This last step of the embryo adoption process has been really hard. The shipping coordination is usually a seamless and quick process; but for us, it has been excruciatingly long.
Most clinics require blood testing of the genetic parents to test for infectious diseases before they will accept embryos into their clinic. The blood testing is usually something that is done before contracts are even signed, but we didn't learn until after our contracts were signed that it was still a missing piece of the process. Unfortunately, our poor donor family had a hard time finding a clinic that would do the blood draw, and it took 6 weeks before we could work through the logistics to get that done.
After many phone calls, emails, tears, and firm conversations, we received word today that the blood draw was done and sent to the lab for testing. So now we just wait for the results. Once the results come in, they can finally ship our embryos to our clinic!
We have had a wonderful experience with Nightlight up until this point, and we were so disappointed with this last leg of the journey to get our embryos to us. Unfortunately, we got caught in the middle of the perfect storm of staff turnover, policy changes, and some bad luck with where our donor family lives. We struggled with some communication issues, and had to lean on some other individuals in the agency to get the process moving. We do believe that they are working through these issues to prevent this from happening to other families in the future, but it was frustrating to be caught in the middle as one of the families {if not the only family} that had to deal with this delay.
All that to say, we are incredibly relieved to finally be one step closer to shipment. We will still need the donor family to sign a release form to give their clinic permission to release the embryos to our clinic {the last step}. We are so ready for our embryos to be safe in our clinic! One thing's for sure: nobody can accuse us of not fighting for our babies :)
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