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Adoption
Using a "professional" profile
We are doing a domestic infant adoption. I created our current adoption profile, I got alot of input and advice, and feel like it's pretty good. But now we are considering paying a professional to design a profile for us. We get shown to a good amount of birthmothers each month, but haven't been close to a match. So me and DH are wondering if our profile just isn't quite right. I know our profile is basically the most improtant thing, since that's all the BMs see about us. I'm just wondering if it's worth it to pay someone. It looks like it would cost about $1,000 for everything (design, writing, printing). I know on one hand, that it's just a matter of waiting for that one person who connects with us. But on the other hand, if our profile isn't good, we may wait longer for someone to feel like they connect with us. And, of course we want the shortest wait possible. I'd been thinking about waiting till we hit the year mark, but I don't know if that makes sense.
Did anyone use a professional to make their profile? Do you feel like it was worth it? How long was your wait? TIA!!
After 2years TTC and 1yr,2mo waiting for an adoption match, our blessing is here!
"You may not have my eyes or smile, but from that very first moment you had my heart"
Surprise BFP made our family complete!
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Re: Using a "professional" profile
I know some people will recommend a professional one or they may have used them but we hired a consultant who guided us on the profile a lot and she said not to get too fancy or professional. I believe she offers a profile consult to just give advice on your profile, if you want her info just PM and let me know. She goes to a lot of birth mother meetings and has heard what they look for in the profiles. She is big on pictures with text below each picture instead of paragraphs of text (theory is pictures grab attention, the text may never be read and they are reading profiles with a lot of the same wording "we live in a nice neighborhood" so she wants you to get more creative and descriptive with the wording). I know there is lots of controversy about referring to the baby as "your" child, "our" child etc in the profile... she told us to refer to the child as "your" (the birthmother's child" even though in the long run it wil be our child. There is also a lot of controversy over wedding pictures, we were told NO and did not include any. I think in the long run everyone ends up adopting but I do think there are ways to make your profile stick out and speak to the "right" birth mother. Since we hired the consultant we decided we just had to go with her expertise and advice and with what she recommended. We were glad we had someone to help guide us through the process.
We did not use a professional. Our SW went over about 30 profiles of people who had been picked (she called them the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) and talked about things to focus on and things to avoid. I put mine together using scrapblog.com, but would have defaulted to Powerpoint if that hadn't worked out.
Our wait was 3 months from when our profile went active.
Just my 2c, but I think $1K is a ridiculous amount of $ for a professional profile, and I think having it too "professional" may work against you. Our SW did say that, if we had an extended wait, we would revisit our profile and see if it needed tweaking.
Do you get feedback about your profile after it is shown?
Our agency asks the BM's if there is something they didn't like about the profiles they did not pick and asks why they chose the profile they did chose. Before we printed our profiles, we had our SW review it and tweek some of the wording. Our SW was also open to reviewing our profile if we are shown frequently without being chosen, and we could decide then if we wanted to change it.
I would see what feedback you can get when you are shown before spending the money on a professional.
We ended up in a adoption org that had the vast majority of profiles professionally done (it's a long story... and I am a bit bitter but that doesn't help you).
Before you pay for someone to do it for you, find out:
How your profile stacks up against the other profiles it's been shown with.
Do most other couples use a pro?
If you find out that you are in the minority with a non-professional profile, invest the money NOW. We waited. I believed that we should show who we are in our our own style. Well guess what... it hurt us. I didn't want to spend the money or take the unique aspect away from our profile. I regret not moving on sooner.
If you do choose to go the professional route, I highly recommend Joanna at Our Chosen Child. She is fantastic, and adoptive money, and not in it for any reason but helping others match their child. She's the real deal.
That said, don't do it unless you are being compared over and over to other pro profiles.
PS- If you want a second set of eyes on your profile, let me know. I love critiquing (in a positive way!).
I don't know if everyone requires the same type, but ours have to be atleast 8 pages and printed, so we can't do like a scrapbook. And they ask for like 30 copies.
Silliest- If I remeber correctly, I think we're using the first agency you had. (Which scares me)
I did see that website,Our Chosen Child, glad to know she really is good.
Also, I'd love your opinion. Can you PM your email address? TIA!!
They only sent you 3? Hmmm.
If you want, I can send you the guidelines we were given for our profile, and can even send you the link to ours (it's only 2 pages, but it might give you some ideas).
How did you do your profile?
I'm doing ours in powerpoint, then I'm going to convert it to PDF files that they can distribute electronically and print where ever they need them- they wanted this in addition to a paper copy.
I started out with a pretty good idea of how I wanted it to look, and consulted some websites & books on digital scrapbooking and clean & simple scrapbooking for further ideas.
I'd be happy to look at it too, and happy to send you a PDF of ours. Just PM me your e-mail address.