Why I Chose Embryo Adoption {Guest Post}

Today’s post is a guest post from Samantha.  She’s an embryo donation / adoption consultant and she blogs at BlessedWithInfertility.  Enjoy her post!

 

Hi, I’m Samantha! I am mother to three beautiful daughters, all who came to me through a less conventional method: adoption. Two of my daughters are from a traditional, open adoption, but my last one is the child whose story I am here to share today.   She was added to our family in an even less conventional method:  embryo adoption! My goal is to leave you with some information that will either make you feel comfortable with donating your sweet embryos to a family who would like to give them a chance at life, or inform you on this wonderful, but lesser-known route to build your family!!

What is embryo adoption?

It’s exactly what it sounds like! A couple essentially “adopts” embryos either from their clinic, an agency, or a private couple and uses them in basically an IVF cycle to get pregnant. You are pregnant with your adopted child!

Who is eligible?

Medically speaking, if your RE says that you (or your partner) can carry a pregnancy, than it’s worth looking into! Male-factor infertility, for example, doesn’t affect the female, and can be a good solution for couples who would prefer not to use donor sperm.

What are the costs involved?

Obviously, it varies, but it can be cheaper than traditional adoption or IVF. You’ll have your frozen embryo transfer (FET) costs, the medicine, and the
miscellaneous charges involved with agency fees, shipping costs, attorney fees, etc.  All in all, I did it for less than $7,000, but have seen it done for even less!

Why choose embryo adoption?

There are a lot of reasons, and I will describe my personal journey below, but the basic pros are:

• You get to control the prenatal environment
• There is no risk of a failed adoption
• It’s usually less costly
• You get to experience pregnancy and childbirth (one of the biggest benefits) when otherwise impossible

My story

So now that you have the basics, let me tell you how my husband and I decided on embryo adoption for our third (and hopefully fourth) child.

My oldest daughter’s adoption was very, VERY costly.  Don’t get me wrong- it was worth it.   We love and cherish her and would not trade her for anything in this world! We found out we were infertile on a Wednesday and by Monday were signed up with a very large adoption agency.   We never questioned the path we were on, nor did we need time to grieve biological children. (Some people really need time to adjust to the idea of not having biological children, and I support and honor them 100%.  It can be a very big emotional trauma to overcome!)

Within six weeks, we had our phone call that a baby girl was due and we had been chosen! Just like that – we were parents! The only struggle we had with this situation was the cost. We took out a major loan to cover the expense of this adoption and because our baby came so fast, we didn’t have the luxury of having two incomes to pay it off, since we had decided that I would stay at home with our children.  Please know that we have no regrets!

Our second daughter came to us after two years of emotional turmoil! My husband was in graduate school, so we had much less funds than the first time around.   I did a lot of our own advertising and used a few parent profile websites, but with that came the emotional stress and drama of six failed adoptions.

SIX. FAILED. ADOPTIONS. Can you even imagine? I have never cried so many real, honest-to-goodness, broken-hearted tears in my life as I did over the course of that two year period. We knew that we wanted more children and knew we were willing to do whatever it took to get there, but it was a difficult time!! When we met our second baby though, there was no doubt that she was the one we had been waiting for.   How we love her so!

All this to let you know why we chose an embryo adoption the third time… We knew that we wanted a large family but I could not imagine going through the experiences of failed adoptions again, much less putting my two girls through that.  My oldest was five at this point so I knew I couldn’t tell her one day she was getting another sibling, and the next day she wasn’t. We had also just purchased a house and could not afford a large agency like we did the first time. But again, we knew there was someone missing from the dinner table!

I actually have no idea what I searched to stumble across embryo adoption – honest! I just saw it, and was curious enough to click the link. As I read, I got goosebumps, and felt confirmation that this was how we would be adding to our family. It made perfect sense for us!

I signed up with a matching website, and within 24 hours I met our donor! It’s honestly a huge miracle- from how the pieces fell into place for us, and how easy things were from the first day. My donor and I have so much in common,  so she fits right into our family as our other two girls genetic families do.

For our family, embryo adoption was the perfect solution to completing our family. I would love to be able to share more with you as I complete my last cycle to attempt to add to our family one last time! Find me at Blessedwithinfertility.com where you can catch up on past journal entries and follow this new adventure! Lots of Love!