FInally got to choose a Donor Family!

On Friday 2/11/12, our social worker informed us that she was going out of town for a week, but that on Monday she would have her office send out our home study. I was paranoid because I did not trust her office to do this. Well, on Monday, the NEDC had not received our home study and I almost called our social worker’s office, but I figured I would give them time. Well, late Tuesday the NEDC still had not received our study so I finally called our social worker’s office and it turns out that 1) the girl had tried to email the study but the address wouldn’t work (yet she never called me for an updated one) and 2) our worker never gave her office the fax number to send the study to (which I specifically gave her on that previous Friday) So it appeared that my paranoia was warranted! L So I gave the girl the correct information and TA DA! The NEDC received my study that day!! Praise the Lord!

            After all that, I find out that Bethany Services (the agency who reviews home studies for the NEDC) cannot review our study until they receive a check from us (they cannot take credit cards), but they could not tell me this until they received out study (What?) It seems to me like we could have sent in the money beforehand….well, God is so big and so good because He has a special lady working with us at Bethany who is reviewing our study and she agreed to go ahead and review our study as long as we got the check in the mail that day.

            She got our study reviewed and approved by that Friday, the 17^th. That same day, the program coordinator was able to get us the profiles of all the donated embryo’s that were available!!!!!!!! OMGoodness!!! We got them on a Friday, and couldn’t send our choices until Monday. And of course I received the files by email when Husband wasn’t home, so I couldn’t even look at them until he got home….that felt like such a long time ;)

            After going through the files we picked some families that we were interested in, and wanted more genetic info on. The plan was to send these in on Monday, and then we got an email that said another family was looking at them too and that the coordinator would give preference based on who got their choices in first (race anyone?) I intended to send the email Sunday so that the coordinator would get them first thing Monday morning, but of course I somehow forgot and I was on the way to the dentist when I remembered!! :o So there we were, in the car on the way to the dentist, going through all the family profiles again on my phone (thank you iPhone) trying to find our picks so that I could email them over the phone!

We managed to find them and email them via iPhone to the program coordinator. She got us the extended genetic history on the families we were interested in, but of course she ended the email with the message that she would be out of the office the next day!!! We narrowed it down to a #1 pick and a “back up donor” incase the 1^st choice didn’t survive the thaw. Monday night 2/20/2012, we emailed our FINAL selection to the coordinator so that she would receive it when she returned to the office.

            Of course it was not that simple; we received a reply email that Wednesday 2/22/12 saying that they had forgotten to mention that one of our choices would not allow for mixing with other families, meaning they could not be our back up. This threw a wrench in the whole plan and we had to revisit all of the profiles again (would this ever be done?) Finally, it came down to us choosing our original 1^st choice as our one and only shot; which is okay because they have 12 embryos!! This means that we can go back for subsequent transfers to have biological siblings for our children! (If any of this seems SyFy, and you have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask).

            So as of today, 2/22/12, we have officially chosen our babies (embryos) and we have 12 children waiting to be born! Husband discovered this makes me a (dodecagon mom) Also, we are officially scheduled to receive a transfer of these embryos in May!!! J J The next step is to begin a medication regime that includes pills and shots L

Embryo Adoption Consult

This past Monday, 2/8/12, my husband and I went to TN to meet with Dr. Keenan and his team about our desire to adopt embryos. One of the main things they do at this first visit is “medically clear” the woman. This involves ultrasounds, some procedure where they check the womb, and various other types of exams where they are taking pictures of the ovaries and uterus, while also measuring the endometrium lining and checking for any scarring or cysts.

Dr. Keenan was great and made the whole process comfortable, although some of the exams themselves hurt. One of the hardest things was going into this with a full bladder! I drank 36oz of water, and apparently my little bladder was too full! Unfortunately, they did not do the procedures first, so I had to sit through my meeting with the Doctor with that painfully full bladder!  :o

The great news is that I AM MEDICALLY CLEARED!! And the Estrogen I have been taking gave me a great thickness to my uterine lining! We then met with the embryologist who explained the process of freezing and thawing embryos, the stages and different types, and the process of choosing the ones we want. There was sooo much information! But it is all so very fascinating! The NEDC has had over 400 successful births through Embryo Adoption J

The not so great news was that they still had not received our home study. I was really hoping they would, however, we cannot get into a transfer cycle until May anyways, so there really is not a rush (can’t believe I just wrote that!).

We did find out that we will not see photos of the donating family (because we are doing a closed adoption), but we do get to know their physical characteristics and bio. So once they receive our home study, we can begin the process of matching! We left the appointment with a lot of information and a lot of prescriptions. I was told to take Prometrium with my Estrogen to start a period, but it has not started yet. They also had me begin to take prenatal vitamins, which is so exciting to me just because it has to do with pregnancy J Between the Estrogen, Prometrium, and prenatal vitamins, I am nauseated, extremely tired, and irritable. Not so fun, even worse for my DH. I just tell him to remember that this is all for our future baby(ies)!

