Dear Birthmom

For the past couple weeks we've been working on our "Dear Birthmom" letter. Let me tell you, it was the most difficult letter I've ever written. In one sense, it's a love letter to someone you've not ever met. It is also a bit of a plea, or sales pitch, "hey, we're so and so and this is who we are and what we do, please give us your baby." No seriously. It's really difficult to write.

When we finally got it done, we gave it to 4 people to read. That's it. We chose people who knew us well, but would be able to get over the emotion, and be straight with us about how the letter sounded. One of them was pregnant, which I thought was good because pregnancy hormones can sometimes put a different spin on things. And, of course, the reader of this letter is going to be expecting, so we thought it only appropriate.

The letter was finished and edited Wednesday, Thursday night we finished up our picture pages (scrapbook style pages with pictures of us, our family, our friends, our animals, and our home), and today we mailed our required 8 profiles off. They will arrive at our agency Monday. From what they said to me a while back when we decided to be open to birth mom situations our profiles can be viewed starting now, even though our study is not yet finished. So we're out there....in case anyone walks through our agency's doors and wants to take a look. Our agency has 5 offices throughout California. So one profile goes to each and I'm not sure what the extra are for.

We've also been more open with letting people know that we're almost done with our paper work, and would be willing to speak with anyone who is considering adoption for their child. Just because word of mouth can sometimes bring a birth mom and adoptive parents together. I actually met a girl last week at a meeting at work (we were introduced by a friend of mine) and she works with lower income pregnant women. She said she'd find out for me what the process might be to put my name and information out there to those women if they were considering adoption.

The wonderful people in our lives are keeping their eyes and ears open for our child as well. It's nice to know that so many people care about us becoming parents. We are very lucky.

Our little one is out there, that's for sure, and s/he doesn't know it, but mommy and daddy are working very hard to get them home.