How to Make an Adoption Profile Book

Creating an adoption profile book is one of the last things that you will have to do before final approval during the adoption process.  An adoption profile book is a collection of text and pictures that represent you and your current family.  This is the only thing that a prospective birth mother may see before choosing prospective adoptive families for her child.  It can be extremely stressful to try to effectively capture everything about who you are in one book.  It’s a lot of pressure! 

That is why I wanted to develop this step-by-step guide to creating a strong adoption profile book.

Before you start writing your adoption profile book:

1. Take/Collect as many pictures as you can of:

• You
• Your spouse
• Children (if applicable)
• Pets
• Siblings to you and your spouse
• Parents to you and your spouse
• Your house
• Your neighborhood
• Things you and your spouse enjoy doing.

PRO TIP: Make sure everyone in these pictures is smiling and fully facing the camera. 

2. Do your research! To write a book to a potential birth mother, you first need to understand who you are writing to.  You must consider what her thoughts and feeling might be at this time.  Hopefully your agency has suggested literature and/or offered education in this area.  However, if they have not, I would suggest reading Dear Birthmother by Karen Silber and Phylis Speedlin.  This book breaks down a lot of the “myths” about adoption and offers the birthmother prospective throughout the pregnancy, birth and after the birth.  Knowing that although you may be feeling excited and hopeful but she may be feeling overwhelmed and scared will help you to write your adoption book with empathy and understanding. Once you understand who you are writing to, write a list of things that you want to say to her.  

3. Make a list of what you love about your spouse and have them do the same about you.
4. Write a list of at least three unique facts about yourself. Have your partner do this as well.
5. Finally, write a list as to why you are choosing adoption.

When you have completed all of these lists and gathered your pictures then it is time to start creating your profile book!

Depending on your agencies requirements, you will have to order quite a few copies of your book and that can get expensive.  I used Snapfish to create our adoption books and I would highly recommend them because:

• They offer an easy to use format for creating your profile book with several designs and layouts to choose from.
• Customizing your book is a breeze with all of their backgrounds, borders, and embellishment options.
• Picture quality will be assessed and if pictures are found to have low resolution you will be alerted and able to switch them out. (However, I used low resolution pictures (that you can see below) but they still printed perfectly!)
• Everything is packaged, shipped and delivered in a timely fashion.
• Snapfish ALWAYS has amazing deals going on so you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg on profile books! (We even purchased extra copies to keep for ourselves)

Related Posts:

An Adoption Story | Placement

Why I Love Open Adoption | Open Adoption Articles

Step-by-step guide for how to make an adoption profile book:

1. Choose what type of book you want to create.

• How many pages? Most agencies will recommend that you make a 20 page book.
• Soft/hardback book? Most of the books created for our agency were soft back books.  Soft back books are less expensive and were suggested by our agency as well.  However, we chose to make hardback books because we wanted it to stand out and reflect how important this was to us.

2. Download all of your pictures to your Snapfish album for your profile book.
3. Create your cover. Include:

• Your first names.
• A picture of you.
• A title for your book.

PAGE 1: A letter to the birthmother. This should be a heartfelt letter showing who you are as a person and your understanding of this unique situation.  Use your knowledge from your research and your list of what you wanted to say to a potential birth mother for this page.

Page 2: Your story. How did you and your partner meet?  When did you get engaged?  When did you get married? 

Page 3 and 4: These pages should be your descriptions of your partner. For example, these pages are titled: Steve (according to Briana) and Briana (according to Steve) in our books.  This is where the list you made about your partner will come in handy.

Page 5: Pictures of your current family (including pets) living in your home.

Page 6 and 7: Pictures of your wedding.

Page 8 and 9: Pictures of your home. Include any details as to why this would be a wonderful family home.  For example, we bought a 4 bedroom house with a giant bathtub for epic bubble baths for our kids.

Page 10 and 11: Pictures of your neighborhood.  Show them where their child will be growing up and playing.  Are there parks nearby?  Is there a pool?  Is it a kid friendly neighborhood?

Page 12 and 13: More about you.  Include pictures and that list of unique facts about yourself.

Page 14 and 15: More about your partner.  Include pictures and the list of facts about them.

Page 16: Include a list of things you love.  What is important to you?  What do you like doing?

Page 17: Making Memories: include pictures of those things that you love.

Page 18: Why adoption?  Use your list of reasons why you chose adoption to articulate your desire to adopt.

Page 19: Pictures of why you want to adopt (Show your love.  Include pictures of you with other children/pets that are important to you).

Page 20: Final letter to the birthmother.  Use your research knowledge and list of what you want to say to her again.  This is the last thing that she will read from you before deciding to meet you or not.  Make sure that it is heartfelt and empathetic to her feelings and emotions. 

Tips for creating your adoption profile book:

1. Spend majority of your time on the letters to the birthmother. Understand that this book is more about her than about you.  This is the most difficult decision that she will probably ever have to make.  Make sure that you understand as much as you possibly can what she might be going through. 
2. Be vulnerable! The best way to show empathy is through vulnerability.  This book is not a sales pitch; it is your heart and soul on paper. 
3. Be honest.
4. Be yourself. This is the only thing that the birthmother will see before potentially deciding to meet you (or choosing you as an adoptive family).  Make sure that your personality translates to paper.  (i.e. If you are silly, show it.) 
5. Understand that she will be looking at this book and trying to imagine her baby growing up within the life that you are displaying in it. Make sure you create a beautiful (and accurate) picture.

I hope that this guide helps you to create the perfect profile book for your adoption!  Click here to start creating your adoption profile book on Snapfish right now!

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