So, you finally made it through your home study? Congrats! Now comes the fun part – at least it seems like fun after the paperwork, stress, background checks, paperwork, interviews, home visits, and more paperwork that you just survived.

As you move forward and begin to built your profile, please, please, please remember that honesty is the best policy. Be open and real. Create a profile that truly represents who you are as an individual, couple, and family.

As Expectant Moms (EM) look through your profile, they are trying to get a very real idea of who you are. This could be the beginning to one of the most important relationships of your life!

For both of our adoptions, our profile was exclusively online, we did not use a printed profile book. However, a lot of the information and tips can be applied to digital or printed profiles.

Profile Picture

I put this first because it will be the first thing an expectant birth mom (EM) will see when she is looking at your profile. You know that saying, “You only have one chance to make a first impression?” Remember this when you are choosing which picture to use.

The two most important tips I can offer are to use a current picture and a professional picture.

There is a good chance that the EM has looked through MANY profiles.  If she has looked on any internet site, she has probably scrolled through thousands of profile pictures. It’s pretty obvious who spent the time, effort and money to get professional pictures taken for their profiles, and who just snapped a selfie on their iPhone and called it good.

This picture is the one thing that an EM is going to look at to determine if she will click on your profile.  It determines if she wants to even bother to get to know you better.

Teaser Text

Some online profile providers let you choose to include a short sentence under your profile picture.  This is a great opportunity to grab the attention of an EM and make her want to click on your profile.  It can be anything from serious, to cheesy, to informative.  Here are a few examples for you to consider…

                “We are a loving family hoping for an open adoption.”

                “We don’t know you, and this is crazy, but here’s our profile, so call us maybe?”

                “Adoption is very special to us and we cannot wait to welcome you and your baby into our lives.”

                “Fun loving, ice cream eating family, who will love your baby forever.”

                “Starting our family begins with you.”

                “Click here! We can’t wait to meet you.”

There are literally a million ways to go with the teaser text.  My best advice is to choose something you feel comfortable with and that is a true representation of you and your family.  Don’t say you want an open adoption if you really don’t.  Simple.

Contact Information

In some cases, you will provide email addresses and possibly phone numbers for EMs to use to reach you.  Other sites will have her fill out a form that will be sent to your email through the website. I definitely prefer using the form. It can be very difficult to share your personal phone number on the internet for everyone to see. We did that for a minute and got a lot of scam text messages and calls.

About Information

Different providers offer tons of different options to share all the information you want an EM to see about you.  Some of the information will be required (possibly age, race, career), while others are optional. 

There are endless amounts of information that you might want to share.  It could include the following list and more!

• Age, Race/Ethnicity, Religion, Relationship
• The story of how you met
• Information about your house/neighborhood
• All the details of your extended family
• Your interests and hobbies
• Your lifestyle
• Career/Education
• Likes and dislikes
• What you love about each other

Share as much as you can. It can really help an EM feel like she is getting to know you and feel more comfortable contacting you. Just be HONEST!!!

Letter

Along with your profile picture, I would say that the letter is the most important part of your adoption profile.  You have the opportunity to speak right to the EM.  What do you want to say to her? What do you want her to know?  It can be a very daunting task, and I remember being so nervous to write it.  I wrote revision after revision and nothing seemed to say just what I wanted.   I got online and started reading other people’s letters so that I could get a better idea of what was “normal” to include.  And I can honestly tell you that after I read four or five letters, I was bored.  A lot of them said very similar things

“Thank you for taking the time to look at our profile.”

“I can’t imagine what you are going through…”

“You are so brave…”

“We are praying for you and your baby…”

These are all really GREAT things to tell an EM who is looking at your profile!  But it started feeling like they were all the same.  The best advice I got about writing our letter was to make it stand out from the crowd and write from the heart!  I am very certain that I said all four of the above examples in our letter, but I saved it for later in the letter.  You want your first paragraph to grab her attention and stand out!

Photos

You will most likely have the chance to share more pictures of you and your family.  Again, it would be a good idea to include good quality photographs, but not necessarily professional. You may want to include pictures of family vacations, holidays, and other special occasions.  Candid photos are a great way to show an EM what your life is like, and what your home looks like. Be sure to caption your photos so the EM knows what she’s looking at.

I think it’s also a good idea to show pictures of your extended family.  An EM may be interested in who her child’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins will be.  Use these pictures to show an EM what it would be like for her baby if she chose you for adoption.  If you go to Disney Land a lot, be sure to include pictures of that.  If you have a family movie night every Friday and eat pizza, share a picture of that.  All of this is to help the EM get to know you better.

Videos

Videos are particularly big right now on online profile sites.  And it is such a valuable tool to show a birth mom who you really are as a couple and a family.  She gets the opportunity to hear your voice and see you interact with each other.   You can show her your house and yard, and she can see any other children currently in your family. Often a family member or friend can be interviewed in your video and share with EM more about you.

We personally didn’t use a video on our adoption profile, so I don’t have experience making one.  But I do think that they are very valuable, and if we were ever to adopt again, I am sure that it is something we would use!

Posts/Favorites

Depending on the site you are using, Posts and Favorites can range from something similar to your Facebook and Pinterest pages to a simple list. 

If you just got back from a cruise, rather than sharing your pictures in an album with all of your photos, you can put them in a Post to keep EMs up to date on your current activities. 

And similar to Pinterest, you can put pictures/links to our favorite books, movies, music, etc.  We shared our favorite places to snowboard, camp and hike, along with our favorite foods! 

On other sites, you can create a list of your favorite things from color, food, and Super Hero, to movie, book and sport.   Again, I think it is a good way to help birth moms get to know you, so share as much as you can!

Recommendations/Endorsements

There’s a good chance that part of your home study was to provide 3-5 letters of recommendation from family, friends, co-workers, etc.  These recommendations are a little different because they will show up on your online profile for anyone to see, which isn’t the case for the home study letters.  These are usually pretty short (1-2 paragraphs) and give the writer a chance to choose descriptive words of endorsement off of a list to be included at the bottom of their recommendation.  These can include Family Oriented, Religious, Sense of Humor, Disciplines, Awesomeness, Nurturing, Loving and Kind, Intelligent, Strong Marriage, Frugal, Friendly, Serves Others, etc.

This is yet another tool an EM can use to get to know you better, so although it is not a required part of your profile, I recommend that you utilize it! We had our parents, neighbors and close friends write recommendations for us.

Conclusion

The purpose of your adoption profile is to help EMs get to know you so they can make the best decision for themselves and their baby.  Although you definably want to portray your best self, it is crucial for you to be open and honest.

There are parts of the profile that I would like to talk about in greater detail (letter, pictures, etc) so look for those in future posts!

Thank you, my lovely friends!