[rd200]

Hi my name is Rachel. My DH and I are starting a domestic semi-open adoption. we have all of our paperwork filled out and are waiting for our SW to call us to start our home study. my question is that i have been working on my parent profile for a while now and am having some trouble with starting the dear birthmother letter. the rest i'm almost done with, but i cant think of how to start it without sounding fake, or condisending(RIGHT SPELLING?)any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. my SW also said that the format(EX: how nice it looks) isnt really important and that the birthmother isnt looking to see if you are creative or not. which is probably true but i guess i want it to look nice like since i put alot of effort and time into it. Any suggestions would be great!!! thanks alot Rach

[minibus]

There are many examples online and in books for "Dear Expectant Mother" letters. Do a web search ... people are so different. Also ask your agency for examples. Many agencies want/allow different things.

Many people do their profile books on the computer using scrapbook programs. We had a friend create ours (the layout ... we chose the pictures and did the text, of course) like a scrapbook, then we made color copies.

I would beg to differ with your SW. I think that a profile book that catches an expectant mother's eye and/or appeals to her asthetically would make a difference. That's just me, though.

Best of luck to you!

[RhondaJ]

I agree with minibus...the overall look of the profile does matter to emoms. I will PM you with how I started mine but just an FYI...what ever program that you use, make sure it is a program that most people might have. I did mine in Printshop and with the different contacts that we had...I couldn't email them a copy, I had to send it in the mail which counted us out on some of the situations. A lot of the contacts we used got last minute situations and wanted profiles ASAP and didn't have time to wait for them to come in the mail! It took me a lot of time to create what I thought was the "perfect" profile (appearance) and I also made sure that I saved a copy and put away for our daughter!

[KIC1975]

I agree with the other posters, the look and feel does matter (otherwise, why would companies pay so much for marketing of their products!).

I like starting out with Hello instead of "dear birth mother". Break it down into sections. Tell a little about who you are as a couple and what you like to do together, then have a section on your husband, one on you, one on your family/friends, one on your home/physical living environment (I included pets in this section).

Think about it as a way to give a glimpse into your life. Don't go over and over how thankful you are that she is considering this or that she is wonderful/amazing/couragous etc. One or two lines is fine. All we said was, "thank you for taking the time to get to know us and we look forward to getting to know you."

I'll PM you with a link to ours. I used Scrapbook Factory to do ours and could save it to jpg and email it. Worked wonderfully.

Hope this helps,
-Kristin

[rd200]

Thanks everyone for the advice. i will look online for some examples. i dont know a whole lot about this profile thing yet, but do i have to have a profile online? i am a bit technologically challenged and i dont know how to do squat online or on a computer. like if i were to do an online scrapbooking thing, then do i just print it out or what? i dont know anything really. i was just going to do actual scrapbooking and then cut the papers down to normal size instead of 12X12. and then just make alot of copies. i need 10 sets. but when i tryed to copy a rough draft to see how it would turn out, my pictures got all funky and looked really bad. maybe i'm doing something wrong. does it pay to put your profile online? isnt that expensive? or not? Thanks so much again for everyone responding. Rach

[KIC1975]

Rach,
I did mine on our computer then took a disc to Kinkos to print them out. I loved the quality.

Our profile is up on our facilitator's web site and I put up a copy on a blogspot post (don't get any birth mom traffic through that, but I have sent it as a link to a few people who wanted to see it). Our facilitator is big into making sure that we have a web site because they get a lot of traffic through those.

Does your agency have a site for families to post pictures?

Also, when you copied your rough draft, did you use a black and white copier or a color copier? Try a color copier and see if that works better. Black and white are notorious for not giving a good copy of photos.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

[rd200]

HI, my agency does have a website to put a condensed version of our profile on . 3 or 4 pics and a page of text. did you use matte photo paper when kinkos printed them for you? we went to office max and did a regular color copy and the pics were really bad quality. then we had a high gloss photo paper done and it turned out pretty good on that. i just dont want to waste all this time doing the old fashioned way and then not have the copies come out decent. did you have to buy the scrapbook factory program? i have a gift certificate to shutterfly so i think i might see what htey have on there. thanks, rachel

[KIC1975]

I've seen some color copies that come out really bad, but I've always had really good results at Kinkos. My problem is that we are working with a facilitator that wants the profiles in batches (usually 20-30) and Kinkos is .49 page. We spend about 4.50 on each profile - it gets expensive fast! If you are only doing about 10 then the cost wouldn't be too bad.
I bought my software because I switched over to digital scrapbooking awhile back. So I just used it because I already had it. Though, I probably would have considered purchasing it specifically for the profiles. It did such a great job. And it allows you to save to a 300dpi pdf which you get great copies off of.
Good luck!

[rd200]

thanks for the advice. i checked out shutterfly and they only have 12x12 and 8x8. none of which my agency will let slide. it has to be the size of a regular paper. so i will see. i just dont want to waist the money on a program unless i know its good and that its easy to use. i'll keep looking. thanks alot. rach

[adoptivemom2004]

Your dear birthmother letter is your ONLY way of connecting with birth mom's who may be interested in a match with you.

I worked with a great So Ca based infant adoption coach who helped my husband and I create a great letter after waiting a year on the wait list. We were matched a short time thereafter.

If you are interested in her contact information - pm me.

Kelli

[rd200]

Does anyone have any suggestions on how long the whole profile should be? if you were to take out the pictures and stuff, how long would your text be? mine is approx. 4 pages of typed text. is that too long? by the time i get my pics in there and what not it will probably be like almost 7 pages. our sw said that they suggest 6-8 pages, but she also said that the birthmom doesnt like to sit and read pages upon pages of text cuz they have to go through so many profiles. Any input on how long yours was would be appreciated. Thanks Rach

[KIC1975]

I think ours ended up being just over 1300 words. Sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. With pics etc. our profile is 8 pages (4 front/back).
I too have heard that birthmoms don't really want to read that much. In fact, we are currently working with a birthmom that is really interested in us and I was chatting with her and found out that she didn't know I was a stay-at-home mom. Which means that she didn't read very much of our profile! lol
If I redo our profile again I'm thinking of doing a page that is "us at a glance" which would include basic info that she can skim quickly. Some favorites, but a "what we do", "what we value" type of catagories.

[rd200]

that does sound like a really good idea to do a "Preview" page. then at least the birthmom knows a little about you and then if htey want to they can read the whole thing. i got some copies done at Kinko's to see how they would be and they did turn out great! the picture i had on there wasnt the best to begin with and that got a bit funny when it copied, but for the most part, it turned out great! the bad news is that they are closing at the end of the month and since i'm doing all my pages by hand in like scrapbook form, it might take a while. Thanks Rach