[Dee1234]

For those of you who have been matched or have adopted:

How did you connect with the birthmother / prospective birthmother ?

I'm sure many of us who are waiting would be interested in hearing your stories. Thanks in advance for sharing!

[tobeafamily]

Personal networking and searching. A friend/former co-worker of ours was on our 'adoption email' listing we updated every few weeks. After one of the postings, her stepdaughter found out she was pregnant and decided to make an adoption plan. My friend said it was 'like a lightbulb went off'. Two days later we met Ryan's bmom, we agreed to connect that day (it was uncanny how well we 'fit' with each other) and now enjoy a fully open integrated adoption, just as we'd hoped.

Regina

[r3sons]

I never really tried to find my bparents. I had posted info on a few free websites just wanting medical history. Then about 2 months ago we were contacted by a search angel. I was given my half-sisters phone number and we talked for about two hours. After two meetings with step-sister and her family I decided it was time to meet bmom.

Everything is going well. It is nice because they both only live 30 minutes away.

Good luck.

[Sarah0518]

Our first match was networking thru family. My dad had taken some college classes for a job, and had kept in touch with a few classmates. While talking about life and grandkids came up. The friend was talking about his, so dad mentioned his daughter was trying to adopt, hoped to be a gparent soon, etc. Well, the friend's oldest daughter got preg and was going to place. Because of that conversation, it led to a match for us. In the end it didn't work out (long story), but still....

Our second match was thru our on-line profile. V's bmom had been looking at profiles at an agency in her hometown, but couldn't find the openness she wanted. Then she decided she'd be happiest moving out of state and closer to the rest of her family. So she decided to find families herself in our state.

We just love her and her mom "N". Couldn't ask for better people. Right now we are waiting for them to get their house on the market and move this direction. Hopefully before year-end.

[Leigh131313]

We signed up with our agency, and she picked us from their 80+ waiting adoptive parents.
Leigh

[LisaCA]

We hired PACT as our facilitator and bmom was found rather quickly. We called bmom but she wasn't home, but already had permission to talk to bmom's grandparents. We all hit it off and spoke for 2.5 hours. Spoke to bmom two days later, and our daughter was born two days after that.

our profile was sent to bmom and she selected us, then her info was sent to us and we thought the family sounded great. At that point the facilitator contacted bmom and then we called bmom's home. It was short and very quick!

LisaCA

[ourdreamcametru]

We already had two biological boys and had always had adoption on our hearts so one day in November I was talking to a nurse friend and told her that I really wanted a girl but ,guessed someday we would have to adopt to get her, since I couldn't have anymore children. In Feb. she came to my house and ask how serious we were about adopting because another nurse at the hospital knew of a teen who wanted to place her baby due in June and it was a girl! We said yes and met the bmother the next night, went to the attorney's the next. We went through the next three months with her. Our beautiful daughter was born May 24 and we got to be in the room and our nurse friends were the nurses who attended the birth.


_________________________________

Biological mom to Zack 14 and Alex 10
Amom to Castle 4 months

[lisa in venice]

First was thru our agency. The second time around our agency got a call from another agency looking for a family for a baby they needed to place. The third time, someone contacvted me after seeing a series of posts on another site. He had seen several similar posts from a birth mother nd thought we had alot in common. The forth time I networked with email and a wewbsite to find a situation. Each match took between six weeks six months.

lisa

[michellemartin]

I'll "poll" for Kara's parents. We met thru an agency. Took about a year for them to be matched with me. They were about to try for Russia.

[DebCsMom]

Our first adoption we matched through I friend who was just beginning a Referral Service. We were her 2nd placement. She got a call from a clinic in her town wanting to know if she knew of anyone wanting to adopt a Biracial baby girl. She called us, we met the Bmom a few days later & brought our daughter home 5 weeks later.

Our next adoption we used her again & this time an adoption attorney I know of. We matched with the attorney. That also happened very fast. The baby was born a couple weeks later but the Bmom changed her mind at the last minute. Spent 40+ hours of labor with her, cut his cord, etc & spent the most wonderful 2 1/2 days with him.

A few months later we were ready to try again. Called the same 2 people. Got a call a couple weeks later about a baby girl due in a couple weeks from the attorney. We said no at first. I was still scared I guess, we got that call sooner than I thought we would. To make that long story short, our daughter was born a few days later & we brought her home soon after.

