Profile

Wow what a few months!  

We spent much of January and February getting our profile finished. The profile is as our SW 'M' said to us - pretty much the only thing we have control over. Other than being in control over how quickly you get paperwork filled out, and the hundreds of things you need copied etc...this is it. Being someone who has been in PR for 15 years, this book feels like marketing material, and I suppose in a weird way it is. Its what will tell an expecting mother all about you and your family. This book will be shown to e-parents (expecting parents) when your general profile fits what we and they are looking for. 

Each agency does it differently, some give you a structured format and others just tell you to do an 8x11 book, which is what our two agencies had said. They give you a list of things to include - about you as a couple, about each of you individually, about any children you have, pets, home, neighborhood, town, extended family and friends. So its pretty much a resume of your whole life!

Its not as much detail that the SW includes in the HUGE home study document, but its still pretty extensive. It was ALOT of work, but also tons of fun and really interesting to put our entire life down in 20 pages of words and photos.
Of course I dont know that we needed to be as detailed as we were, but seriously if this is the only thing that is going to determine us getting a baby, then you better believe we went through it with a fine tooth comb. Control issues aside, this was fun, creative and of course digital scrapbooking was involved, yay!!! It looks amazing if we dont say so ourselves. I would give me my baby and honestly would want to be adopted by us! Our 9 year old had a hand in editing and was very pleased with the finished copy that arrived in our mail box - "Looks great Mom, I think they are going to love us!"

Our homestudy was completed and signed off the same week we had our profile books sent to our 2 agencies.

So....drum roll please.....after 6 months of mountains of paperwork, 5 visits with our social worker (all about 2-4 hours each), reading books and articles, working for hours and weeks on our profile, and of course dealing with fingerprint challenges....on March 15th we officially became a 'waiting' family with both of our agencies in Colorado and Connecticut!  Woooooooooooooo Hoooooooooooooooo!!!!!

So now what *twiddles thumbs*