The Story Of Our Embryo Adoption

The Story Our Embryo Adoption- We call our embryo baby Penguins 

Dear my Beloved baby Penguins, l never got meet you. I never heard your heart beat, I never saw an ultrasound of you, or even a picture of you as an embryo. Although I had no genetic connection to you, I still feel like your mommy. I have been your mommy since May 9, 2013 when I got the phone call from our embryo adoption agency that we had been picked to be the parents of eight embryos. I wanted to do my very best to give you all the best chance at life that you could. It was a one year and half battle to do my best for you, but in then end sadly we lost all eight of you. Just know, Penguins, that Mommy loves you a lot and wishes she could have met you in person.

                Let me start from the being how we got started on embryo adoption. In April 2012, I met a friend from high school for coffee and she told me that she and her husband were doing embryo adoption. They had a biological son that was born with a genetic disorder and were doing embryo adoption to have another child. She told me how excited she was about it and how she was excited that she could carry their adoption child. I thought to myself that sounded weird but ok. She had told me that they had just signed up with a Christian Embryo Adoption agency and was waiting to get matched. At the time I was about to start to do IUI, and had no idea that we would try twice and be unsuccessful both times.

                After our last failed IUI, we moved on to look at IVF. I was talking to my friend about us doing IVF, and she told me what a great gift it would be if we donated any embryo we had leftover to another family. She had told us a little bit about their donor family and why the family picked them. At that time we were told I had unexplained infertility so we thought IVF would work. But just as we were about to start the medication for IVF, my doctor tested my egg quality and said that we only had a 5% chance of a pregnancy with IVF. After that, I called my friend and told her what the doctor had told us. She talk to us again about embryo adoption. We thought about it and I called a national number for embryo adoption I found online. The guy I talked to gave us the name and number of a Christian Embryo Adoption Agency in Washington State, where we lived.  I called the agency on Dec 3 2012.  After getting off the phone I was so excited and we talked about it. We decided this was our best way to have a child. We could still go through with the pregnancy and we knew from having a home daycare that genetics did not matter because we loved the daycare kids as we would love our own children.

In January 2013 we had our home study done to do embryo adoption. Our home study took some time to get done because my fingerprints for the FBI background  check were just not readable, so we had to do my fingerprints three times. We finally got it figured out.  When our social work came to do our home visit it was kind of funny because with the home daycare we have to have safety lock on all the cupboards and drawers, and we have to have a fire extinguisher and a fire escape plan that is posted. This all stuff that she usually talk to couples about but we already had it all because of the daycare. I think we were one of the first families that had it all done ahead of time.

After our home study, we were set to get matched. We met with Maria at our embryo adoption agency at the end of April. She greeted us with words we thought we would not hear for at least four more month: “Great news! I mailed off your profile book this morning to a family.”  Daddy (Sean) and I look at each other and was like WHAT! That was fast.

We were told by the clinic where we were going to do IVF with that we could not do our embryo transfer there because they did not except embryos from other clinic and they did not have an embryo adoption program at the time. So Little Penguins, we chose to do our transfer at the clinic that your mommy and daddy first used and you were there just waiting for us on ice. That is how you got the name the “penguins”: because you were chilling on ice.

The day I got the phone call that we were picked I will never forget in a million years. I was baking muffins to give to the moms of my daycare kids as a thank you for being so understand and supportive us that year. We had to close the day care often because of  the IUI and IVF appointments, and I know that there were more appointments and days I would have to be closed while doing the embryo adoption stuff.  As I was taking heart shape muffins out of the oven my phone rang. It was Maria saying she had great news: the family had picked us. They had eight embryos for us and had had one son from the embryos. She told us more about the family too. I called Daddy (Sean) to tell him the great news right way. He was excited too.