Our 3rd and LAST adoption we AGAIN called the same 2 ladies. This time I told them we didn't want any referrals that were due before Sept 1. We had a vacation planned out East & didn't want to have to come back. Knowing how fast it goes for us! LOL While in CT I got a call from my friend whose Referral service is very successful now. She sent in our profile & a week later we were matched. Our son was born 3 weeks later & we brought him home a couple weeks after that.

It'll happen for those of you who are waiting. It may seem like it is taking FOREVER, but we don't have control over that. We can't make our "PLAN" only God can. It's HIS plan. Even though it's driving us absolute nuts, it's His plan. LOL

Deb

[jean17]

Does anyone know of free site to post your webpage to match up with Bmom's?

[Volfe]

Like Michelle I want to jump in the poll I found aparents via word of mouth (their friends knew and friends of friends...) It helped that I was very open about wanting to place, just as I'm very open now about joys of bparenthood.

Good Luck everyone, it will happen. But I want to add this, Getting the word out is like this. Put a rock under a cup. Someone wants a rock. Well no one knows the rock is there. Now put stickers all over your house saying The Rock is Under the Cup. Now everyone knows it is there. The person wanting the rock will find it now.

How will you be found.

Sorry abouut my clunky analogy. It is an advertising concept

[billysmommy]

My son's bmom had posted in a forum asking hopeful families to email her. I did, thinking "she''s probably never even read this...........". She called us two hours later and our son was born 6 weeks after that. When she found herself facing another unplanned pregnancy, she chose us again and we now have a daughter.

[Dee1234]

I loved reading these stories of how others connected with a birthmother and found their child/children. Since it's been a while, I thought maybe newer members would enjoy reading these stories as well.

For those of you who have successfully adopted, feel free to share your story. How did you connect with a birthmother and find your child/children? What worked for you -- word of mouth, agency, attorney, facilitator, newspaper ads, the Internet, etc.

Looking forward to reading more success stories! It gives those of us who are still waiting hope.

[MrsSmith]

Thought I'd throw our info into the poll.

We had two failed matches prior to adopting our daughter. In the first case, the expectant mom saw our profile online and contacted us, but after choosing us, ultimately changed her mind and decided to place with a family that lived closer to her home (she was on the west coast, we're on the east coast). The second match came when the bmom saw an ad we'd placed in a paper in her area. We were all set to adopt her baby boy and even had our plane tickets to fly out to her town, but then the baby, who'd been born several weeks prematurely and had been in the NICU since birth, aspirated fluid into his lungs and died two days before we were flying out to meet him and the family. (Also happened to be Christmas day, not a very good Christmas that year.) After that, we took a few weeks to grieve and regroup, and then we decided to change from doing a domestic, independent adoption and pursue an international adoption, so spent the next 2 months redoing our homestudy for international, choosing an agency, compiling our dossier, etc etc etc. Just when we had everything set to go for a Guatemalan adoption, all international adoptions were put on hold in Guatemala, and things just seemed to be one letdown after another. While regrouping again and trying to figure out "now what??" we were contacted by our DD's bmom, who had seen our profile online - we'd never removed our profile and still had our stuff out there from the networking we'd done over the previous 6 months. After talking with her on the phone and emailing for a few weeks, she and the bdad drove here (they live out of state) to meet us one weekend, and by the end of that weekend, they'd decided to place the baby with us when she was born at the end of June. (This was early April.) They ultimately wound up moving here to our town temporarily, so our DD was born right here in DH's hometown, albeit 5 weeks early and while we happened to be away! But as soon as we got the call, we hopped on the first plane back and were holding our DD in the NICU when she was just under 24 hours old. We also had two other expectant mothers contact us from our online profile, both of whom were strongly interested in placing their baby with us, but one was just a week after we'd been chosen by Em's bparents and we didn't feel that we could handle "artificial twins" and the other contacted us when Em was just a few months old, and again, we didn't feel that we could parent two kids so close in age as well as we would want to parent them. So, we had those two that we said no to also, and they were both from online profile listings. I think overall, the online profile + networking (with networking materials including the link to our online profile) was far more successful for us than the newspaper ads we placed, and ultimately more cost-efficient too.

I wish to everyone who is still on the road to finding your child the very best of luck on your adoption journey.

Cheers!
Heather

PS - Since I am adopted too, thought I'd throw in that my parents matched with my bmom through an OBGYN, who was my mom's doctor and my bgrandmother's doctor and got them together when my bmom was pg with me. So, there's another check for the "personal referral" method.