Mini Update

Hi there friends,

Not a lot to update, but I know some of you have been asking and I don't want to keep leaving you in the dark :)

We received our adoption contract on January 15 and were asked to mail it back, signed and notarized within two weeks.  We, of course we're super excited and got it done much faster than that.

The genetic family also had a portion to sign and notarize so we were just waiting on them, figuring it would take about two weeks.

Two weeks come and go and we're thinking, OK, not a problem.

Three weeks come and go, we're thinking....hmmm that's weird.  So I emailed our agency.  She said she'd email them that day.

Four weeks come and go... now we're getting worried.  I emailed our agency again and braved the question that had been at the back of my mind... "do you think they're getting cold feet?"

Two more days pass and I don't hear anything.  Now that question is no longer at the back of my mind, it's full blown at the front. I'm starting to process the idea of entering the matching phase again and saying goodbye to the 8 little embryos I had come to love.

Some people we're mad/frustrated/disappointed on behalf of us.  "how could they change their minds??" people would ask. And I really appreciate the care that was shown.

 But I can genuinely say that I understood how the genetic family might be feeling. (Again we didn't know anything for sure, we were just SPECULATING. All we knew for sure was that they hadn't sent their contract in yet - our minds were just going to the worst).

Placing your embryos for an adoption is a REALLY big deal.  When you have walked through infertility for years and finally get healthy embryos - you're thrilled that you finally have the opportunity to have children.  You get pregnant with two healthy children and feel like you're finally at the end of your journey in infertility. You never dreamed of having an "excess" in those dark days of fear and uncertainty.  So maybe, eventually, the idea of placing those extra embryos for adoption sounds like a good idea when you're done building your family - but then actually signing them away for good, forever - that's weighty stuff.  So although I was starting to get disappointed, I can empathize with that potential fear.

But finally, on February 11 we heard back from our agency.  Apparently there was a miscommunication with the genetic family.  They didn't realize that the contract was in the email they'd received in January and had deleted it, waiting for the contract to be sent to them.  They were apologetic and said they'd take care of it ASAP.

Whew! We were so relieved.

And officially, in the afternoon on Friday, February 20th our agency received the genetic family's contract and our 8 little snowflakes are OFFICIALLY in our name.

We are so excited to have completed this step of the process! Our agency is now coordinating with the clinic where our embies are frozen to have them sent to our clinic in Pasadena.  We're also making our FINAL, albeit hefty, payment to the agency!

Once our clinic has received the embryos we can start the meds.  At this point we're looking at a late March transfer. We ask for your continued prayers that the embryos would ship safely, that my body would respond to the meds, that the embryos would thaw safely, and for a successful transfer!

More updates to come as we get more info!

(photo from a super hero dress up night at church.  I realized I've accumulated quite a bit of snowflake apparel and figured it made sense to be "Snowflake Girl")

Embryo Adoption Awareness Day

Apparently, today is the first annual Embryo Adoption Awareness Day! I'm pretty new to the EA scene, so I only know because of Sara's blog.  Please pray for Sara - she did her third frozen embryo transfer on the 19th and is in the "two week wait" to find out if she's pregnant. She has a great blog with tons of info and experiences to share. 

It seems that in the last few weeks I've been hearing more and more about EA on the news and in the media.  It could be a case of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon (the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information--often an unfamiliar word or name--and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly.) But I'm praying that it's because EA is truly becoming a more recognized and common adoption method.

Currently, if you don't happen to live near a specific EA agency like we do with Snowflakes being in Anaheim, just 45 minutes away, it's hard to get traditional adoption agencies to do your home study. It's also hard to get grants or financial help from agencies that usually give funds to families trying to adopt. And as far as I know, you don't qualify for the Adoption Tax Credit (but I could be wrong on that one, tax laws are a moving target).

 I think it's great that we can raise awareness to this new, but very real adoption method.  We know that these frozen embryos (an estimated 600,000 in the United States) are real babies with real souls that don't have a chance at life unless someone adopts them. Even if, at the end of all of this, Donny and I don't end up with any pregnancies, we can still rest in the knowledge that we gave these tiny embryos a chance. We'll be giving them their only chance at life in the best way that we can. Any embryos that have been lost by other couples, or that we may lose as we progress into transfers, will be faces we'll one day see in Heaven and I praise God for giving us this opportunity to be a part of his plan for them. 