I was also assigned to find a fertility clinic to “monitor” me before and after our embryo transfer. The problem is many clinics will not see you after you have achieved pregnancy. I did find some, but they have mixed reviews. Also, most of it is self-pay so it will be expensive L

So here I am on Friday, preparing to take my midterms (yes already!) and making doctors’ appointments and calling pharmacies, etc…and I cannot stop feeling like May is so far away. I know that it really isn’t, but I am just so excited!!

So it’s Wednesday, and did I mention that I am a full time student in my last semester of college?

 I am currently trying to cram a weeks’ worth of school work (3 classes) into 4 days, while trying to ignore the fact that my embryo transfer consult appointment is in 5 days, 4 if you only count the days leading up to it! I am so excited that it is hard to focus on much else! My mind keeps racing ahead to the appointment and beyond, planning out the moths to come and what they will hold for our family.

No word on our home study yet. We know it has been approved by our worker and her boss, but we are still waiting on that 3^rd signature from the Heavens (okay, just somewhere high up in the government I guess). As it turns out, our agency just began using some new electronic system for home study reviews, instead of sending hard copies. And guess what? It stopped working before ours could be sent for review, and who knows when they will get the system working properly?

I once read that when we ask God to show us our circumstances through His eyes, our whole outlook will change. The situation will be the same, but we will see it differently. I am learning to do that with our home study process. I am annoyed that it has not been full reviewed yet and sent to the NEDC, however, God is showing me that this is a chance for me to just trust Him. That He has the timing worked out perfectly for us, and that I can relax and just wait on Him.

It’s kind of funny how God is always right. He always will be several (hundred) steps ahead of me, and as hard as it is for me to grasp, He does know better than me. God has over and over again proved Himself trustworthy to me…and every day I still have to make a conscious decision to let go, and let God.

Ahh Estrogen….what will this be like?

So here it is January 27^th, and we are still waiting for word that our home study was approved. Once it is approved by the agency, it then has to be sent to the NEDC and to Bethany Christian Services (who then reviews it for the NEDC). We are hoping that this occurs before our initial consult.

Now I must tell you that when I am anxiously awaiting some event in the future, I am the type of person who looks to small events to mark the passing time. One such even just occurred. I just began a regimen of Estrogen that I must take up until my appointment date in February. I have been taking it for three days now, and so far I have not noticed any side effects. I was really thinking that extra estrogen may make me irritable or moody…

With the NEDC you only have two appointments with them; your initial extensive consult and then the actual transfer at a later date. I am taking the estrogen because at my initial consult, they will actually perform a “mock transfer” and they want to see how my body responds to the estrogen. The estrogen is meant to thicken my endometrium lining and they want to see how much of the estrogen I will need to take before the actual transfer. At this appointment, they will also perform a balloon ultrasound type thing to check my womb and medically clear me.

This is also the day that we will meet with the financial people, the nurse, and the program coordinator. If I am medically cleared, they will then give me a bigger regimen of drugs to take (of which I am not sure). If my home study has been received and approved, we will also begin the process of picking our donating family.

I don’t really know a whole lot of details at the moment. I am hoping that at our appointment we will get all of the details we are missing.

And in the Beginning There Was….A Home Study

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.

Too Much.....Too Soon

Sometimes I wish that we hadn’t found out about our infertility so early in our marriage. It created a dark cloud that hung over us, tainting everything; sucking the joy out of life. My husband and I were newly walking in our relationship with God and with each other; we were so unprepared to deal with this blow. Instead of turning to God with our pain and confusion, my husband got angry and I pretended it wasn’t an issue. I was 19 and my husband was 23 so of course every one we knew was having babies, and we were supposed to be happy for them. We were not ready to share our struggle, so we suffered in silence; oohing and ahhing over their newborn miracles while dying inside and crying at home.

 Just thinking back to that time now, we were so young! And yet so burdened. Sometimes it was so hard to reconcile a loving God with this fate. Neither one of us knew much truth about God. Fast forward almost seven years and you will find us today, trying our best to trust God and let go of the wheel. We have been holding on so tightly for so long, it is almost heady to let go…God is showing us so much along this journey. He is showing us Himself, who He really is, and He is showing us our life through His eyes. We have learned that just because something seems tragic in the worlds eyes, doesn’t mean God can’t make it into something beautiful. All good things come from Heaven and I know that God is working all things for our good. We are learning that we are “blessed with infertility” (a phrase borrowed from a fellow blogger).

If not for infertility, we would not be the people that we are today. Our marriage would not be as solid as it is, and we would not know God like we do now. The Bible tells us that God knew us before we were born, that He formed us in the womb (Psalms 139); to me, this means that God had our children picked out before we were even born, and we will get those children through embryo adoption. We are honored to give any of those little baby embryos a chance at life!