[scdogs]

Hi everyone,
We are new to the process, and I need some help with the profile scrapbook that we are going to give to birthmothers. Our agency isn't being too much help in this area. Do you have any suggestions of what we should scrapbook? Are there any websites that I can look at? Can I put portions of our reference letters in the book (they are very touching)? How can I make my book stand out? Sorry for all of the questions. Any help would be very appreciated...
Take care!

[SchmennaLeigh]

You would be giving them to an expectant parent and not a birthmother. A woman is a Mother/expectant Mother until she signs the TPR and should be referred to and treated as such.

That said:

Be honest, be personally creative and be yourself. Also, if you read what I wrote above regarding your terminology choices, if you REFER to a woman AS a Mother, your profile IS going to stand out. Unfortunately, not enough people DO treat these women AS Mothers so when someone does, it is a big attention grabber.

[StorkWatcher]

Hi! I had so much fun doing ours! We put just a few basic pictures of our home in, so the moms/parents envision their child's home.

We included pics of our hobbies (livestock, pets). Our wedding photo (just so they could see our immediate family all in one shot, since it's large) then more photos of the members in casual and action shots (not many posed) of how we spend our holidays and who the child's aunts/cousins/grandparents would be. I put just a few simple captions to explain who everyone was with the pictures.

Our first page was required by the agency and was a simple reference page which showed the two of us and told our ages, occupation, religious affiliation, and why we wanted to adopt.

We included our Dear Birthmom letter (at the time, our agency told us to address the letter that way. You may have read other posts here that have great suggestions for other ways to start this) to give some background and info on our hopes/plans for raising our child.

This portion was written based on an outline provided by the agency and included our stories on our childhoods, our families, how they felt about our planned adoption, how we hoped to raise our child, what role church/religion had, if we planned to have more children, what our lives are like, what type of arrangement we were hoping for with the birthfamily, how we would explain to our child that we adopted him and how we would talk about his birthparents with him as he got older.

I just made sure our photos were as clear as possible. We were allowed to used scanned copies of digital photos, because our printer was of good quality. We only had 2 professional ones - the wedding and one from the church direcory. All others were taken by us. I really tried to find things that showed our lifestyle.

Hope this is helpful! I didn't really have a theme, although I kept things in mostly plain primary/secondary bright colors on the backgrounds.

All in all, I didn't really try to make it stand out, but I did choose a red cover, rather than a pastel color. I knew that we would stand out to someone because of who we were - and we did!

[snaps]

We used a great software program to make ours called Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe. It is very user friendly and easy to use if you have a digital camera. You can also scan pictures (esp. older pictures) to put in as well. We each did a page about ourselves (ie. growing ups, intrests, careers, college, etc.). We then each did a page about our families (siblings, outings, etc). We then had a page showing our house (front, back and neighborhood lake, playground, etc). We had a page on our pets, a couple on intrests (for us hiking and the beach) and one about us with kids (godchildren, neices and nephews). We also had a page on how we met and dating, then one of our wedding and then a "thanks for considering us" page. It sounds like a lot to do, but we easily knocked this out in about a week (working an hour or so per day). Each page had a number of pictures or collage and text. You can choose various backgrounds, fonts, picture cropping (circle, heart, square, etc.). We then printed the pages at Kinko's and had the albums bound their as well. In our case we did not include the letter to the potential birthmom because our agency had them review this with online photos before they got the scrapbook. I don't think it would be a bad thing to include portions though.

Good luck and if you want me to I can scan a few pages of our album and send it to you (have to scan it b/c unless you have the software it won't open for you. Just PM me and let me know. I am not bragging, but a number of people (social workers, agency staff, etc) told us that ours was one of the best they had seen. We just winged it and I guess we did good.

Good luck with everything,
Snaps
New Mommy to domestic princess

[scdogs]

Hi! Thanks so much for your help. I was a little bit overwhelmed, but now I feel much better. Snaps- if you wouldn't mind emailing me some scanned pictures of your profile book that would be a huge help! My email is scdogs@yahoo.com

Thanks again!

[rredhead]

Hi!
We posted our scrapbook online (HTML and PDF) at:
http://www.rmcsquared.net/adopt.htm

Please PM me. Due to the lack of resources in this area, I'm considering the feasibility of offering my scrapbooking services for profile books. I guess I would say I'm starting my market research.

Good luck and God bless!
-Robyn

[scdogs]

Hi Robyn,
Thanks so much for sharing your webpage, it was quite a help! Congrats to you, and the best of luck with your new one.