Snowflake Family Profile & Matching Process

Don't you just love this print from Barking Bird Art on Etsy?

One of the questions people often ask us is, “how are you matched with families?” I heard someone mention once that it’s a little bit like online dating :)

When a genetic family has a set of embryos that they would like to place for adoption, they contact Snowflakes and set up a list of requirements for the adoptive family.  Sometimes genetic families might prefer that the adoptive family be a specific ethnicity or age. They may also request a family of a specific religion or education level.

On the adoptive family side of things, we create a “Family Profile.” It’s a PDF document that we wrote which includes pictures and fun information about us. It includes the basic pertinent information that genetic families are looking for (age, ethnicity, religion, education, occupation, etc.)

Genetic families are sent the profiles for adoptive families that meet their requirements.  If a family sees our profile and decides they like us, then we get to see their information.  We get to know health history (3 generations on both sides), the amount of embryos available for adoption, the quality of the embryos, if there have been successful pregnancies from that set of embryos, and the age of the mother when the eggs were extracted.

As the adoptive family, we get to choose if we accept the match.  If we don’t accept, then they’ll continue showing our profile to other families until there’s a mutual agreement.  This process can take between 1 and 4 months – mostly depending on how picky we as the adoptive family are.

Megan said that our home study should be complete by this time next month, so we're hoping to start the matching process in early December!

The Process

Snowflakes Embryo Adoptions follow the best practice adoption methods. Although this isn’t required by the government, they feel (and we agree) that it’s beneficial for adoptive parents to go through all of the same adoption training and education.  Which means for the last 2 months or so, we’ve been in the THICK of adoption paperwork! Anyone who has ever adopted before knows how much paperwork is involved.

We filled out a basic preliminary application and paid the first round of fees. Once that was received, we we’re accepted into the Snowflake Family Evaluation (SFE) process. Although we’re not doing a traditional “home study” our SFE has many of the same components.  We had to do a FBI fingerprint background check, driving records check, physical exams, request multiple references, send copies of our marriage license & birth certificates and much, much, much more.  Luckily (and those of you who know me in real life can probably attest to this) I kind of have a thing for paperwork. I get a little bit excited about having a list of items to check off and boxes to fill out. I mean, I am an administrative assistant after all. 

We had our first meeting with our social worker Megan yesterday afternoon.  I was a little bit nervous, but mostly just excited to keep moving forward. We met her at the Nightlight offices in Anaheim Hills.  She was super sweet and down to earth and as soon as we started talking all my nervousness melted away.  It's super encouraging that she's also a believer and someone who genuinely cares about getting embryos adopted! The time flew by and our 90 minute meeting was over.

We were able to schedule our other two meetings/interviews and Megan said that we should have a completed home study by this time next month! We'll meet again at their offices for the "individual" meetings on Saturday the 22nd, and then do our home visit on Sunday, the 23rd. 

The home visit has kind of been weighing on me ever since we started the adoption process so I'm happy to finally have an actual deadline. Megan reassured us that she's not going to be looking in closets or under the bed - rather it's just confirming that there are no obvious safety hazards in the home - but still, a home visit just sounds intimidating.  But now I officially have 13 days to do a deep cleaning, paint the kitchen sink, pull out all the weeds in the mostly dead front planter and train the cats to do a welcome song and dance when she arrives. (ok, maybe not all of those things).

Currently we are ALMOST done with the paperwork side of our SFE. We’re still waiting on Donny’s blood test results, we need to watch 3 adoption webinars and write mini-reports, and we have a little more reading to finish - but we are SO CLOSE!

Our Infertility Story

Below is one of the pieces we had to write for our preliminary application. (Warning - some talk about "menstration")

Our infertility story may be a little different than most. When I (Gabby) was younger, I had a very irregular cycle and in 6^th grade I menstruated for 5 weeks straight.  I was put on birth control to regulate my cycle and didn’t have any issues for several years.  In 2006, when I was a junior in High School, I decided to stop taking birth control since I was now regulated and was tired of taking the medication.  From that point on, I didn't get another period.  I went to an OBGYN after a year without a period and was diagnosed with Premature Ovarian Failure.  Because I had been on birth control for almost 5 years they had no way of even knowing when it would have happened.

As a senior in high school – that news was hard to fully grasp.  I remember being sad that I wouldn’t be able to have children, but my family was so loving and supportive, that adoption just automatically became a part of my future.

