It was about this time last year...

...that our hearts were opening up for embryo adoption. I was actually "hinting" at the idea during Thanksgiving with my mother, to lay the groundwork for the coming months to actually tell my parents this was our plans. It is crazy how things can change so much over the course of months, turning into year(s). I am not exactly sure why we were led down the road of embryo adoption and for it to not work, but I have a few ideas now.



DH and I talked about adopting someday, even before we were engaged - before we knew that there would be issues with infertility. Adoption was always something that was special to us. So when we found out that conceiving without medical assistance would most likely be impossible, we automatically defaulted to adoption. In 2005 we had our first failed adoption attempt. We were then forced into a break. We then decided in 2008 to become licensed for foster-to-adopt. During this process we were approached with an opportunity for a independent adoption and we began talking with the birth-mother over the phone - we got to "know" her and she made plans with us regarding the birth and how we would handle everything, but on the day that we were to meet her in person she no showed us and had her phone turned off, so this adoption opportunity failed also.



After things fell apart with the second failed adoption, we decided to reconsider fertility treatments, but as we began thinking about the process we started to have questions about ethically how to handle situations that may arise, and that is when we found information regarding embryo adoption. I know that God led us to it and through it. I know that Caden and Journey were provision from God, and I am very thankful for them, even if their lives were but a vapor.



For so many reasons we had given up on the thought of ever having biological children, and we still don't know what God has in store for us (over the course of 7 years our lives have changed so many times and in so many ways and our idea of how our family would grow has changed through it all). We are financially exhausted after all of these attempts and really thought that this embryo adoption would be the end of the road for us, because we had no more money and had already borrowed too much money - there was no money left to do anything else, but God - He moved on the heart of my mother-in-law, and she has offered to help us out with an attempt at IVF w/ICSI - something I never thought we would actually be able to do or would do. She has offered to pay for the cycle, if we can come up with the money for medications (potentially $3,000). I am so amazed! I am so thankful! And I am so thankful that we have learned what we have through embryo adoption. Because of it we have a better understanding about life, and therefore can make better decisions.