It's official!

It is official.

We are the proud parents of 4 embryos that will hopefully become our children some day!  This whole process actually started more than a year ago, but we are just now sharing the good news openly.

Let me take a step back to May 2013 and my last post.

As I mentioned here, Embryo Adoption (or Embryo Donation... we'll call it EA/ED for short) was something we had just heard about.  There are more than 600,000 cryo-preserved embryos in the United States alone.  These are embryos that were created by couples using In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) to start their families.  Often more embryos are created than are needed for one procedure.  Some couples use these for future children, some donate to science, some sadly discard, and the rest sit there and wait.

EA/ED is a growing alternative to give these embryos a chance at life.  Though EA/ED has been used for years with great success, it is still not well-known, and we are navigating our own way through every step of the process.  We thought traditional adoption was confusing!

Like traditional adoption, there are agencies that are starting to specialize in EA/ED, matching donor couples with recipient couples.  Unfortunately, like traditional adoption, we feel that the profit these companies are making does not match up with the services provided, especially because the actual medical procedure is not included in the price.  Once again, we were on our own.

We researched websites and agencies and decided upon a site called Miracles Waiting.  This is not an agency but a site that allows potential donors and potential recipients to fill out profiles as a way to match up.  I highly recommend this site to any other couples out there who may read this and are considering EA/ED.  Everything about infertility costs money, but Miracles Waiting felt like a good risk to take as the cost was less than $200 to be listed for a year.  In the grand scheme of things, I felt like that price was ok if it didn't lead to a match.  But if it did, perfect!

We signed up, we worked on the profile for forever, and then we posted it.

And nothing.

We did wind up having some great conversations with others, we learned more about EA/ED, we learned more about what we hoped for in a future agreement with a couple.  We learned that some couples want to be considered co-parents with us (which we respectfully declined).  We learned that others wanted us to live in a certain state or we were out (we're out).  We learned that others wanted no contact whatsoever, even from future children (ugh).

I thought we might be at another dead end.  Until my 31st birthday, January 9th 2014!