[MkMw]

Hi Twyla - I really liked your web page -

The boys' Birthmother was decidely NOT local - we were open to local (and will be again when we adopt again) but are currently not able to commit to an ongoing visit schedule because my husband is in the military and we STILL don't know where we'll be this July the detailer has been very quiet. We are hoping to stay here (in Virginia) but for now..."Home is where the Coast Guard Sends Us".

They were born in Durban, South Africa - we took them home from the hospital. We are hoping to go back to S.A. when they are 12. I probably "talk" (through e-mail) to her more now than we did while there - although she saw them 4 times after we brought them home before we left.

The funny thing about local - one of my best friends from high school called me about a girl her sister knew who lives 3 hours north of us - the DAY before my husband bought my tickets (usually my job, but I just couldn't do it - I guess I wanted him to be committed too - KWIM) but I already (and still do) felt that this - however hard was right for us....

I hope you are successful -twins can be a lot of work but they are truly double the fun!

michelle

[twyla]

Hi, everyone!

Just thought I'd check in and let you know what I had found when I called our local metropolitan paper and the University of Tennessee campus paper.

For starters, it would cost about $20.00 a day just to run a tiny 4 line ad in our local paper!!! I don't think we can afford to gamble with money that way. Plus something that most of you probably don't know is that some newspapers apparently require their prospective adoptive parents to provide a letter from their attorney or agency as to having met the proper qualifications to adopt so as to keep the people out that may try to 'buy' a baby or have other unscrupulous (spelling?) motives about placing the ad. Not that this letter is a problem for us, we just were unaware it was being done.

My next call was to the campus newspaper. They informed me that they don't accept advertising from adoptive parents seeking to connect with a birth mother. You could'a knocked me over with a feather! I even explained that we were seeking a very open adoption and for it to work the birth parents would have to have a similar background as us and since we had graduated from this university this was the ideal place to find each other. No dice. I did tell her about the local paper's policy of requiring proof of qualification and she seemed interested enough to get my name and phone number, plus she said she was going to pass along that information to the editor of the paper.

My sole purpose of posting this information is for those of you who have read this thread and are now excited about the original idea I posted. Please keep your feet on the ground and check out your available advertising sources before getting excited about advertising on college campuses to find the little one you are seeking. I'll bet this is not an unusual response from college papers. I'll also bet the costs I was quoted were not that unusual either. This could be a very expensive way to connect and frankly I'm not willing to waste the money with just a local newspaper that is probably not read by very many of my target audience.

[MkMw]

Wow Twyla! The only newspapers I advertised in were college papers - 3 of them, one of them actually set up an adoption section when I called.

I did call our local paper though (we never advertised there though - I just have never liked the newspapers ads, I don't know why) any adoption ad we placed had to be on attorney letterhead, we didn't have to prove we had a homestudy though, so I don't really see what benefit it has....I think our attorney asked if we had a homestudy and who it was with, but he never looked at it.