Odds and Ends

The Facebook ads are performing really well so far. They're driving traffic to my parent profile blog and visitors are spending some time looking at different pages (a good indication they're valid clicks and not accidental.)  Surprisingly, the non-religious ad is getting far more clicks than the other two. I even had a complete stranger leave a wonderful comment, basically saying I'm going to make a great mom and she wishes she had a baby to give me. She really made my day. 

I attended a "funding adoption" seminar tonight, provided free by a local adoption agency. The financial guy is an adoptee himself and he really knows his stuff, but the focus was mainly personal finance and not adoption funding specifically. I think at some point I'll need to write my own guide to fundraising and networking, especially if I manage to adopt privately for half the cost of an agency. 

I'm also happy to report that I have a new roommate. We met in passing on the Obama campaign in'08, and she plans on being in town until July. Her sister is a pediatric nurse in the process of adopting a little girl with cancer, whose parents relinquished her to the hospital/state when she was born. Crazy how many lives are touched by adoption. 

Good Idea, New Project

I started looking into newspaper advertising and quickly realized it was going to require many hours of phone calling and emailing (during business hours) just to get basic information on the newspapers there. I don't have that kind of time right now, nor do I feel like it would be a good use of a PTO day.

However, I'm still determined to advertise for myself. The more I think about what agencies charge, the more determined I am not to go that route. I don't want that industry getting my hard-earned (or borrowed) money.

This morning, it hit me. Why not advertise on Facebook? Everyone is on Facebook. I manage all our online advertising at work - everything from testing the most effective images and copy to tracking results and managing the budget - so it'll be a cinch. I can choose a daily budget, pay only if someone clicks on my ad, and control which states see my ads. I can target Democrats, pet lovers, non-religious people, young women, Spanish speakers, etc.

The opportunities are endless and inexpensive: using Facebook's minimum budget, I could advertise for myself for 5 1/2 years before hitting the $2,000 mark an agency would charge to put my name on a list. And the monthly cost is less than 1/3 of what the online parent profile website charges for a static page on their site, no advertising included.

My first three ads should be up and running in the next day or so (they're pending approval). I'll track the number of clicks and visits to my blog to figure out which ads work the best before branching out into other states that allow adoption advertising.

Here's a quick rundown of the three ads I'm testing to start:
Ad #1, shown above: Targets women ages 18 - 26, links to my parent profile blog
Ad #2: Up-close pic of my face, targets women of all ages, links to blog post Top 5 Reasons to choose a single parent (I wrote it this morning)
Ad #3: Up-close pic of my face, targets women who have identified as atheist or agnostic, copy speaks to non-religious adoption

I'm especially interested to see how #3 does, since there is some evidence online that birth parents have a hard time finding non-religious families for their children. So much of the adoption industry is focused on "loving Christian couples", I think lots of adoptive parents probably play up their religious affiliations because they think that's what birth parents want to hear. We will see!

The Stars at Night are Big and Bright

There is so much going on right now, I seriously can’t decide where to focus my energy. I have a few household projects that are 75% finished, and a bedroom, car and garage that seriously need to be cleaned and organized. My parent profile has been updated yet again, but I still need to get copies made and dropped off at the attorney’s office. I also need to make my Kickstarter video, work on the copy for my children’s book and actually get the project live online. I still have my two part-time jobs in addition to my regular 9 - 5, a packed social schedule thanks in part to it being an election year (I know, poor me) and meanwhile, I’m not doing anything new to get my name out there as a prospective parent.

AHH!

Of course I have a plan, I just haven’t been able to work on it yet. I’ve decided to advertise for myself Juno-style in Texas. The state is easy to work with legally-speaking, and they place lots of babies every year. And because I’m bilingual and a UT grad, I’m hoping to make a connection with some birth parents there. Other adoptive parents have had really good luck doing it this way.

The next step will be to access a big book of publishers from the public library so I can identify the most affordable mid-sized newspapers in Texas. Then I need to figure out what it will cost to advertise in each one, and if it’s pricey, I may submit it to Kickstarter as another project. (I think advertising for oneself is considered creative!) Either way, I hope to get a lot more mileage out of a thousand bucks than if I hand it over to an agency that’s going to turn around and charge me $20,000 more in placement fees.

Serenity now.

Liquid Gold

This post may not be for the squeamish or those who don’t have kids yet.

Something that has kind of bugged me about adopting is figuring out the right formula for a baby. Friends who’ve had to use formula seem to have all kinds of horror stories about fussy, gassy babies who puke all the time and have to go through a dozen formula types before they find something that works. 

There’s no denying that breast milk is best, but how do adoptive moms make that happen? Apparently there are a variety of supplements that need to be taken, including encapsulated placenta, to make a non-pregnant woman lactate. But those supplements have side effects, and the adoptive mom would also need to hook herself up to a breast pump for an hour a day for a couple of months to get it all flowing. Despite all that work, nearly all breastfeeding adoptive moms still have to supplement with formula because they don’t produce enough on their own.

