Adoption Option #2

We received an email from a birth mother a couple of weeks ago. She seemed great. She seemed out going and loving and kind and like we would be good friends. The weird thing was that I didn't want to answer her email. I didn't want to let her into our life and learn about our "traditions" and our jobs and what we do for fun on the weekend. I didn't want to feel like we have to sell ourselves like an item on a shelf. I realized I am still angry. I realized that I am SO NOT READY to talk to birth parents about what kind of life that we can offer their child. I am not ready to even consider an open adoption option. It was pretty eye opening.

A couple of days later Brandon and I started talking and decided that we want to take down our profile and look at other opportunities. The next day our amazing case worker called us to just check in and see how we were doing. I talked to her about all of my feelings and she agreed that it would be good to take down our profile and also suggested another option...EMBRYO ADOPTION.

Those were foreign words to me. I had never heard of that and it sounded kind of illegal at first. So what is it? Well, let me tell you....

When a couple goes in to have IVF (In-Vitro Fertilization) the doctors usually harvest an abundance of eggs and sperm. They then fertilize the eggs, creating an embryo. They then use the strongest and healthiest to implant into the women hoping for pregnancy. Just in case she doesn't get prego the first round they freeze the other embryos and use them for later treatments. In some cases couples have more eggs in storage that they never use because they get pregnant or something happens where they can no longer utilize the frozen eggs. So they usually pay to keep them on ice OR donate them to science. A third option is now becoming more popular where couples are donating them to couples who cannot conceive children on their own BUT there is nothing keeping the woman from actually carrying a child once she is pregnant.

Let me be more clear....... Brandon and I would get donated embryos from a couple who is no longer utilizing theirs and doesn't have any future plans to. They would then implant them into me and I would then carry the child full term and once born would be legally our child with no other parties involved. There is no risk that someone could come and take the baby. ZERO. It might sound crazy or weird but I look at it like this is adoption just at an earlier stage.

Whats the downside? Finding embryos that people actually want to donate is really hard.......We put our name on a list at a local University Hospital clinic that works with embryo donation/adoption but they told us the timeline for a Caucasian child is pretty long and recommended that we try to find out own donor, which seems completely weird.

SO this is the only way I know how to do that. We're asking for people to get the word out.....if you know someone who knows someone who has embryo's that they are not planning on utilizing let them know about embryo adoption because even if they don't help us....maybe they will help another family out there......

In the past we have asked you to help us find our child through knowing someone who was pregnant and considering adoption....now we need you to help us find our child through someone who has experienced the joy of pregnancy and who is looking for a way to help others experience that same joy.