About my "Dear Birthmother" letter!! I am working with an attorney, so there were no guidelines given to me. I have been researching letters all night and I'm just not sure if mine stands out. This is such an important letter, and it is starting to overwhelm me! If you don't mind, I will post my letter below. Please feel free to critique it in any way. Also, I'd love to read some of your letters if you would PM them to me. Thanks in advance
Dear Expectant Mother | Hello! We are *** & ***. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to introduce ourselves. We cannot imagine the thoughts and feelings you are experiencing, but we want you to know that we admire you're strength and courage during this time. It takes an incredibly brave person to choose an adoption plan for their child, and we pray that you find peace in your decision. We look forward to getting to know you and joining you in this experience! We are completely ecstatic to grow our family through adoption. We have wanted to become parents for quite some time now. If you were to choose us as the adoptive family, your child would not only be the first child for us, but also the first grandchild for each of our parents; so exciting! We are a loving and committed couple that can provide unconditional love, stability, fun, adventure, opportunities, and nurturing to a child. We have attempted to grow our family for nearly 3 years. After 2 years of fertility treatments and 2 heartbreaking losses, we have realized that the path that we are meant to be on is the path of adoption. We would consider it an honor if you were to choose us to parent your baby. Your child would always know the tremendous sacrifice that you made for them. We believe that love makes a family and we have more than enough to give. We wish you the very best in your decision.
Re: Sort of freaking out....
TTC since June 2009
01/10- Femara
03/10- Femara
07/2010- Clomid with injectables and IUI #1
08/2010- IUI #2
06/2011- IVF #1 BFP!
09/2011- Miscarriage at 10 1/2 weeks
11/2011- FET
01/2012- Start Home Study process
03/2012- Home Study approved and now waiting on our child to find us!
07/2012- matched with a BM who is due in October!
11/10/12- our son is born!
11/13/12- court grants us custody!
12/28/12- finalization! Always ours in our hearts, but.now also ours forever
http://keepingupwiththejoneses-dana.blogspot.com/
1. It's not just expectant moms that might be reading this. I'd consider including reference to expectant dad and/or extended fam
2. She has not yet actually made the choice of adoption, do I'd change that to "considering"
3. Make it more personal. Give a few specific examples of what you are excited to do as a family activities, values, etc
4. Talk specifically about what you are looking for or comfortable with in terms of openness.
Writing this letter was the hardest part for us!!! Good luck
Great suggestions ladies! I took your advice and added more personal touches to it, it has made a world of difference. I feel much more confident now. Thank you!!
It's the strangest feeling to have to convince someone on paper that you would make good parents. Talk about a lot of pressure! Lol.
The only comment that ours sons birth parents made about our letter was that they really liked that we have specifics. They said that everyone said, "we don't believe in spanking" for example, but we talked about specific kinds of discipline that we felt most drawn to. So yeah, the more specifics the better!
This is just my opinion as an adoptive mom (I'm hoping some birthmoms will chime in), so take it with a grain of salt. I would trim it, change that you're to your, and spend more time talking about yourselves and your families, with less emphasis on the list of things you can provide and your IF struggles.
Just my 2c
ETA: Pictures really are worth a thousand words, especially with profiles. If this is part of your profile, I'd let the pictures do the talking for a lot of the stuff you've stated in your current letter.
What about an annual vacation you could tell her about? If we had to write a letter like this, we would include our annual trip to Disney.
Any issues you are passionate about? For us it would be animal rescue.
Things you look foward to doing with your child on your days off - the zoo, the aquarium, children's museums?
Things like this that tell the EM about your family may be good to include.
Maybe even include if you will be a SAHM, work part time, etc?
I'd take my advice with a grain of salt, though. We aren't doing DIA. Others who have can correct any of the advice I gave if it isn't recommended.
5/10 - Gideon 6/12 Warren
4/11 Started adoption process for 2 siblings through DCF. 10/12 Found out we are licensed! 12/14 Brought 3 week old identical twin girls home from the hospital. Could be at least until Summer 1015 til we know if they are forever ours
Definitely talk about the level of openness you want in the letter. What I really liked when I was really looking through was a basic run down of their family in the first paragraph or two, and then more detail in further paragraphs, that way I could skip if I just wasn't feeling them and didn't have to read the whole thing to know what their religious beliefs are or how many kids they have, or how long they'd been married.
Some things I really liked reading about what they liked doing for fun and I liked reading about immediate family too. Pictures are always great too.