Jeffrey and Melissa

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From Us to You

Dear Expectant Mother,

We’d like to thank you for considering adoption for your baby. We can only imagine the difficult decisions you have to make. We hope that getting to know us a little bit better can make your decision a little easier.

We have been together for 18 years, and married for 17. We have survived job loss, the recession, and many years of infertility together. It has made our marriage strong. We cannot imagine going through all of that without each other’s support and love. That’s not to say that our lives are perfect. But we’ve learned how to communicate with one another and cope with difficulties in a way that shows respect and love for one another’s feelings.

For many years, we have longed for a child of our own. We’ve gone through the heartbreaking grief of infertility and decided we had to stop doing treatments. For us, having a child is so important. What’s no longer important is that a child is biologically related to us. Jeff can’t wait to be the involved parent who takes his child to sports activities, scouts, playing on the playground at parks, and camping. Melissa dreams of the days when she can have a child to read stories with, teach about gardening, and get involved in his or her school.

With our experiences in life, we are confident that we will come into our new roles in life with a lot of wisdom. We’ll also have a lot of patience. We both believe in letting a child be “free-range” to learn to make his or her own mistakes and become independent adults. Parents do need to watch their children and guide them. But as we watch our peers with their children, we have noticed that our parenting style would be more laid back. Children can act out sometimes, that’s what kids do as they are learning their boundaries and growing, but we will always teach them the importance of kindness of respect. Children need to know they are loved and their parents have expectations for them. Love and respect will be the highest values in our parenting, including love and respect for one’s own body.

We know this must be such an emotional time for you. We want your choice to be the best for all of us. Please know that whatever you choose, you have a team of supporters cheering you on.

Sincerely,
Jeff and Melissa

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Why We are Choosing to Adopt

We are choosing to adopt because we are unable to have children of our own biologically. We would very much like to experience parenting and give the gift of a healthy, stable childhood. Melissa had two extended family members who were adopted and thinks it is a wonderful way to build a family. She often dreams of great things we can do with our own child. Jeff has a playful, kind heart and longs to share the things that made him have a happy childhood with his own child.

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How We Met

We had our first date at a local Irish pub because of our mutual love of Folk music. Melissa remembers that she was specifically looking for someone who could match her progressive ideas — sometimes in rural areas she felt isolated because she has always stuck to her values — and realized Jeff shared some of those values too. Jeff was impressed she was interested in Bob Dylan. Melissa joined Jeff’s family for his grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary the following week, so it quickly felt pretty serious! Jeff immediately knew Melissa was the right girl for him because of her interest in music. Melissa quickly learned to trust Jeff because of his constant support of her career and life choices.

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About Melissa, by Jeff

Melissa will be a great mother because she truly love kids. Every time we walk by a kid in a stroller; a child playing in the pew in front of us at church, or playing with our nieces and nephews, she is always grinning ear to ear. She FaceTimes with our niece and nephew in Chicago and loves to babysit our niece and nephew here in town. Whenever she walks in the room they both run up to her yelling, “MELISSA!!!”

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About Jeff, by Melissa

Jeff was born to be a father and people often call him a grown-up kid. Through the years of trying to become parents, knowing that he is meant to parent has helped to keep our hopes high of having a child to call our own. Jeff is always engaging with his little nieces and nephews, playing games with them and chasing them around the house. Their parents know a visit from Uncle Jeff means they get to have a break because he always keeps the kids entertained. He is going to be a very loving and active parent. I am so excited for the day I get to see him hold a child of his very own.

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Lifestyle

We are a hardworking Midwestern couple who long to adopt a child of our own. We love spending time with each other and relaxing with our family. In our spare time, we enjoy taking our dogs on walks, going on nature hikes, making homemade beer, gardening, baking, and watching science-fiction movies. We both are interested in finding the best way to do things — the original way to make beer, the best sausage, the original baked pretzel.

We just love having cookouts with family at our house! We usually have some sort of potluck and each person brings a dish, with Jeff cooking smoked meat and sharing his homemade beer. Our nieces and nephews sometimes come and enjoy playing in our big backyard with our dogs. Sometimes we will go to a concert or museum in the nearby city. We are often doing yard work, gardening, and house projects.

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Our Dogs

We have two dogs named Nugget, and Fuggle. They are two small dogs we adopted from a dog rescue after their previous owner died in a car accident. We found out through genetic testing that they are father and son. We have rescued all our dogs over the years — we particularly like dachshunds— but lost three to old age recently.  We were very sad to lose our dogs. We waited for about six months and looked for the right dog match. We were overjoyed to find two boisterous dogs! We love and treat our dogs well, making sure they have all the things their vet recommends. Nugget and Fuggle were fostered temporarily by a relative of their original owner, so we still send her photos from time to time to let her know they are thriving and doing well.

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Home & Neighborhood

Our neighborhood is the type of place where parents in town take their children to go trick-or-treating and kids leave their bicycles in the front yard all summer. We’re a middle-class neighborhood on the edge of a small town. Our community is very lucky to have a higher than average ethnic diversity than most cities in our state. We live in a single-family home that we bought in 2014. Our house was built in the late 1950s and we have three bedrooms, two and a ½ bathrooms, a garage, and a finished basement. Your child will have his or her own bedroom. We have a fenced-in backyard, vegetable garden, and fruit trees.

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Racial & Cultural Diversity

Being from well-educated families, we were both taught to reject racism. We realize that sometimes even that isn’t enough, especially in recent American history. While we’ve always come from traditions that support multicultural heritages that are not our own, we realize our white, wealthy backgrounds give us a privilege that others do not have. Learning to be anti-racist is a journey. We have to constantly look for ways to be inclusive and respectful. That may also mean respecting your child’s background so that he or she feels included, too.

