Written in Pregnancy · Opened on Their First Birthday
A Letter to My Unborn Child
Write it now, while you’re still carrying them and everything is still ahead of you. We print it, seal it, and mail it back on their first birthday — a real envelope in your mailbox, not a note that disappears into your phone.
You will never be exactly this person again — the one who is still waiting for them.
Choose Your Delivery Date
When Should Your Letter Come Back?
Pick any date from one month to two years out. Here are the three parents reach for most.
First Christmas
A few months in
Arrives during the first holiday season, right in the newborn haze — when a letter about who you were is the only mail that week worth opening.
First Birthday
One year after they arrive
A full year of distance. You’ll read it as a completely changed person — and that’s exactly the point. The bookend to the first year.
Second Birthday
The far edge of our window
Two years is the longest we hold a letter. Want them to open it at 18? We mail it back to you at year one and you keep it sealed for them.
The Method
Three Simple Steps
Write
Type it online or write it by hand. Use the seven prompts below if the blank page is winning.
Choose Your Date
Pick when it comes back — any date from one month to two years out. The first birthday is the favorite.
Receive It Sealed
It arrives in your mailbox as a printed, wax-sealed envelope — unopened, unread, exactly as you left it.
Your Starting Point
Seven Prompts for a Letter to Your Baby
Answer these and you’ll have a letter worth crying over on a birthday a year from now.
1.Right now, you are…
How many weeks. What you feel like. The way you kick at 2 a.m. What we call you before we know your name.
2.The day we found out about you…
3.What I’m most afraid of about becoming your parent is…
4.But what I already know for certain is…
5.The world you’re about to arrive into looks like…
The songs, the news, the price of things, who we are this year.
6.The people who cannot wait to meet you are…
7.And on your first birthday, when I read this back —
Say whatever you need to say. No rules.
Why Now
The Details Go First
Pregnancy is a version of you with an expiration date
The specific fears, the nickname you use before they have a real one, the way you talk to a bump — all of it is gone within months of the birth. A letter is the only way to keep the person you are right now, before the newborn rush overwrites her.
Paper survives what phones don’t
A note in your phone gets buried under ten thousand photos and a new device in three years. A sealed envelope in a keepsake box gets handed to your kid one day. Physical mail is the whole point: it’s the version that lasts.
Simple Pricing
Two Ways to Write It
$9
Digital Letter
Type it online. We print it on heavy cream stationery, seal it with wax, and mail it to you on the date you choose.
$19
Handwritten Letter
Write it by hand and mail it to us. We store it sealed and mail it back to you on your chosen date — your real handwriting, kept safe.
One-time payment. No subscription. US delivery only.
I wrote to my daughter at 32 weeks, terrified and huge and not sleeping. It came back on her first birthday and I didn’t recognize the person who wrote it — I’d already forgotten how afraid I was, and how much I already loved her before I’d met her.
— A New Parent
Free Guide
Still Negotiating With the Blank Page?
Grab our free 5-page letter-writing guide — a 15-minute method and prompts that aren’t terrible — then come back and write the one to your baby.
Questions & Answers
Letter to Your Unborn Child FAQ
When should I write a letter to my unborn baby?
Any time in pregnancy works, but the third trimester is the sweet spot — the baby feels real, the anticipation is at its peak, and you still have the quiet before everything changes. Write it now, while this exact version of your life still exists.
When will the letter be delivered?
You choose any date from one month to two years out. Most parents pick the baby’s first birthday — it lands about a year after they arrive, when the newborn blur has cleared and you’ll cry reading who you were before you met them. First Christmas, their first Mother’s or Father’s Day, or your due date anniversary are close seconds.
Can you deliver it when my child turns 18?
Not directly — our delivery window caps at two years, so we can’t hold a letter for eighteen. What many parents do instead: we mail the sealed letter back to you on the first birthday, and you tuck it away to hand your child yourself at 18, at their wedding, or whenever the moment comes. You keep the keepsake; you choose the day.
Should I write to the baby or to myself?
Both are meaningful and both land hard. A letter to the baby becomes something they inherit — proof of who was waiting for them. A letter to yourself captures the version of you on the edge of parenthood, before the sleep deprivation edits your memory. Some parents write one of each.
What if the pregnancy has been complicated or scary?
Name it directly. A letter that honestly records a hard pregnancy, a long road to get here, or a fear you carried is often the one that matters most later. You don’t have to dress it up. You just have to be honest.
Handwritten or typed?
Whichever you’ll actually finish. Handwriting carries more of you — your real hand on the page is the keepsake. But a typed letter you send beats a handwritten one that stays in a drawer. Either way, it comes back to you as a printed, sealed envelope in the mail.
You might also like the first-birthday time capsule, a letter to your child in the future, or a baby-shower time capsule.
Before they arrive and rewrite everything
You have a few quiet minutes and a person on the way. The version of you waiting for them has something worth saying — and only a little while left to say it.
Write the Letter to Your Baby