Our profile book

I’ve had several people ask how a birth family chooses adoptive parents for their child. With our process, we will receive postings via email about available children. Those postings will include information related to the case — gender (if known), race, birth date, location, medical and mental health history of birth parents, price of adoption and more. If Matthew and I are interested, we will indicate that we would like to be considered. We have already discussed that we are open to a child of any race or gender. The timing and cost of the adoption will be the factors we consider most when choosing situations to put in for.

At that point, our profile book will be shown to the family and they will make their decision on who they would like to meet. I told Matthew that making our profile book was the most important homework assignment of our lives.

Because the book is the first impression for the birth family, it was really important that we gave them a sense of who we are as a couple in less than twenty pages. No pressure, right? Luckily our agency gave us a lot of tips and even proofread it for us several times.

We felt that it was most important to use a lot of pictures in our book so that the birth family could see the environment (both physical and emotional) that their child would be raised in. We shared information about us as a couple — how we met, our backgrounds, our descriptions of each other, and how we came to the adoption decision. We also included information about our family, friends, our dogs and home, and hobbies (highlighting travel, amusement parks, sports, and Give Kids the World). Once we got all of the suggestions from the agency and made edits, we printed three copies on Shutterfly and also sent a PDF version to be shown as well. Since our agency works with birth families from across the country, the PDF version might be the only one they see.

To say I stressed over this book is an understatement. It’s so hard to put myself in the shoes of these birth families and this decision they’re making. First, what a selfless decision to give your child to another family because you know that you can’t provide the life you would want for them. Then to have to decide who that family is that receives such a precious gift. I was so meticulous in putting this together because I wanted to make sure they would really know who Matthew and I are, how much we want to love and raise a child, and that we understood their sacrifice.

So, now our book is complete and just waiting to be shown to birth families!