Two communities where we live and work have about 12-17% African American households, and had peaceful  Black Lives Matter marches following the death of George Floyd. Melissa spent her childhood before age 9 in a predominantly Hispanic community and had positive experiences learning to speak a small amount of Spanish and celebrating Latino heritage. Jeff’s Catholic upbringing brought him into close contact with many Catholic families of other ethnicities. Some of Jeff’s lifelong friends benefit from interracial marriages and biracial children. They will be a part of our adopted child’s life and we will lean on them for advice if needed on issues.

A friend took this photo of young people of color who held a protest at the local police department in June 2020. The police came out to talk to the protesters and they ended up kneeling together. There is a positive relationship between our community’s police and youth. It’s not always perfect, but Kansas is one of those states that has historically been progressive and continually tries to improve.

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Our Families & Friends

We are surrounded by a community that will love and care for your child. Jeff’s family lives in town. Jack and June are retired and in good health. June has a background in early childhood education and often steps in to babysit for her grandchildren. Jeff’s sister, Elizabeth, her husband, and two young children, Leah and Eddie, also live in town. We are close with all of our brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews, who live elsewhere, too. We’re both active in our church and community. Your baby will grow up surrounded by loving, stable, and well-educated people.

We really love vacations with our extended family- especially after the pandemic prevented this for so long! We went on a recent trip to the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas and stayed in cabins with Jeff’s family, doing nature hikes, swimming, and sightseeing. Jeff enjoyed vacationing in California to see his nephew graduate college, and his entire family joined in the celebration. Over the last year, Melissa went to Illinois to visit her sister’s family and go to music concerts, and she and her mother went to a special symphony held in the plains of Kansas. Jeff’s best friend Jeremy in Arizona has become like a brother and we recently visited his family to meet their new baby! Our circle includes friends with bi-racial children, and if your child’s background is different than our own, they will see themselves in the community we have built.

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How a Child will Enrich our Lives

Having a child will give us a more fulfilled life. We have struggled deeply with infertility for many years and still find there is a hole in our lives. It always seems there is an empty chair at our table, an empty bedroom in our home, and sometimes even too much free time. We are ready and excited to parent immediately and often consider adopting again in the future. Our families have been so supportive and loving and we know they can’t wait either. We are all so excited to bring a child into our lives.

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Hobbies

We have developed several hobbies because we both love learning new things. Melissa loves gardening. During the pandemic and the loss of our dog, it was one of the few things that helped her relax and unwind from the stresses of work. She likes finding plants native to the Midwest that help the environment for her backyard garden and connecting to her family who also enjoy gardening. Melissa also enjoys baking, cooking, photography, and nature hikes. Anything with a creative outlet!

Jeff began brewing beer at home more than 15 years ago. He really enjoys picking out the recipes and ingredients and is always looking for methods to improve his cooking. We love having family and friends over to enjoy his beer and are always taking it to others to share. Jeff really likes listening to vinyl records and finding new or new-to-us musical artists that truly have a message to share. Some of his favorites are David Byrne, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, R.E.M, Leonard Cohen, Pink Floyd, Prince, and many more.

We both find that learning new things through our hobbies is the most important way to live one’s life and move forward.

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Family Traditions

We both come from highly educated parents from upper middle-class families in the Midwest. We enjoy basic holidays like Christmas and the Fourth of July, and our traditions are mostly Christian and faith-based. Music is a huge part of our lives, but with opposite backgrounds. Melissa’s family members have all been musicians and have a keen interest in classical, chamber choir, and orchestral music. Jeff’s knowledge of popular and 20th Century music leaves them all in the dust! Recently we visited the home of the late rock star Prince in Minnesota; which has been turned into a museum. We both enjoy going to concerts of all kinds of music, especially musicians from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

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What We will Teach and Share

One of the highest values we adhere to is respect. Children can make all sorts of mistakes, but the most important thing is that they learn to be respectful and kind to others. Melissa grew up with an aptitude for writing and also enjoys music and gardening. Jeff would enjoy teaching a child about popular culture, humor, playing outside, and tinkering with electronics. We get lots of fun ideas from our siblings who have young children, about fun things to try, like science experiments at home or Montessori lessons. Jeff’s mother has been a Montessori preschool teacher for many years and his father worked in retail business management. Melissa’s parents were both music teachers. All of those values are important to us, too.

We plan to be open and honest with our child about their adoption story. What we tell him or her about you depends on what we learn from you through the adoption process. Melissa plans to keep an adoption journal that your child can read later in life. We will explain that they have a parent who gave birth to them, but that we will always be their parents too. We will keep an open mind as your child gets older and asks questions. We will adapt based on your child’s growth and what you want us to share with them.

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Our Promise to You

We promise that your child will grow up feeling loved and accepted by all of our family. We both have pretty large extended families and everyone would be supportive of adoption and they would especially be supportive of a child of another race.  He or she will have as much contact with members of your family as you are comfortable. Two of Melissa’s relatives were adopted and they grew up benefiting from some sort of relationship with their birth family members. One grew up knowing her biological triplet brother as a dear friend. The other grew up spending every other weekend at his biological grandma’s house because she lived in town. While every adoption situation is unique, we’re certain there can be some sort of connection between you and your child in a modern world where the touch of a button may be all that separates two people.  Your child will have a normal childhood full of ups and downs, but working together as a couple, we know we will provide a stable foundation to help them get through anything that life brings.