Dear Donor Family,

Thank you in advance for considering us as potential adoptive parents. We hope that this letter will give you an idea of who we are and help you to make a decision about whether our family would be the best fit for your frozen embryos. Our names are [His name] and [Her name]. We met online through Catholic Match in Summer 2019. We got married in a Roman Catholic wedding ceremony in June 2021. When we got married, [Her name] thought that she would have a “honeymoon baby”. However, she suffered from vaginismus, which required six months of physical therapy to resolve. By that point, since we thought that we would get pregnant “right away”, we prevented pregnancy until October 2022. When we didn’t get pregnant after six months, we went to a restorative reproductive clinic and worked with them for a year with no success. Eventually, we moved on to a more mainstream fertility clinic that uses ART and went through three rounds of IUI. None of these were successful. [Her name] was also told that she would not make a good candidate for IVF. As a married couple, we feel that we have a lot of love to share. We want to share that love with children and we have come to understand that families are made up of people that love each other, not necessarily by genetics.

[His name] is of Cambodian and Taiwanese descent; he was born in Thailand in 1980 in a refugee camp because his parents were forced to flee Cambodia due to the Khmer Rouge regime. With his parents and his younger brother, he moved to the United States in 1985, where his little sister was born in 1986. [Her name] was born in 1986 in Ireland; her parents are from County Meath and County Louth. She moved to the United States with her parents and her three older brothers in 1989. Coming from different immigrant backgrounds, we both have leaned into incorporating the cultural traditions of our respective families while building our own traditions. We tell each other that, once we got married, [His name] became Irish and [Her name] became Cambodian. Both of our families see holidays as an excuse to get together and eat food! As of writing, [His name] and [Her name] have a total of nine nieces and nephews, with seven of them being from [Her name's] side alone! Out of the nine nieces and nephews, two of them are Irish/British-American, five of them are Irish/Korean (their mother was a Korean adoptee!), and two of them are Greek/Cambodian. We love spending New Year’s Day at [His name's] parents’ house and then visiting [Her name's] side of the family at her mother’s house on Saint Patrick’s Day. As Catholics, we observe Lent so we observe the Irish tradition of eating pancakes the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday–[Her name] loves coming up with different ways to interpret what a “pancake” is. Easter is [His name's] favorite holiday–our Catholic faith is very important to us but, for [His name], this holiday is a chance for spiritual renewal. An important holiday for [His name's] family is Khmer New Year, which is in mid-April, where the key highlight is eating traditional Cambodian food, which [Her name] is being taught how to make by [His name's] mother. [Her name's] favorite holiday is Christmas–she has a curated playlist of her favorite Christmas songs which [His name] likes to deliberately “misinterpret” the lyrics of in order to tease her. [Her name] is in charge of her family’s Christmas pudding recipe which was handed down from her mother who received it from her mother. Throughout the year, we see both sides of our family fairly regularly.

As a couple, we enjoy each other’s company while maintaining our own interests and hobbies. Our favorite activity is to travel. In general, finances willing, we like to rotate between traveling internationally and domestically. In other words, if we travel internationally this year, then we will travel domestically next year. South Korea has a special place in our hearts: our trip to South Korea was our first trip together and both of us feel like we truly fell in love on that trip. We plan to visit South Korea on a regular basis because we enjoy it so much. We have also visited Ireland twice to visit [Her name's] family and homeland and we hope to visit roughly every four years to maintain connections with [Her name's] side of the family who still live there. As of writing, our planned trip this year is to Japan, where [Her name] studied abroad twenty years ago. When we are not traveling, during the summer, we like to go bike riding and play tennis. We often combine bike rides with picnics. We also enjoy singing karaoke at home with our karaoke machine and we enjoy going out to a local game shop to play board games. We attend Catholic Mass weekly ([Her name] sings in the choir) and our routine is to go out to a coffee shop afterward--[His name] loves coffee and [Her name] loves pastries. One nonnegotiable activity we do is have dinner and watch our favorite TV shows together. We tend to watch Japanese anime and Korean TV dramas but occasionally we will branch out and watch funny YouTube videos or American TV shows.

[Her name] works as an academic adviser for business students at a local college and [His name] is a vocational rehabilitation counselor for disabled individuals. Our jobs give us skills that would be beneficial to raising and supporting the development of children. [His name] is extremely patient and knows how to meet individuals where they are. [Her name] understands the importance of education and setting goals without being restricted by them. Both of our jobs require empathy and compassion but also knowing when to have difficult conversations. Both of our workplaces have been supportive of our efforts to grow our family and encourage work-life balance for employees with children. The home where we live was chosen precisely with children in mind. Besides our master bedroom, there are two other bedrooms currently serving other purposes but can be easily converted back to their intended purpose once we have children. Our house has a large yard and there are sidewalks on our street where we often see families walking with their children when the weather is nice. Our neighbors are friendly and of diverse backgrounds. Our home is within walking distance of two playgrounds and a shopping center but far away enough that it is relatively quiet on most days. As for the house itself, [His name] takes great pride in maintaining it and keeping it clean. Every week, [His name] routinely does the laundry and cleans every room except the kitchen and dining room as well as addresses any repairs that may come up. [Her name] makes the house a home by planning and preparing vegan and vegetarian meals for the upcoming week, sometimes experimenting but more often preparing the Asian, Irish, and American food we both enjoy.

We understand that you did not make the decision to donate your embryos lightly; we also did not make this decision to pursue embryo adoption lightly. We hope through this letter that we have demonstrated that your embryo will be entering a happy home. They will be surrounded by grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and family friends who will be so excited to share the world with them. Our life is complete; our heartbreak is that we cannot share it with another wonderful person, such as your child.

We hope that you will give us a chance to give your child a beautiful life full of love.

Sincerely,