Below is our soon to be success story, we hope!
To protect the privacy of our anonymous donating couple, I have changed
some little things about our story. Don't worry, you will still get the main wonderful gist. Although embryos are donated all the time around the world, it’s still a small world. You never know who knows who, especially in Utah lol!
The dream:
Ok, so it’ll probably sound weird, but…“I had a
dream!” I had the same dream several times in July/August. It was
always the same, and soo very real. I was sitting in a hospital bed in a
blue gown, holding a baby girl with lots of dark brown hair. I can’t
see her face because it’s as if I’m watching it all from above. But,
Blake and I are crying because we are so happy, and are cuddling our new
baby. I say to Blake, “I can’t believe that we did a fertility treatment again, and
it worked!” He lovingly looked at me, then rubbed her chubby little cheek with his hand. That was it...short and sweet. That's all that was said. I was still crying when I woke up, the dream was so real, wonderful, and very detailed.
In the dream I can even see the facial features of the nurses that are
taking some stuff out of my room (if this treatment works and I have these nurses, I'm really going to be freaked out, ha ha!). I can smell the room and feel the
spirit strongly. The baby is sleeping, so warm and wrapped up in a little yellow,
blue and pink striped blanket. We are in our own little heaven in this moment. I don’t know where I am in the dream, but
I know for sure that I just gave birth to a baby. ME!
I told Blake the next
day that I had the dream and that it was so real, but we thought that
was really weird because it just ISN'T possible! We knew we weren’t
doing IVF again because it just wouldn’t work, and we can’t afford it again anyways.
And we knew we weren’t going to do a sperm donor. So after I had the dream a couple more
times, I was starting to get really annoyed. One night when I couldn’t
sleep, I got on the internet to look at fertility treatments because the
dream was really bothering me. Still not sure why I randomly went to their
specific website, divine intervention I assume, but I found a section on Embryo
Donation/Adoption on a Utah fertility center's website, and about had a heart
attack! We have joked over the years about wishing we could "buy embryos
on the black market”, ha ha, so I was really shocked to see that it is
an actual thing. We had no idea! (It has become more publicly know in the last several years, but has been around since the 90's! Not all fertility clinics offer it, but there are a couple of big donation centers in the country.) I didn’t want to get too
excited because I figured it had to be really expensive or have a really
long waiting list. And we were so sick of WAITING and being in constant
limbo. Nothing is worse than never ending limbo! Didn't want to get our hopes up again, only for them to be
crushed. But I emailed them anyways a few days later.
The phone call:
A couple days after that, a lady we are now working with, called me one unsuspecting Tuesday afternoon while I was watching Netflix. The conversation went
very differently than we both had expected. She initially told me that the waiting list was really long so to maybe call their NV clinic because they had more embryos. For some reason I just wasn't feeling great about that location, although MORE embryos should have been really tempting! So, after we got talking some more about Blake and I, she got excited and said, “oh my gosh, I think I have something for
you!" I was in shock, I don't even
know if I replied to any of what she said actually, ha ha. But she
literally had paperwork on her desk that day about a group of embryos
that were just about ready to be put into the donation pool by a couple who had
completed their family already via IVF. The donating couple had some specifics on who could receive their embryos (this happens sometimes), and it was seeming that they may not find someone soon for these embryos. There were 30 or so
other couples on the waiting list who didn’t meet all or any of the
donating couple’s criteria. So we are SUPER lucky to not be playing the waiting
game, yet again, and lucky to have been the perfect match! So very grateful! To top it all off, this couple has several, YES - THAT'S SEVERAL, remaining frozen embryos! The norm donated is 1-4, tops. So we are realllly blessed! And, the basic info we got on the
couple…hair colors, eye colors, body types, heights, race,
religion, and even college degrees, are all almost the same as ours! Craziness!!
Not that we wouldn’t have been happy if they were total opposites, but
this just makes it so much more special for us! We are so very grateful to this donating
couple, they will NEVER know how
much this means to us. Giving the gift of life and family to those who couldn’t have it otherwise, is so selfless and wonderful! This allows us
to adopt in a sense (a VERY early on adoption), and have the extra pluses of being
able to carry the children and experience the miracles of pregnancy!
Other fun info:
Luckily
everything has gone really smoothly. I already got all of my
pretreatment exams out of the way here in our own state. A wonderful
local psychologist really felt for us and gave us a smoking deal on our
required psych evals, which can be over $1,000.00 easy. Another
wonderful blessing along the way! We could have started
sooner than next month, but the doctor and I wanted me to try to lose another 10 lbs. I'm actually down
almost 35
lbs, YAY, and we're praying like crazy that this works!
Since adoption
laws only apply to babies after they’re born, there aren’t nearly as
many hoops to jump through for this. This makes us really happy, and
much less stressed! We don’t need a home study, there isn’t the
traditional pile of adoption paperwork or the frustrating adoption processes,
no fingerprinting or background checks, no worrying about birth parents possibly changing their minds, and all
of that not so fun and time consuming stuff. This treatment
is way less
intense than IVF too, which is good news for me because I got
hyper-stimulated with IVF :( I was totally and completely miserable, with ovaries the sizes of what
felt like soccer balls. For this treatment, I only have to do shots to prep my
uterus for about 3 weeks, so it won’t be bad at all. The needles are huge though, ha ha. And hopefully we
can get a few children from this great opportunity, if the embryos thaw well, KNOCK ON WOOD! Never thought this was possible! After our failed IVF cycle, it made us
kind of nervous to share anything this time around because we were so heartbroken and hated having people ask what had happened. But here it is, the whole scoop! :) Trying to keep the faith! The doctors say I check out great, so there
shouldn’t be any reason to think it shouldn’t work out. Trying to stay positive, Mom! :) Our “beautiful frozen
babies” or "snowflakes", as we call them, are all high quality as well. So we're hoping for great
results with the help of our fertility doctor and our loving Heavenly Father.
Please
cross your fingers, toes (and anything else that can possibly be
crossed!), in the coming month as we start our FET (Frozen Embryo Transfer
via Embryo Donation) in Utah!
This truly amazing treatment option fell out of the sky into our laps
out of nowhere, when we were least expecting it. We both had sadly ALMOST came to terms with the fact that we were probably never going to
have any children. I was so close to calling it quits, so close. We had prayed about adoption again numerous times, and just
wasn’t
feeling great about it for some reason. And this is why! Heavenly Father hears our
prayers, does things in HIS time and not ours, and knows what is best
for us. My patriarchal blessing says inventions will be of great
use to me in this life, we are hoping that it may be referring to
these treatments! :) It is amazing that they have all of these wonderful technologies and procedures for people like us to grow their families. Though at times we may feel abandoned by the Lord, and as
if we are getting the short end of the stick, we must trust in him and
keep our faith!
