How to Write the Universal Perfect "Dear Birth Mother" Letter

Let me just say this right off the bat, there is no such letter. God didn't make unicorns, and prospective adoptive parents don't make universally perfect Dear Birthmother letters.

Starting the letter (or profile) was my first challenge. Almost universally prospective adoptive parents thank the birthmother for reading their profile and for considering their family for placement. After this beginning I stopped cold. Where could I go from here? "Umm, my name is Alexa, we would make great parents, we really want a child to love, and we would really be ecstatic if you picked us for a match"? So I sat down and attacked it like I would any problem, I tried to organize it.

First, I started off with me "All About Alexa". It contained a little about my background, my immediate family and my activities. Then my husband was introduced with his information. Finally we got to the meat of the letter with a section on him and me together. It was in this last section that I described our numerous pets, education philosophies, etc. At the end we included a blurb on close friends. I also added two pages of additional photos: of the house, parties, our street, our pets, and the like.

We started with independent adoption and finished with a hybrid of independent/agency open adoption. Most attorneys, agencies, etc. use the "Dear Birth Mother" letters for the prospective birth mothers to choose their match. Many of the larger organizations have the birth mother select three prospective families (prioritized) out of the stack they are sent. In our case, our birth mother was sent over forty (yes 40!) letters to choose from. Talk about feeling like a needle in a haystack!

Our adoption professional had sent us "samples" to look at, to give us ideas. Well, my first thought when we received those samples was, "So this is the competition." Make no mistake, no matter what the name, if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and swims on water, it is a duck. The same is true for the "Dear Birth Mother" letter. The letter could be more aptly renamed to the "Dear Birth Mother" brochure. Yes, brochure. Why? Because you are selling yourself, with lots of competition waiting in the wings.

After reviewing the letters sent to us, and others I found online, I realized that they all began to blend together. How someone could read forty separate profiles and not get them jumbled in their head baffled me, I couldn't do it. In the end, our birth mother told us that what first caught her eye was the fact she and us had both named our dog Zoe, a common bond. Because of that fact, she moved our letter to the "further consideration" pile. After I found that out, I remember thinking of the fight my husband and I had when I came home with from the pound with the puppy. To think that if I hadn't stood my ground on a third dog, we might not have our daughter today. Amazing!

So in short, the letter is your marketing tool, you won't appeal to everyone, even a simple common bond can somehow move your profile to the "further consideration" pile, and an individual birth mother will almost certainly think of you as the "perfect match."