If you’ve followed my story about how I became a dad and how my wife and I adopted our daughter in 2007 and our son in 2012, you know the road to building our family has been an amazing and wild ride.
Our experiences have inspired me to help other hopeful adoptive families through InfantAdoptionGuide.com and the Infant Adoption Guide Podcast. I’ve recorded a podcast episode about our journey so if you’d like to listen to how we’ve made it through our first two adoptions, check out episode 12.
The big news for our family is that we are adopting again!
My hope and prayer is that our adoption stories will inspire and help you in your adoption journey.
Excited (and anxious) for adoption #3
Just like any family who are “expecting” to add to their family, my wife and I are super excited to adopt again. We are also a bit nervous and anxious.
It may surprise you that we are nervous after adopting twice, but that’s the thing with domestic infant adoption – every story is unique and there are no guarantees. You just don’t know how the whole thing is going to play out.
What do I mean by this? There could be a failed match (or more than one) with an expectant mother, where we may be invested emotionally and/or financially only to start over with waiting for the right match.
After two successful adoptions, we know how we would like it to go. We know what it takes to build our family, but we also know it can be a roller coaster ride.
Where we are right now in our journey
We decided to work again with our friends at Lifetime Adoption Center, just as we have on our first two adoptions. They are great and we are comfortable with them. We know what we get and they do what they say they will do so we trust them. We feel that Lifetime will minimize our risk of a failed match or failed placement.
Here’s our TO-DO list:
–Home study: complete.
–Printed profile: done (and we love it).
–Web page: our profile looks great on Lifetime’s many websites (another huge bonus by working with Lifetime).
–PDF version of our profile: done and sent to Lifetime so they can email it to prospective birthmoms.
–Profile Video and DVD: finished and looks amazing. This is a difference maker in my opinion (and based on our experience). We created a 2 minute profile video sharing our excitement to adopt again along with what our family life is like. Here’s a link to our latest video.
Our video blends together three key things:
1. We talk straight into the camera.
2. We share several short video clips.
3. We show action photos of us (where we are doing something – not just posed).
Creating a video is huge for prospective birthmothers. There are so many hopeful adoptive families that don’t even create a profile video – let alone put it on a DVD. Having the DVD allows anyone to watch our video – especially someone who doesn’t have immediate access to the internet (which is hard to imagine, but it happens).
What’s left to do?
Our profile video is a huge part of connecting with expectant mothers so there are two things we are doing to share it as widely as possible.
1. Sharing our printed profile and our video everywhere we can.
Lifetime does a great job of sharing it directly to prospective birthmoms they are talking with. They also share it all over the internet via their many adoption websites.
Our job is to let the world know about our desire to adopt again. This means telling our family, friends, and really anyone we can – especially on social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
2. Contact our adoption attorney.
We need to make sure they know we are waiting so they are ready to help us when a match is made with an expectant mother. You never know – this adoption could be a fast one!
3. Save more money.
We know that because we live in a state with less population, we’ll likely have to travel to another state to adopt and we are absolutely OK with that. It means that we need to set aside the funds for travel and for another adoption attorney in the expectant mom’s state.
4. Wait and have faith.
We know it takes time to build our family through adoption. Families are all about love – which requires sacrifice, commitment, and trust. Our faith carries us as we wait for the next little one to join our family.
This is where we are on our 3rd adoption journey. Will you pray for us? We’ll pray for you. Let’s support each other in our journey to build our families.
So – where are you at on your adoption plans?
Leave a comment below or email me. I’d love to hear from you!
