Embryo Adoption

As I've shared before, my path to motherhood has not been easy.  After a long time of expensive testing, fertility medication, surgeries, and more, Steve and I were told that we would not be able to have biological children.  Ever.  Not even with IUIs, IVF procedures, and all of the other fancy things they can do.  Of course, we were depressed, but knew that we wanted to be parents, and prayed to God that He would find a way for us to do so.

As most of you know, the answer to that prayer came in December 2009, when we got the phone call that there was a little girl in the hospital who needed a family.  Lydia is the light and life of our lives, and we thank God every day for her.

A few years after Lydia was born, I started feeling promptings that we should begin again to expand our family.  But there were so many obstacles!  Steve was beginning grad school (again, working on his PhD), and we were barely scraping by on my teacher's salary.  But, we started saving all the money we could.  I started selling a couple of things on the side (leggings and Usborne books), teaching private lessons, and doing all that I could to save up the $20,000+ dollars we needed.  But, we had moved to Kansas from Georgia, and basically all of the extra money I was earning was paying mortgage on the house we still owned (we had put it up for sale with no buyers).  We met with an adoption agency, but it didn't feel right.  We kept saving.  After almost 4 years, we finally sold that house - but took a huge hit, so all of our savings and then some went towards that.  That whole time, I was thinking "Why us?  Why do we have these promptings to become parents, yet we can't seem to save the money we needed because life keeps happening?"  We met with another adoption agency, and it still didn't feel right.

But at the same time, I started researching our infertility issues.  And I discovered this miraculous thing called "embryo adoption."  The more I read, the more I thought - "hey - this could work for us!"  This process is best explained here, but essentially, when couples go through the IVF process, they sometimes have fertilized embryos kept in frozen storage.  When those couples decide they are done having their family, they can choose to do a few things with the embryos - one of which is donate them to somebody like me.  I could essentially be my own surrogate.  The idea was intriguing, but also kind of weird.  We thought about it for a long time, but the more we thought, and the more we prayed, the more right this felt.

When Steve was offered his job in Nashville, we finally could begin saving in earnest.  We met with a fertility clinic, and our doctor said we would be great candidates for this procedure.  It is still expensive, but children are always worth it!

Things finally felt right.  I feel that God has led our paths here, to this place, to this situation.  I feel that my husband was led to the job he has (he loves it), and that we were led to find embryo adoption.  I'm excited to see what the future can bring - and maybe, just maybe, Lydia can become a big sister soon!