Step 5: Presenting & Matching
Think of matching in an adoption like a high stakes set up between a business and a future employee using a headhunter.
Birth parents share what they expect from a future adoptive family with the agency. The agency, much like head hunter, gets in touch with their clients and lays out relevant details.
Future adoptive families get sent an email notifying them of a possible new situation. This email includes details birth mom (and possibly dad) have provided to waiting families. It may or may not include medical history, work history, and criminal history, hobbies, due date and reason for considering adoption. The document also usually outlines the birth mother's expectations for openness of communication and shares what anticipated costs of the adoption will be.
After reading up on the situation, adoptive families have a brief, specified amount of time, usually 24-48hrs to decide if they want to present their adoption profile. By choosing to present a profile, families are committing their willingness to honor the wishes and expectations laid out by the birth mother.
For birth families, choosing their adoptive family is like looking at a stack of resumes and cover letters and picking a future employee, only they are picking who will raise her child. Birth families review stacks of 20 page adoptive profiles and letters. They eliminate some profiles right away and keep other books to think on a little longer. Normally adoptive families will get notified in a day or two if birth family ruled them out. The longer time goes on, the more seriously a birth family is considering a profile.
We have two non-traditional agencies that allow our profile to be viewed without telling us. These agencies have vetted our preferences so they don't pair us with someone we would likely say no to. By presenting behind our backs they save us some of the emotional roller coaster of getting excited about a situation only to be hurt when we aren't chosen.
Presenting is something most families do at least a dozen times, matching is something we pray and hope only happens once in the process.
Matching is the process of pairing an expecting birth family with an adoptive family. If the birth family reviews our profile and chooses us, we are considered matched! A few of our agencies ask that we travel to the appropriate state and meet the birth family in person after matching. Once matched we would become financially invested in the process as well. Then we’d wait for delivery unless the baby has already been born, then we’d travel to the state as fast as possible!
