Dear Birthmother Book

The final part of a home study for domestic agency adoption is creating a "Dear Birthmother" letter.  From what I understand these "letters" started out as just that- a letter to the potential birth mother of your potential child.  Now it seems that instead of a simple letter it might be best to create a scrapbook type book to be presented to the birth mothers.  I honestly don't know what birth mothers are looking for but I also don't think I need to "know" since it seems to me that each match will be unique and God is in control anyway.

I am not a scrapbooker- that whole deal is too much for me.  So, instead I opted to create a digital book- the type I'm used to creating for photography.  I found an awesome website called blurb.com where lazy people like me can download all of their instagram and facebook uploaded pictures and create a book that way.  Here is our book:  

We were told to have 5 copies printed.  I just ordered the soft cover type to save money.  I also found a coupon that saved us $27 on retailmenot.com  Apparently, once the books come in and our homestudy if signed off on by the director (supposed to happen tomorrow) then as they have birth mothers come in to the agency that they think we would be a good match with they will show our book, along with 3-4 other family's books to the mother for her to choose which family she could envision her baby being in.  At that point, if she chooses your family the agency will tell us about the mother and her situation (if there is any health history or drug use, the sex of the baby...) and ask us if we would like to accept the match or a lot of times the mother wants to talk with one or two of the families on the phone or meet in person.

Honestly, this whole scenario sounds kind of awkward to me- to think we are choosing each other- her choosing us based on an instagram book I made and us choosing her unborn child on....intuition?  Oh boy, I'm going to need to wear extra deodorant that day- I can't imagine how nervous I'll be.

So, here's to hoping the book is decent.  I'm not big on embellishments or teddy bear overlays- hopefully it's not to straightforward.  I will say that when we went to make it I realized that we had like zero pics of our whole family together so I hired a fellow photographer and good friend Audrey Owen of Audrey Snow Photography to do a quick (I'm talking 20 minutes) family shoot.  If there is anyone out there that is serious about adoption and has already started the process and had their home visit I would like to offer our photography services for quick portrait session to help you supplement your own Dear Birthmother book.