As with most adoption processes, Embryo Adoption through the NEDC requires us to have a home study completed by a licensed agency. No problem right? You would think you could just look in the yellow pages and find an agency to do a home study, and that may work, until you mention the words “embryo adoption.” Most people have never heard of this type of adoption and they are quick to hang up on you. Once we finally found someone willing to work with us, we found out that in our state you must be licensed as a foster parent in order to adopt; i.e., get a home study. Wait, what?!? Oh yeah, and then you have to make sure that agency is willing to share their completed home study with the NEDC.
Oh this just kept getting better. Step one: locate an agency willing to do a home study for embryo adoption. Step two: get them to approve sharing that home study with NEDC. Step three: get licensed as a foster parent, which is a very long process of classes and trainings. Step four: attempt to wait patiently for the home study process to be completed. Everywhere we turned, doors were getting slammed in our faces. Every agency we found would agree to one thing we needed but none of the others. It was so frustrating!! We couldn’t even get our foot in the door of the embryo donation program without a home study.
We tried everything and every option we could, in our own strength. It wasn’t until we gave up and turned to God that doors began to open. God showed up in a major way here. We found an agency willing to do our home study for free (which saved us $3,000-$5,000), and share it with the NEDC, and get it done in two months. (Please note that it has been four months so far).
The home study itself is an extensive process that requires a lot of information, time, and medical visits. Husband and I both had to be medically cleared and have vaccinations. Due to my husband’s childhood illness, we even had to have a specialist write a letter of life expectancy! Imagine walking in and asking your doctor for that one day! We really were not prepared to share our business with the world, yet there we were, having to give six references (which meant we had to tell six people about our infertility). Needless to say, this was a hard process.
In the meantime, all we could do was schedule our initial consult with the NEDC and hope our home study got completed in time. As it turns out, the NEDC was very busy and our appointment wasn’t scheduled until February of 2012.
We began the home study process in October, 2011 and it just got finished, but we are still waiting on it to be signed off on. So since October, it has been a waiting game. As a woman, I want to “do.” It drives me crazy to just sit here, waiting on and relying on something out of my control. I am simply counting down the days until our initial consult with the NEDC.
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