I will also never forget the day I got the family profile. I had just got home from Western Washington from my doctor appointment. I was so excited that I was in the same building that you were in. But I got home the family profile was waiting for me. Daddy was not at the doctor appointment with me at the clinic because he had to work, so he gotten the mail that day and had the picture of the son laying out for me to see. That picture was the first thing I saw after my four hour drive home. I thought Daddy was playing a trick on me and had laid out a old picture of my oldest nephew Bryce. As I look at the picture closer I realized that Bryce never had a sweatshirt that the boy in the picture was wearing. The boy in the picture was not Bryce but the son of our donor family: your full brother. I looked at the picture of him around age two and noticed that the picture look a lot like one of me at the same age. Thats when I just knew that you, little penguins, were meant to be our babies. We had already decide that we going to take whatever embryo we were given. But after see the family profile there was nothing to think about.

We were ready to schedule our first transfer for the first day available. After all, that July would mark six years of trying to add a child to our family. We got August 7 as our transfer date. I thought that is a great date it is a month after our wedding anniversary.  So August 7, 2013 was our big day to get pregnant. When we showed up at the clinic they told us that they thawed out 4 of you even though we asked for two to thawed.  We stayed at my best friend house the night before and a few days after so that I could rest and two of you could have a  good chance at implanting. I was so excited and thought no matter what, I’m pregnant with twin. I really, really, really, wanted twins. Then August 16 was the day of the blood test. We had to drive down to the Tri-Cities to do the blood test because we did not really know if there was any place in Sunnyside beside the hospital to do it. We also knew that the hospital charged three time as much so we did not want to go there, so we went to the Tri-Cities. We hung around the Tri-Cities because we were going to see friend and had a family reunion to go to later that day. We went to brunch, then we went to the mall and walked around. We thought about seeing a movie but we did not want to miss the phone call telling us we were pregnant.  The friend we were going to see was not off work yet, so we went to a park and were going to walk around when my phone rang. The nurse start off by saying “I’m so sorry but you are not pregnant”.  As soon as she said that I gave daddy (Sean) a thumbs down.  He started crying right way.   After calling family and e-mailing Maria at the embryo adoption agency, I went in the bathroom at the park and ripped of the estrogen patches that I had on to help you grow.

We know right away we need to try again. We were all set but the end of September we found out I need to get my gallbladder out so we had to wait a few months. We set up for a December 12, 2013 transfer. We were so sure, little penguins that this was the transfer that was going to work. We would get our twin penguins, we just knew it.  We had heard from people that their first transfer failed but their second one took and they got twins. We just knew this the time. So we went for the transfer once again. We were hoping they would thaw out two but they thawed out four again. One of the embryos did not make the thaw and two did and they got transferred in to me and the one was left they said it was a compacting and they were questioning it.  Part of me wanted to just ask them to transfer all three of you that were left but I thought to myself, “No; if they all take, a triplet pregnancy would be hard.” That day we drive back to Sunnyside. Daddy had to work the next day and the clinic told us it was ok to drive the four hours home, so we did. Then I got the most surprising phone call from the clinic: our last little penguin that they questioned had grown to a full blastocyst and they wanted to know if we wanted to re-freeze it, and we said yes. We thought “wow, we have one fighter on our hands.” Then December 23, 2013 was the big day for the blood test. We went down to the Tri-cities again. Then I don’t remember what we did after that but we went to a friend’s place to have dinner with them. That is when we got the phone call. I made Daddy (Sean) answer because the last time I answered the phone the test was negative so I thought this time if he answer the phone the test would be positive. But I was wrong; it was negative once again. This time the first person I called was Maria at our embryo adoption agency. We said a prayer for our penguins that were lost.  At that point I did not know if I could take another transfer. My hips hurt so bad from the shots of the first two transfers, how could I do a third transfer?

