This is from Marybeth :
Ok, So I’m no blogger but wanted to share how God has answered our prayers about having a family! It was over five years ago that John and I started trying to expand our family. After 1 – 1 ½ years it was obvious that we had some issues. Come to find out we both had issues. If it had just been John or just me we could have probably gotten pregnant. However, put us together and it’s a no go. We dabbled in fertility but it was too much stress on our marriage! My husband is a lot more important to me than having a biological child.
Finding out we could not conceive has been the toughest time in our marriage! I have met a lot of people who have the desire and passion to adopt. I was not one of those! I wanted to see John and myself in our little one. After a year of God working in my life I was ready and excited to look into adoption. (John was always ready to adopt.) We went and took an adoption class at Bethany Christian Services. We went with the desire to find out about Domestic adoption.
However, God had something else in mind for us :) We received a little brochure about a new type of adoption called embryo adoption. I know, you’ve probably never heard of it. Neither had we! This is where couples do in vitro and instead of destroying or donating their embryos to research, they are now adopting them out to couples who can’t conceive on their own.
John and I were excited about this possibility. After much prayer and talking to family it was clear this was the path that God had chosen for us. We got busy working on our home study and adoption paperwork as well as getting my body cleared for the adoption. (They want to make sure that the recipient’s body will accept the embryos, that way they are not wasted.) This was a super fast process compared to domestic/international adoptions. We set up an appointment in May with the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville, were able to go to our appointment with them in early June (2 months earlier than we were supposed to go), were cleared for adoption by the fall, and went to Knoxville to have our transfer on January 23rd. We found out less than two weeks later that we were pregnant! Shortly after that John and I were delighted to find out we are having twins. Unlike John, who is a twin himself, I have never wanted twins. However, after all we went through with the shots and doctor visits we were thrilled. And it’s buy one get one free J! Ask us in a year or so and we’ll let you know if we are still thrilled or ready to pull out our hair!
Here are just a couple of the ways in which God was preparing us and taking care of us without us realizing it.
- In Florida, I could have had my choice schools. By the time we moved to TN 2 summers ago and got settled in, there was only one temporary position available in the whole school district…and it was for Middle School. I have never wanted to teach Middle School! However, after much prayer and talking with John and friends I decided that this is where God was leading me. I loved it!!! It was only supposed to last till November but ended up lasting the whole school year. But again, it was only temporary so I was looking for a new job last summer. Due to a frustrating, huge mix up at the county office, I was only sent to one interview the whole summer. They ended up hiring the interim teacher that was there the previous year. So, I started out this year without a job. However, God again provided. I had another temporary job (second grade) that started at the end of August and went through December. God sure knows what he’s doing J This was perfect timing for all of my trips to the doctor. I would not have been able to teach full time and go to Knoxville for the transfer and Little Rock for all my appointments before and after we became pregnant. (Little Rock doctors are a lot cheaper than Memphis doctors!) After our last trip to Little Rock I received a phone call from my Assistant Principal with a job offer. Again, God is good! I go to work every day and tutor 2nd-5th graders. There is no take home, no stress, and no come early and stay late. It is exactly what I needed for my high risk pregnancy!
- Almost two years ago we felt like God was sending us to Memphis. Why Memphis?! However, we felt like that is where God was leading us with John’s work. Since then we have seen many reasons for us moving. The 3 main ones are: Kandice moved with us and found a wonderful husband!!! God ended moving all my family members (Douglass’) from Florida to Arkansas within the year. They now live 1 ½-2 ½ hours away. (I still do miss my in-laws!) And maybe most importantly, there are only two places in the whole United States that do embryo adoption. One is in California and the other is in Knoxville, TN. We probably would have never heard of embryo adoption in FL.
Here is some extra information we thought you might want to know about the embryo adoption process.
- When we went to Knoxville there is a wall in one of the offices filled with file folders. We estimated that 5% of the folders were blue and 95% were yellow. The 5% are couples who want to adopt. The 95% are embryos just waiting to be adopted!
- This process is a whole lot faster and cheaper than regular adoption. However, it can be a little nerve racking and emotional because you can spend a lot of money and never get pregnant. The NEDC puts in 3 embryos 3 times. After that if you don’t get pregnant you are out of luck. If we went all three times we would have spent almost as much as a domestic adoption with nothing to show from it. However, we felt like this is where God was leading us, so we went for it!
- We adopted 12 embryos. They thawed 4 and one didn’t make the thawing process. 3 were implanted and 2 survived. A couple years down the road we can have another transfer and have biological siblings to our other kids. Pretty neat!
- The embryo donors had to approve of us and we chose which embryos we wanted to adopt. The first embryo profile they sent us was pretty discouraging. The NEDC is supposed to find embryos that match your looks and who you are as a person. The first embryos were our complete opposites. We realized just how hard it was going to be finding the right match for us. We shared our frustrations with God that night and prayed that He would make it abundantly clear which embryos were for us. The next day we received the profile for the embryos that would one day become our babies. It was extremely obvious that they were perfect for us! The embryo donors interests were the same, similar jobs, same love for sports, similar looks (we think), and most importantly, John and the donor dad share the same favorite movie; Forrest Gump :)
Just some extra fun tidbits of information:
- I ran into a former Chick-fil-A employee of mine at John’s CFA conference in Texas. He had heard about us being pregnant, so we told him about our embryo adoption. He got the funniest look on his face and asked me if I remembered a debate we had had probably 9 years earlier. Me and my bad memory had not, of course. We had had a debate about in vitro and whether or not they were babies at the point of conception. I adamantly replied that they were. He then asked me if the embryos were lying on the table in front of us would I put them into my body, since I thought they were babies. I told him of course I would. It’s neat how 9 years later I did exactly what I said I would do. I took someone else’s embryos and put them in my body :)
- Myself and the babies are doing well! I am finally not as nauseas, tired and grumpy; much to John’s delight! I just had a sonogram on Tuesday and the babies are doing great. Baby B moves but baby A is all over the place! We might have a hyper kid on our hands! He (we don’t know the sex) was wiggling, kicking his feet, and throwing his arms up in the air. It took the nurse three attempts to get a heartbeat before he would settle down enough to get it.
- Another fun thing about this type of pregnancies is that we have had 5 ultrasounds at 12 weeks. We have had lots of bonding time with our babies!
I think that’s it. It’s been quite a hard, emotional, exciting journey that God has sent us on! Feel free to let us know if you would like more information on embryo adoption or have any questions. We are praying that God will use us to help get the word out about embryo adoption. We would love to see part of those embryos waiting to be adopted become answered prayers for hopeful parents. Also, we are hoping that our story will inform people that there are more options for their left over embryos besides destroying them. We would love your prayers. We still have 5-6 months to go and it is a high risk pregnancy! Be sure to follow us on Facebook to see our journey and eventually our kids :)
