Saturday, June 25, 2011

It's Official!

Today is June 25th, the day our Adoption is final! We are the proud partents of two precious Embryos! It is a big step, but not the end of our journey. All of our paperwork has been sent in with our final payment to the Adoption Agency, now we need to decide what clinic we will be going to.
Choosing a fertility clinic is a fairly big deal to us because that is where we will go to have the embryo transfer done; they are the people that will handle our embryos in the crucial moments when they are thawed and transferred to my womb. Many fertility clinics do not view embryos as having any moral value. It is important to Steve and I that we find a clinic that will uphold the preciousness of the lives of our embryos and honor our decisions regarding their viability.
The next step for us will be to select a clinic that we would like to work with and then send them our embryo records. They will review the records and then let us know if they will accept them or not. When we find the right clinic, we will determine what their costs are, how many visits are necessary and what our travel costs will be. Then we will estimate how long it will take us to get the money together and plan to travel when we are ready. I am really hoping that we can have the transfer done by Christmas!
Your prayers are appreciated!

Thursday, June 16, 2011

3-2-1-Adoption!

The highlight of my day today was spending 10 quiet minutes in my car waiting for someone. It was so nice to just sit there with nothing to do.....and then I got on the phone and started making appointments for the upcoming week! So much to do and so little time! The 25th of June is coming up quickly and I still need Life Insurance! Really, our Dossier for our adoption consists of so many pieces of paper to show that we are responsible adults that can care for a child; such as Life Insurance, Criminal Record Checks, health statements from our Doctor, Financial Statements and even our Drivers Abstracts. Normally I don't have a file containing all this information in one place, so I have to run around and get all the vital copies to send in so our adoption can go through on the 25th of June as planned.
So exciting to think that in a couple of weeks, we will be the proud parents of two precious Embryos!

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Match Making

Suddenly thing are happening quickly and I am falling behind on updates! We have been looking at Embryo profiles this last month; information about the Donating family like physical description, personality and family dynamics. Also, what they are looking for in an adoptive family. We considered very carefully how many embryos we would like to adopt since we would be adopting all the remaining embryos of the profile we choose. We selected a few profiles that fitted that we felt might be a good match and requested more information. We received pictures of siblings and parents and even a letter from one family telling more about themselves. Steve and I both agreed that one family stood out as the one we felt that we should send our profile to; a family with 2 embryos.
We contacted the Adoption Agency and requested that our profile be sent. Our profile consists of a worksheet containing basic information about our family; race, religion, hobbies, physical description, education, income etc.. Our profile also included a personal letter, outlining who we are as a family and our vision to include new family members into our lives and a collage of family pictures including our home and pets.
It was exciting and to ask a family to consider allowing us to adopt their embryos! It was also very scary to ask strangers choose us, knowing full well that they might decline!
After what seemed like weeks, but was only a few days, we heard news. The family accepted our match proposal! We are all so very excited!! I was teary when I phoned Steve with the news! We are currently working on signing a Match Contract and finalizing Adoption papers! The expected completion date of the Adoption is June 25Th.
It has been a long time coming, but in the foreseeable future, we will be the proud parents of two precious Embryos!
I will write more about the next steps after that in a later blog, but just to give you an idea, we will have to do a lot of travelling to the US to approximately 3 clinic visits before we get to bring the babies home.
To be continued....