for all kinds of families, every situation is different. When my baby's birthfather and I were looking through family profiles, we were actually turned OFF by the ones who presented a lot of religion in their profiles. I know a few other birthmoms who felt the same way. (It's okay to be religious, just don't pretend to be if you're not.) There are birthmoms out there who want christian families, but we weren't one of them.

Just try to be as honest as possible. A lot of adoption agencies will also strip down your profile to make it "appropriate." The adoptive parents told me that after the agency edited their profile they felt like everything authentic had been taken away. It might be frustrating but just be as honest as you can. Send it to close friends and ask them if they think it sounds like you, and authentic.

What bothered me when I was looking through hundreds of profiles was that pretty much everyone said the same thing. If you have pets, talk about them too. (We wanted our child to be raised around dog lovers! Might sound weird, but it's just something we wanted for our child.) Be yourselves and talk about your interests, because when we were choosing a family, we were really looking for something in the profiles that we could connect with! (People who liked the same types of TV shows and music, etc.)

[Allofus]

Our daughters other mom said that it was the things that were different in our profile that "spoke" to her. She also picked up on the T-shirt my husband was wearing in a picture; a really obscure band.

Just try to represent yourself the best you can. When it's the right match, it is just right. It makes the relationship just click into place.

In terms of Christian? I don't think so. If your religion plays a big part in your life, mention it and the activities you take part in. If it doesn't play a big part in your life, I don't feel it even needs to be mentioned.

JaguarShadow, you sound so much like our birthmom! But don't worry we are in Canada, and I see you are in the US. I bet you have a great relationship

[LLise8153]

I'm a little slow to answer too, just joined as well, but figured that I would chime in. I go with the same advice that you have been given....be honest! I don't think that there is any one set list of what birthmoms look for, because it really does depend on the particular birthmom who is looking and what might be very important to me for my baby might not matter at all to someone else. The profiles are over whelming, you get so many of them all at once and are expected to just pick. I would have wanted to meet all of the ones that I was seriously considering. For me a few things that were very important...I wanted to see pictures of the family looking happy. I wanted a family that was settled and happy...they didn't NEED a baby to be happy, but wanted one to fit into the happiness that they already had. I wanted a family that was open to a boy or a girl, I felt like you can't have my boy if you don't want my girl. Try to avoid "we KNOW", we know this is hard, we know how you feel, because you don't...I'm a birthmom now and I didn't know. I looked at one couple and seriously considered them, just because the dad was stupid tall and mom was short, which reminded me of me and the birthdad. I wanted a family where people wouldn't just look at little man and say...."where did he come from?" Religion wasn't very important to me, and didn't factor into my decision at all. Basically be who you are, be honest, say what you mean and mean what you say and I think you will find your baby. :-) Good luck to you!

[Dbabyadventure]

Hi! i am in MN and we did extensive networking and outreach. Please feel free to message me and we can talk about how it works. We matched with our daughter's first mom in just 6 months.

Best of luck,
Courtney