It’s been well over a year since I put my thoughts into formal words to anyone who cared to read.  We all know how the last year has been stranger than all the others before.  So many family and friends kept apart, the loss of loved ones and of course the very political divide we saw cause so much strife in our country.  2020 was a hard year, but I honestly grew friendships, enjoyed my family and watched my boys grow another year older and chose to find joy.  It was a challenging year at times but certainly not my hardest.

2021 feels like maybe things may give us a resemblance of normalcy again.  Despite anyone’s political or mask beliefs, I think everyone can agree that we’d all like to see things go back to “how they were before”.  But just as I was beginning to feel like we were headed towards living life closer to “before”, I got an email. 

It was a message I knew would come in time, that I’d be contacted with an update, but it still took me off guard.  The email was in regard to an adoption we’ll be a part of.

I have to take you back to give you the context of the situation we find ourselves in now. 

Pre-COVID, (because we all base time pre and post COVID now!) I received an invoice for the storage of our 5 remaining embryos.  At that point, the embryos were approximately 2 ½ years old and we had to either 1) pay the $400 -ish annual storage fee, 2) destroy them, 3) donate them to science or 4) adopt them to another family.

For us, there was only 1 option really.  I guess we could have continued to pay to store them, but honestly, we know that we’re done with our IVF journey.  To keep them in the freezer, knowing they would never have the chance to reach their potential, that’s not what we wanted for them.  We want more for these embryo’s just as we did our others before them.  And so, we chose what to us felt like the only real option: Adoption.

Adoption is a beautiful journey and at many different points in our lives, I saw us going down that road to grow our family.  But now we find ourselves on the giving end of an adoption story, a spot I could have never imagined being in.  I would never have envisioned a situation where I would selflessly give my children to be loved and raised by another family.  But here we are, praying for just that.

For over a year, we have been working with an embryo adoption agency.  This particular clinic is 1 of the 2 our reproductive clinic recommended based on their relationship with said clinic and the reputation they have for their work.  We chose this particular clinic knowing that even though we are giving up our legal rights and ownership of the embryo’s, we would still have a say in the family that may choose to adopt them.  We will be given the opportunity to also decide if we would like an open, semi-open or completely closed adoption.  And if we have a 180 change of heart, we could even get our embryo’s back, assuming we hadn’t already given approval to adopt them out.  I did quite a bit of research to land on this clinic and was very happy with the options and “say” we would have over the future of our boys’ fully biological siblings.

On Friday, I received the email that all of the pre-work was processed and the embryo’s had officially been moved to their facility down south.  Our profile would now be made available to couples looking to adopt embryos for their own infertility journey.  If our profile was chosen (which includes photos of our family and beautiful boys, stories of who our boys are and their interests and medical histories of us all) we will receive another email with a link to said couple’s profile.  We will then be given the chance to learn about and potentially communicate with the possible parents to our biological children.  We then get the final “yes” or “no” to this couple’s dream based on the desire of our hearts for the 5 embryos taken from our beings and grown for 5 days in a lab next to our Everson.

The science is both incredible and feels so distant and cold.

I’ve not been through a “regular” adoption so I cannot compare the feelings on either side of the isle, but I would assume there is doubt and fear, anxiety and excitement and most of all love, in the hearts of all people involved.  It starts with an unideal situation but out of it, comes the potential for a beautiful family story, one based on unconditional love and selfless action.  I may not have carried these embryos to full term and felt their kicks in my womb, but I cried many tears over them, prayed many prayers for them, and did everything I could to protect them and give them the best chance at life.   And I still want them to have that life that I prayed for for them.

As we go down this road, I have no idea what it looks like.  I have no idea what couples might be interested in adopting our genetics, but I get excited to think about sharing in someone else’s life dream.  My boys are my everything and my other boys (or girls) could be someone else’s everything as well.

And then of course, the ideas of “no one else can raise my boys like I can” and “I can’t let my biological children be raised by someone else” and of course “these are my boy’s full siblings, I can’t give them up” thoughts creep in too.  These are real thoughts and concerns that cause anxiety and fear, but I remind myself that God has always had a plan for this.  He already knows what happens to us all and has written the end of the story.  We can’t know yet how it reads, but we have to trust that he’s written it for our good, and I do believe that.  

In the end, my fears and anxieties are outweighed by the joy I have in my heart when I think of another couple experiencing the love we have with Lincoln and Everson.  The thought of their sweet giggles and cute smiles gracing the home of another family, loving each other and knowing their mom and dad (biological and adoptive) loved them so very much that they went to extremes to bring them into this world.  As long as all of my children always know how much love there is for them in this strange and crazy and sometimes scary world, I can move forward with this adoption knowing I am completing a part of the chapter written before me.

So now we wait in anticipation, for that next email.  I have no idea how long that might take or what questions we’ll have when we get there.  In the meantime, I’m praying for whatever family picks our embryos, that they would know Christ as their Savior and their intention would include raising these children to know Him as well.  I pray that the embryos will take to them, that a healthy pregnancy will develop and that multiple children for a growing family will come of the adoption. 

And I pray most that they will know Love.