Sunday, February 26, 2017

Embryo Adoption :: Thawversary + Transferversary

One year ago today, our sweet babies were thawed and transferred after being frozen for almost 7 years. They had been stored in tiny straws in tanks of liquid nitrogen, with a cryoprotectant liquid. How crazy is that? 

I had been preparing for the transfer by taking increasing amounts of estrogen and progesterone, so everything was timed exactly for transfer day. We had done 2 transfers before, but had lost our babies, so we went into this day with tempered excitement. 

Thankfully, our babies thawed well and were looking really good at the time of transfer!

First family photo!

A lot of times, doctors will transfer 2 embryos in hopes of a successful singleton pregnancy; in other words, transferring 2 embryos can increase your chances of getting pregnant. But of course, you also run the risk of having twins! For us, we were willing to parent twins, so transferring 2 at a time was not a hard decision. Because we believe each individual embryo is a life, we were the crazy people praying that both of our babies "stuck."

And when we got our beta numbers 10 days later, and we saw how high they were, we had high hopes that both babies stuck. So we were elated when our first ultrasound confirmed what we had been praying and hoping for...TWINS!


One of the things I love most about this process is that we have photos of our babies at their earliest and tiniest stage. We got to watch them grow from the time that they were only visible under a microscope to when they were born at 6 pounds, 8 ounces. 

We were pro-life before we knew about Embryo Adoption, but walking through this process makes the science and undeniable facts about the creation and origin of life that much more tangible to us. Those tiny multi-cell embryos were Eli and Maddie. The 6 embryos we lost in 2015 were Jack, Jill, Amy, Noah, Annie, and Hope. The 2 embryos we have remaining will hopefully be babies #3 and #4 for us to parent this side of heaven. There are a lot of ethical and spiritual implications regarding frozen embryos. Perhaps one day I will be bold enough to walk through them on my blog. But for now, the fact remains that each unique embryo deserved and deserves a chance at life. They are not just a random set of cells. My children are living, breathing proof of that.

It's crazy to think that 1 year ago, Eli and Maddie were still frozen, and now they are almost 4 months old. I will forever be grateful for Embryo Adoption because it allowed me to experience pregnancy and carry our babies. And it gave our precious ones a chance at life outside the freezer.


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