I’m pretty sure placenta doesn’t fit into my vegetarian diet. And with the adoption timeline being so unpredictable, I’m not about to hook myself up to a machine today if I still have a year to go before being placed with a baby. 

That brings us to one more option: donor milk. I wasn’t familiar with the industry until recently, but I’ve learned a lot over the past couple of weeks. Some states have milk banks, which require a prescription from a doctor. The Rx is pretty easy to get, but the cost is around $3 per ounce (babies need about 5,000 ounces in their first 6 months = $15,000!) And the breast milk is pasteurized, so it’s pretty much nutritionally equivalent to formula. 

Either way, the closest milk bank is in Denver and shipping would cost another fortune. So I’ve decided to stay local in my search for donor milk. Very local, in fact. I happen to have a close relative who just had a baby, and in a couple of months she is willing to start pumping some extra for me to freeze until the time comes. Breast milk lasts 6 – 12 months in a deep freeze, so I will be claiming a shelf in my parents’ freezer and hoping the timing works out. 

I’ve also connected with a local group called Human Milk for Human Babies, so I can hopefully connect with one or two other mothers in the area who may be producing extra – many parents who go this route have two or three moms who regularly donate. At first I was thinking you couldn’t feed a baby breast milk from more than one mom, but obviously that doesn’t make sense. 

Once you get over the weird factor, you have to admit that our bodies are pretty amazing! I’m excited about the possibility of offering an adopted child all the benefits of breast milk. Now, like everything else, it’ll come down to networking and timing.

Yet Another Project

A few weeks ago I heard about a couple receiving donations from strangers to help pay for IVF through a website called Kickstarter. I thought it sounded too good to be true (could I really just ask for strangers to give me adoption money?) and I was sort of right.

Kickstarter focuses on creative projects with definite goals, so the IVF couple was actually asking for money to make a video documentary of their IVF journey. They raised $5,000 in less than a week. I wouldn’t be up for anything that involved cameras following me around, but I did want to submit something and see if people will pitch in to help make it happen. Fortunately I had the perfect project waiting on the back burner: a children’s book about adoption that will fill a huge gap in the market.

If my project is accepted, I’ll let everyone know. The funds I’m requesting would be used to hire an editor and illustrator (job creation!), and pay for other expenses related to publishing and promoting a book.


Update: Project accepted! I'm researching my options now so I know how much funding to request, and I'm leaning toward self-publishing so I can be in control of the size, layout and illustrations in the book. Stay tuned!

Financial Milestone

Between fundraisers, donations, gifts and my part time jobs, I have been able to pay cash for my adoption costs so far. I've also put together a nice little collection of secondhand basics: a car seat, bassinet, Pack N Play, stroller and high chair. And this week I met a major milestone - saving enough to cover the rest of a maternity leave after my vacation days run out. Woo hoo! (Unfortunately my employer doesn't offer any paid maternity leave.)

This means I can now focus on the nitty gritty costs: attorney fees, agency fees and birth mother expenses. So I want to send a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has helped, whether by donating clothes for the yard sale, drinking wine with us, giving me baby gear, buying a recipe book or connecting me with part time work. It's working!

What a Beautiful Weekend

My nephew Hayden, 7 lbs, 13 oz. and 20.5" long.

It started Friday with a party at a coworker’s house, where we exchanged silly gifts and people raved about the peanut butter pretzel balls I made. I went home and slept for about an hour before getting a text that Yazmin was in the hospital, so I headed downtown around 1:30 am and met my new nephew two short hours later! Back home to sleep till noon, then whipped up some candied walnuts for Yazmin, a chocolate eggnog pie for the family and some chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks for another party. (My arm was actually sore the next day from all that mixing and whipping cream.)

Then the war in Iraq officially ended. Thanks Obama!

On Sunday I did some freelance work and Yazmin and family stopped by my parents’ house with the baby. I got to see my dog Jayda around a baby for the first time ever. I let her sniff all over his rump, his car seat and his stuff. She jumped up a couple of times when he was our arms, but my soft boot sent the message that wasn’t okay. Later when he cried, she perked up her ears and cocked her head and stared at him intently. It was pretty cute.

After that, I finished most of my Christmas shopping and went to an hors d’ouevres potluck and sing-along party. The host is a good friend of mine who happens to be an attorney, so needless to say it was a fantastic place to hand out my adoption networking cards. There were probably 100 people there, many of them in the legal profession.

The funny thing about adopting is that I go back and forth between thinking “No one is ever going to pick me!” and “Holy cow, I need an adoption loan soon!” depending on how encouraging the day has been. Yesterday was a holy cow day.

I’m looking forward to a short work week, then tackling the moment’s most pressing question: Where to spend New Year’s Eve?