How do you show a snapshot of your entire lives in just a handful of pictures and paragraphs? These are the questions we found ourselves asking this week when we began to create our profile on our surrogacy agency’s website. This daunting task felt like building a dating profile and in many ways it is.
Why is a profile so important?
A profile, whether it is on a surrogacy agency website or in a post on an independent surrogacy Facebook group, is your chance to put yourself out there and tell your story to a potential surrogate. Unless you’re lucky enough to know someone personally who can be your surrogate, your profile is the first impression potential surrogates will have of you, your family, and the life that you live. If they’re interested, this could lead to a match!
What to include in a profile:
Photos
Our agency, 4U Surrogacy Canada, encouraged us to share a variety of pictures in our profile. We choose mainly recent photos, and even included our puppy in a few of them to give the full picture of our little family. We tried to pick photos that could add some colour to who we are. For example, we’re big Blue Jays fans and included a picture of us decked out in our jerseys.
A video
While our profile doesn’t currently include a video, we’ve been told that this can be an effective way to connect with potential surrogates.
Your story
There are a number of elements you’ll want to include in the written portion of your profile. All profiles should cover the basics like where you live, how old you are, where you met (if you’re a couple) and why you’re turning to surrogacy to build your family. Beyond that, you get to decide how much detail to share.
It was suggested that if describing yourselves is hard to do, write a brief letter about why your partner would make an amazing parent. It’s often easier to write about someone else, than to write about yourself. Another suggestion we received was to ask for testimonies from friends and family speaking about what we would be like as parents. Instead, we wrote a brief letter to our future surrogate (much like the letter we wrote on the page Dear Ms. Right) outlining the basics. We figured between the photos, letter, and this blog, our public profile speaks for itself.
The best tip we learned was that a surrogate wants to help someone she can relate to. We would suggest throwing in a few fun facts about you to help paint the picture of who you are.
Who’s your favourite musician? Billy Joel!
What is your favourite Disney movie? Parent Trap if we’re talking live action, The Lion King if animated.
What is your favourite food? I would say sushi, Zane would argue it’s burgers and fries. The Cowfish Sushi-Burger-Bar in Orlando solves all arguments!
Perhaps these things will resonate with our future surrogate. Perhaps they resonate with you? Reach out to us anytime and let us know what you would put in your profile, or if you know us well (hi Mom!), what you think we should include!
Baden
Not My Tummy 