Confirmation

No more reservations or nerves! We're so happy with our decision to move forward with this genetic family. A more detailed update is in the video below. :)

Matched :)

We're officially matched! 

We received notification that we were selected by a genetic family this past Friday. We have since been looking through their profile and thinking everything through before giving our approval to move forward. It has been a very interesting experience. We have never had the ball in our court before. We have just seen what God has laid out in front of us, and have moved forward with what has made sense, trusting that He was leading us through every decision. But getting someone else's profile, looking through their medical history, knowing that we actually had the option of saying no and moving on to a different family...it was surprisingly very intimidating. Is this the family for us? Will we get along well? What if another family would be a better fit? How are we supposed to know based on a couple pages of info and pictures??

We got a bit overwhelmed by the element of choice, and for a couple days I think it distracted us from the whole point of this. So here are the basics- We want to be parents, and to come alongside another family who wants their embryos to have a chance at life. That's it. All of the other minor details just don't matter in light of that. :)

Let's refer to the family as the R's for now. :) I obviously have to protect their privacy, so I will have to be somewhat vague. I can tell you that they are a white, Christian family who lives on the east coast. They have five embryos which are all at the day 6 blastocyst stage (if you're not familiar with the IVF lingo, that just means that they are developing right on track). The family is very interested in getting to know us and keeping in touch through whatever communication means we are comfortable with.

So what's next? Well the agency was going to start sending the documents to Dr. Q's office this week. Next week we'll get the contract signed. Then the agency will coordinate shipping of the embryos from the R's clinic to Dr. Q's office. I'm sure that after contracts are signed, we will start communication with the R's directly, so I will keep you posted. :) It's been a slower start than I expected, but we're moving forward!

Nothing Yet

Still no word from our agency...

Embryo Adoption Profile Book

I received confirmation from our agency that our profile is currently being viewed by a genetic family! :) We don't know a single thing about this family, but I'm still happy to be considered by them. So yeah...hopefully we'll hear in the next few days whether or not they want to move forward with us.

In case you were wondering, we did slightly adjust our original adoption profile book when we switched to embryo adoption. Most of the main pages contain the same content, but I had to change the language in our introduction and closing pages to suit a genetic family instead of a birth family. And while I was at it, I updated some pictures as well. :) If you'd like to see what the genetic family is looking at, you can click here. :)

Embryo Adoption FAQs

Below is a quick update, as well as the answers to some of the questions that I've been asked since we made our decision to switch to embryo adoption. I hope that it helps clarify things for you guys. Enjoy! :)

Addendum complete!

I know it's been way too long since I've updated. I'm sorry! There hasn't been much to share, and Ryan and I have been in and out of town a few times so life has been kind of busy. But the latest and greatest is that our home study addendum has finally been completed! :) Last year when we did our home study, we were approved to be adoptive parents via domestic infant adoption. Although it was very easy to switch from DIA to the Snowflakes program, we still needed to meet with our social worker so that she could make an official addendum to our homestudy to include embryo adoption. That's what we've been waiting on over the last few weeks. Now we can move on to the matching process! :)

So what will happen from here is similar to the domestic infant matching process, only it seems we have a little more give and take. Last I heard, there were 75 genetic families waiting for adopting families in our agency's Snowflakes program. Each of them have established criteria for prospective adopting families, and I believe that they put together a profile book about themselves with pictures just like we did. The agency will show us one family at a time, we both get to look through each other's profiles. If we all feel that it is a good match, we will sign the contract, and the agency will coordinate shipping of the embryos from their clinic to Dr. Q's. I hope to have more info and contact with our agency next week, so I'll be sure to keep you posted now that things are actually moving forward. :)

A Snowflake Story :)

One really cool thing about being a part of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, is that this is the agency that actually pioneered embryo adoption. :) I'm really thankful that we decided to go with them last summer, because it allowed us to switch to embryo adoption really easily when not all agencies provide this service. Anyway, I came across the video below about two families who went through the Snowflake program at Nightlight. I really think it shows how embryo adoption allows two families to help one another in their respective predicaments. It is a beautiful blessing to both the donating family and the adopting family, and I am so excited to be a part of it! :)