Ok, my last little penguin, you were the only one left. I knew that since you were still alive that you were a fighter and you were going to be my stubborn one. We were going to butt heads in your toddler days and Daddy and you would butt heads in your teenage days. And we would love you anyway because you are our child. I was sure you were a red head little boy because red heads are very stubborn. Your transfer date would be just over thirteen months after you were put back on ice, and we had overcome all the obstacles people face on this journey. We were sure there would be no more obstacles. We are the champions and we would win and have one healthy baby in our arms. Unfortunately, we were so wrong. See Penguin, there this man: his name is Murphy and he has a law: If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. My grandpa Fred was a big fan of Murphy and his law and I heard about this law many times growing up.  So now we have obstacles that even made the doctors are puzzled. 

Our last obstacle began in January 2014. Maria at our embryo adoption agency and I talked and we decided that since the clinic you were at did not do ultrasound for transfers that it would be best to move you to a clinic that did, and Daddy (Sean) agreed. So on January 21, 2014, I met with our new doctor, and went through everything to become a patient there. Then in March I called to see what we needed to do to be able to do a July transfer. They want me to re-do some yearly tests because it been a year since doing them. One test they had me do was a CMV test. CMV is a common virus that most people get in childhood, and the virus only active once but can stay active for 6 months. So in March I tested positive for the virus. We were told not to worry because we still had time until July. Then in May I tested positive again. I began to worry because I had to be on medication for almost two months before the transfer, so July transfer was postponed. I retested in July and the virus was still there so the September transfer that we so hopeful was now off. Our new plan was to retest in October and go from there because the virus is only active for 6 months and it should be gone by then. But in life, plans do not always work out. In the end of August I found out against all the odds in the world that I had gotten pregnant naturally: with triplets. We had been told we would never get pregnant on our own, let alone get pregnant with triplets. That had the doctor stumped. Sadly your three sisters (by adoption) hearts stopped beating at almost eight weeks. We did tests that confirmed they had chromosome disorders and that’s how we knew they were girls. But because I was pregnant and the CMV test kept coming up positive for CMV, my OB sent me to a specialist. He ran a detailed test that showed that the CMV had never been active and most likely it was in childhood that I had had CMV. There the other obstacle that the doctor was just stumped on: why did I test positive for CMV during a general test but with the detailed one I test negative?

We thought after the miscarriage we were all set to go forward. I thought that triplets’ purpose was to clear up the CMV and to prove that I can get pregnant: that is why we lost them so early. We are getting already to do the last transfer when we found out that, because of the triplets, I had scar tissue and would need surgery on my uterus to be able to do the transfer.  After I got through the surgery, everything was great and we are set to start medication for the last transfer.

I responded great to the medication to get my body ready for transfer just like I did the other two times. We saw the doctor on January 21, 2015: one year to the day of my first appointment at that clinic. The doctor checked my lining to make sure everything was good. So January 29^th was set as the day of transfer in Seattle. We drove over the night and stayed at my parents’ house which is 45 minutes away from the clinic.  Dear Penguin, this part is just heart breaking. As we walked into the building that houses the clinic, the clinic called. I thought “This can’t be good.” They told us that you didn’t survive the thaw so there would be no transfer after all. And you were our stubborn one. Daddy (Sean) started to cry as soon as I told him the transfer was off and you did not survive. I’m so sorry. I tried to fight so hard for you and I did everything in my power I could do. 

We have been given the option by the agency to rematch with embryo but at this time we are not planning it. I am not sure if I have any more fight in me after the past year. We are, however trying to pursue private domestic adoption.  If anyone were to ask us if they should try embryo adoption, we would tell them yes, even with the outcomes that we had. We believe that every embryo deserves a chance at life and we did our very best to give that to you eight, and we love you. Because of you eight, I run an embryo adoption/donation support group on Facebook.  

So you eight penguins, I would like to ask you to please be my guardian angels and watch over me and Daddy. I sure hope those triplets are our guardian angels too. I like to think I have 11 angel babies watching over me.  I love you all and I’m so thankful to the family that let us adopt you.