Hello! We are Antoine and Bitania and we want to thank you so much for considering adoption for your baby. We sincerely appreciate that your decision is not an easy one and as Christians, throughout your decision making we hope and pray that God guides you towards the right parents for your child. We want to let you know what respect and admiration we have for you and we feel incredibly honored and blessed to be able to share this journey with you if you so desire us to be the adoptive parents to your baby.
By reading our profile we hope you get a glimpse of the kind of people we are, the kind of life we want to offer and how much we want to love and cherish a child joining our family. We wholeheartedly look forward to making that dream of starting a family through open adoption come true.
We met ten years ago in Paris France through our jobs and became fast friends. Over time, our friendship strengthened and developed into a romantic relationship, we got engaged on Valentine’s Day of this year and are now excitedly planning our Summer wedding!
The fact that we were born in two different countries (France for Antoine and Ethiopia for Bitania), raised in different cities (Paris for Antoine and London for Bitania) and now live and call home California has made our relationship rich with culture, love and understanding.
We are each other’s best friends, confidant and partner in life. We can really depend on one another and for us this is comforting. Our relationship is based on mutual respect, open communication, patience, understanding, sincerity and very much light heartedness. We don’t believe in being ‘too old’ for pranks (like wearing Halloween masks to catch each other off) or being ‘above’ silliness or goofing around like playing Hide-n-Sneek and tickling. This keeps us young at heart and has, in the difficult moments of life, pulled us through.
Since the time we started dating, we tried to have a child of our own. After heart wrenching losses, and thereafter much reflection and acceptance, we are confident that our journey to build a family is through open adoption.
At the age of 5, Bitania distinctly remembers rocking and cradling the baby of a women her grandmother raised. This baby’s name was Benjamin and, from that moment on, Bitania has known she wanted nothing more but to love and cherish a child of her own and to be a mother. So far, the children in our lives have come in the form of our beautiful nieces, our six God Children and two children we sponsor for their education in Ethiopia and India.
We love all our nieces and God Children very very much and we try our best to be a loving guide to them as they face different stages of their lives. Regardless of where they live throughout the year, we make special effort to visit them often, spend time to talk with them, play with them and if they need advice be as good a guide as we can be. They are a big part of our lives and we love them like they were our own.
Though we love all the children in our lives very much, we also know that our love for our own child will be different and deeper, and it is only with your loving decision to entrust us to parent your baby, that we can answer the question our God Children always ask us: “When is it going to be your turn, Auntie and Uncle?”
Bitania is a beautiful, smart and kind woman. She’s the nicest person I know. She respects other people’s feelings and values, while at the same time not compromising her own.
Having been born in Ethiopia, raised in England, completed her university in the States (Maryland) and lived many years in New York and in Paris she is extremely worldly and all these different places have made her a unique human being, rich with knowledge and culture.
She has tremendous courage and can face any challenge of life with determination and wisdom. She always thinks about the impact of her decisions and makes sure her life and actions are consistent with her values.
Bitania is a real foodie: She likes spending time at our local farmer’s market selecting the best organic products, cooking delicious and healthy meals at home and dining at restaurants with family and friends. It is hard to choose but my favorite of her dishes is her boeuf bourguignon - a sort of beef stew with pasta.
Having a balanced life and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is important to Bitania so in addition to working (she is a Product Manager at a successful San Francisco Financial Technology Company), eating well, running on the Marina near our home, and spending some quality time with family and friends, a big part of her life is also her faith in God. She ensures she nurtures herself spiritually and this makes her one of the most grounded people I know.
Antoine is my rock and strength. He is a very loving, dependable and patient man and I am very thankful to be with him. His support and strength of character has lifted my spirit up during some sad moments in my life when I lost loved ones. I have seen firsthand on many occasions that he puts me and our family first. When I needed it or when my family has needed it – like when my uncle passed - he has taken leave from work and on occasion worked from home to be with me and comfort me.
