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Dear Birthmother: Thank you for taking the time to read our letter. We realize you are facing the toughest decision in your life, and we are grateful that you are considering placing your baby with us. While you will always be the person who brings this baby into the world, it is our hearts' desire to provide a loving family to raise and nurture your child. We hope this letter and these photos will help shed some light into who we are and how much love we have to share with a child. Building Our Family We have been married for six years. While we enjoyed each other's company and the "perks" that came with being childless (like traveling on a whim), we longed for children. We tried for several years to have a baby only to discover we are unable to have a child ourselves. We were very sad, frustrated and depressed, because we felt we would never have the family we had been dreaming of for so long. Adoption, however, was the answer to our prayers. We adopted our daughter, Alaina, a little over a year and a half ago. We have never known such joy or a greater love until we welcomed our daughter into our lives. While our house is now filled with happiness, laughter, and the occasional "uh oh," we believe our family is not quite complete. Our home is now filled with so much love and happiness, we want to share it with another child. We want Alaina to have a little brother or sister, and we would like for our children to grow up close together in age so they can not only be siblings, but best friends. We are happy with our family of three, but in our hearts we believe we were meant to be a family of four. A Little About Us Our names are Julie and Adam, and we are both 34 years old and very active. Adam is originally from the Chicago area, and Julie moved to Chicago "temporarily" in '98 to pursue a master's degree in education. While in Chicago, she fell in love with the city and, more importantly, she met Adam and fell in everlasting love. That temporary move was 10 years ago, and Julie now loves calling the Chicago suburbs home. Adam works in the finance industry and is very close to his family; so close that his parents live one mile north of our house, and his sister's family lives one mile west of their house. Adam's father has been a big influence in his life. Adam's dad worked in the stock market before retiring, and he taught Adam all about the financial industry. However, baseball is their true passion. White Sox baseball is close to a religion in their house. When Adam was growing up, he and his dad attended several baseball games together every year and played in a pick-up game on Sunday mornings. Between those two loves, they never run out of things to talk about. Adam has a sister, Stephanie, who is married to Evan, and they are the parents of our two year old nephew, Ben. The kids are a little too young to have much interaction, but they like to wave to each other from across the table at dinner time and give each other hugs. Adam's family gets together every Sunday evening for dinner. This gives the kids a chance to play, and the grown-ups get a chance to catch up on the week's events. Julie has been a music teacher for the last 12 years. She comes from a long line of music makers. Her father and brother are also currently teaching music, so it is common at family get-togethers to have a "jam session." Of course, these days the jam sessions are more likely to be "The Wheels on the Bus" or "Itsy -Bitsy Spider" (Alaina's personal favorite!). Julie's brother, Dan, married "aunt" Elizabeth last year, and we are eagerly anticipating the arrival of more cousins. Even though Julie's family lives in a different state, we see each other about once a month. Making sure Alaina has the chance to interact with all of her extended family is important to us because our families are definitely the center of our lives. Our Role As Parents Since we still consider ourselves "new" parents, we continue to learn as we go. Julie works for a school district that allows two years off for maternity leave. After that, there are job sharing programs and part time opportunities if Julie wants to take advantage of them. We have not yet decided what to do after the maternity leave time expires. Luckily, there is a lot of time to think about it, and we are glad to have a lot of options. While we do believe there are tremendous advantages to being a stay-at-home mom, we want to balance having great financial opportunities for our children with the benefit of staying home. Adam is lucky to have a job that allows him to dictate some of his own hours. He was blessed to be able to take three weeks off when Alaina was born so he could share in the newborn experience. Adam feels it is important for a dad to be a partner in parenting, from changing diapers to running a bath to providing support and encouragement. The one thing the two of us have learned is that you have to have a sense of humor; everything from strangers commenting on who Alaina looks like to the fact that a bowl of SpaghettiOs has just plopped down onto the new carpet. We know that whatever challenges come our way, we can handle them as long as we handle them together. Family Time There are many activities we like to do as a family. Alaina loves to play in the water, so recently everyone signed up for a parent/tot swim class. Splashing around in the water is a lot of fun and good exercise too. During one of our classes, we met another family who also loves spending family time in the water, so we're all going to spend a few weekends this spring in Wisconsin trying out the water parks. It's a nice getaway we can do together. We have also signed up for a music class that we attend as a family. The class is really about teaching the parents songs and games they can play at home with their kids. You haven't seen anything until you've seen Adam giving Alaina a pony ride while singing "Walking Ol' Joe." Unfortunately, one round is never enough for Alaina, and "Ol' Joe" sometimes ends up with sore knees. Singing and playing games have been the perfect start to the weekend, and of course we always go out for a snack afterwards before everyone is ready for nap time. We look forward to the warmer weather when we can be outside more. We love to have people over to bar-b-que, and we enjoy playing in the backyard. Our dog, Slugger, loves to chase bubbles and Alaina gets more excited watching Slugger dance around the bubbles then about the bubbles themselves. When the weather is nice we try to take a daily "after dinner walk". It gives us a chance to be together as a family, but at the same time we can talk about our day and have more "grown up" conversations. Because Adam's family is close by, it's easy to arrange babysitting from time to time. While spending time with Alaina is our absolutely favorite thing to do, we know that we need alone time to keep our marriage strong. Alaina's Adoption Adoption has changed our lives in the best way possible. While we were at first a bit nervous about adoption, it has brought us unimaginable joy. We were able to meet Alaina's birthmother and get to know each other so everyone had a chance to feel really comfortable with the decision. We made an adoption plan and navigated some changes as Alaina's birthmother's needs dictated. We send letters and pictures to Alaina's birthmother, and will continue to do so for as long as she wants them. We grew to care for Alaina's birthmother very much, and found we admired her for her courage and enormous love for her child. She is an inspiration to us, and we try hard every day to make her proud of us since she trusted us with her greatest gift to the world. We are confident that we will feel the same bond with the birthmother of our second child. Final Thoughts We know this is a difficult time for you, and we want you to know our thoughts and prayers are with you. We hope this letter will shed some light on our lives and our family. We would love to have the opportunity to meet you and give you time to get to know us. We feel that getting to know each other would enable you to decide best if we are the right parents for your baby. Whether or not you decide to get to know us, please know that we will be thinking of you. Wishing you the best for you and
your child, About
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