I actually feel very blessed to have learned so early on.  It has given me a lot of time to process and come to terms with my situation. We didn’t have to go through the disappointment of trying to get pregnant without results.  Early on in our relationship, I told Donny about my condition, so he too, has known for a long time.  I think he struggled with the news more than I did since he was much older when he learned, but has always made it clear that he would rather be with me and not have any children than be with someone else.

We were married in 2010 and by 2013 were starting to think about growing our family.  We went back to my OB who re-did blood work to make sure nothing had changed with my condition.  He confirmed that there was “absolutely no way I’d get pregnant” (his words, not mine) and in some ways, it was reassuring to know that God was closing that door very clearly. We were content with the situation, and knew that it was time to pursue adoption.  We were researching infant domestic adoption when my sister-in-law told me about a friend who was able to successfully have a baby through the Snowflake program.  I looked into it, and watched a video about a Snowflake family where the woman also had Premature Ovarian Failure.  It was amazing to find out that there was a possibility adoption and pregnancy could be part of my story.

In some ways, it’s almost been weirder for me to grasp the concept of me being pregnant than it is it grasp the concept of adoption. I’ve had to readjust a lot of thinking from the past 7 years – but in a very good way! We’re very excited about pursuing  Embryo Adoption and finding out if this is God’s plan for growing our family!

Snowflakes Embryo Adoptions

One afternoon, I (Gabby) was chatting my with sister-in-law Jessica about our adoption plans and she mentioned the Snowflake Embryo Adoption Program.  A friend of hers had been successful and said it wasn’t as expensive as you might think.  At that point, I’d heard a little bit about embryo adoption, but it felt pretty “sci-fi” to me, so I hadn’t given it much thought.  I actually can’t remember now how long it ruminated in my mind before I started doing serious research, but I think it was around maybe the Fall/Spring of 2014…

Just a side note here – I LOVE doing research.  I’m one of those people who sees a cute dog on the street, finds out what breed it is, and then spend hours reading about it’s history, genetics, pre-dispositions to diseases, whether or not it sheds annually or bi-annually and whether it’s a good family dog or not. (Don’t believe me? When you have time, ask me about Australian Shepherds some day – but make sure you have time, because I’ll have a lot to tell you).

So I started researching Embryo Adoption and everything just started to click.  It’s almost half the price of domestic adoption, is a faster process, and me, as the adoptive mother gets to be pregnant and start bonding with my child 9 months earlier!

Please visit both of these websites for more accurate explanations of everything I’m about to say.  I’m in no way an expert – I just do a lot of reading.

Snowflake Embryo Adoptions (our adoption agency which is under the greater umbrella of Nightlight Christian Adoptions)

Embryo Adoption Awareness Center

So here’s the basics… because of a somewhat growing infertility epidemic, in vitro fertilization is on the rise.  When a family is struggling to get pregnant, they often turn to in vitro fertilization and end up creating anywhere between 3 and 15 embryos.  Hopefully, a family will be able to get pregnant using these embryos – but when they are done building their families – there are often embryos left over.

Families have a few different options for these remaining, unused embryos (which are not recognized as human lives by the government - rather “property”). These families can freeze them indefinitely (upwards of $600 a year), donate them to science (for stem cell research), destroy them, or, place them for adoption. Currently, it is estimated that there are around 600,000 frozen embryos in the United States today. Snowflakes Embryo Adoptions does not advocate for the creation of more embryos and they actually say that they would love to put themselves out of business by getting all of those embryos adopted!

Because our infertility stems from a problem with my ovaries, not my uterus, we’re good candidates for embryo adoption.  When we are matched with a set of embryos, they will be shipped (FedEx actually…yeah, totally crazy) to my fertility clinic, thawed and transferred into me.  The transfer is a simple, out-patient procedure, and I can take a pregnancy test two weeks after the transfer to see if the embryo(s) implanted into my uterus!

Because embryo adoption isn’t currently recognized by the government as an actual “adoption” rather a “transfer of property,” the adoption does not need to be finalized, we’re considered the birth parents, and our names will be listed on the birth certificate. In fact, unless we choose to tell the hospital staff, no one would even know that the child(ren) I’m delivering are my adopted child(ren) not my genetic children!

Like I said… pretty sci-fi.

This 3 minute news clip sums it up well since I probably rambled quite a bit...

http://www.embryoadoption.org/videos/vp_Miracle_Baby.cfm