He is very intelligent and curious. Professionally he is accomplished and holds an important post in a Financial Technology company as Director of Engineering, and even though that may be so, I have always admired how he manages to separate and balance his home and work life. As soon as he leaves the office for the day he is able to put his work aside and enjoy our home life.
When at home he loves spending time catching up on current affairs in the news, playing backgammon with me, playing video games and thankfully as he is very good with his hands, helping around the house with the handy work like putting up our lamps or hanging pictures or fixing shelves. I am blessed to have a willing and knowledgeable person at home.
Being an engineer, of course he also loves all things technical so in his spare time when he gets a chance he also likes creating fun social network apps for us and our friends to use, like one which he is currently working on called ‘Ya’ that allows friends to get connected by interests.
Outside of the house he loves hiking, walking, skiing in the winter (he’s very good at it) and enjoying time together with friends and family.
He has so much to give and teach I am proud that one day he will be father to our child. He is very much looking forward to that day to share and teach all the activities he loves to our child.
We live in San Francisco, in a neighborhood known as ‘Pacific Heights’, which we specifically chose to raise a family in since it is clean, safe, family-friendly, close to several parks, schools and the beautiful waterfront Marina.
We love spending time in our neighborhood walking down the pretty streets of Union or Chestnut or Fillmore, stopping off for lunch at one of the many restaurants or just picnicking in the many parks around.
Often in the afternoons we enjoy a leisurely walk down the Marina before coming back home to watch the stunning San Francisco sunset from our home.
Our home is airy, light and comfortable and whenever we get a chance we love to enjoy just relaxing on our couch reading, cooking, talking, hosting friends and family and simply being.
We are both eager to share our neighborhood and embrace our child in our home.
We were both raised in loving households that put importance on family, honesty, respect, hard work (strong work ethics) and gratitude, and as a result both of us have these strong values engrained in us.
In addition, as we both have travelled and lived many years outside of the cultures of where our parents were born and we were raised, through our journeys we have also developed understanding, patience, acceptance and the importance of loving validation.
We promise to provide a secure and loving environment to our child, and we can’t wait to love, cherish, teach and nurture our son or daughter. We look forward to holding them in our arms, protecting them, guiding them, encouraging them and going through the good and the bad with them.
Antoine comes from a tight-knit family and he is the eldest of two children. He is very close to his parents and his younger sister, for whom he was the Best Man at her wedding and also Godfather to his niece. As Antoine’s family lives in France, the family makes a special effort to connect on Skype every week and also to travel and see each other at least twice a year.
It is family tradition to spend every other Christmas together for two weeks and every summer together with the extended family (uncles, aunts, cousins, all the children) for a month. These family get togethers take place in the South of France where Antoine’s parents live. The summer annual family get togethers are filled with long lunches, afternoons around the swimming pool and children spending hours in their play garden that is complete with a tree house, swings and a zip line. Antoine’s family is eager to welcome and share these wonderful moments with our child.
Bitania is the youngest of three girls and comes from a fairly large family that has intertwined their nucleus family with their extended family. In Bitania’s family, it was common that when a parent was not able to care for a child, another family member or another family helped or took the child in. As a result, Bitania’s family has firsthand experience of children being brought into the family fold, cared for and loved at all times as members of the family. The love, support and bond that exits in Bitania’s family (who live all over the world) is a big example for us that families are created from love and not just blood and they are all excited to lovingly welcome their first grandchild.
Our close long-standing friends are also a vital part of our lives. We have known most of them from when we were children and through the ups and downs of life they have been our solid rocks. Bitania is Godmother to four of her friends’ children and Antoine is Godfather to two children. All our childhood friends have two or more kids and they could not wish more that we experience the same joy of having our own child in our lives. We are grateful to have so many godparent contenders to our child.
We sincerely thank you for taking the time to get to know us and for considering our family to adopt your baby. We’d love to learn more about you too, so please don’t hesitate to contact our adoption agency Adoption Connection.
We understand that your decision is not easy so we keep you in our prayers so that God guides you and strengthens you through the process.
We look forward to meeting you and, should you choose our family to adopt your baby, weaving our families together through open adoption.
texting/phoning 415-355-4636