It was a dark snowy Friday night when I was driving to meet my husband at a local fundraiser. I typically drive in silence but I had stumbled across a radio program that caught my attention. My husband and I been unsuccessfully trying to build our family for...
Anonymous Embryo Donation Doesn’t Work
In the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program, there are no anonymous or closed placements available. Why? Simply put, it is just not possible anymore. Thanks to the at home DNA testing kits, and the internet, individuals can easily find out if they are...
Keeping Your Marriage a Priority During Your Adoption Journey
The adoption journey is hard—especially on a marriage. From what seems like endless stacks of paperwork, waiting for a match, the anxious feeling you may have about any unforeseen hurdles… it can be hard not to feel a strain on your relationship. And this is...
How to Spread the Word About Embryo Adoption
For the past twelve years, I have been working for Nightlight Christian Adoptions. All of my focus has been on raising awareness and participation in embryo donation and adoption. The most discouraging words I hear on any given day are, “I’ve never heard about...
Meaningful Ideas for Birth Parent Gifts
Having a prospective birthmother choose you to raise her child is a priceless gift that you can never truly repay. Many adoptive parents choose to express their feelings for a birthparent by giving them a meaningful gift at the hospital when the baby is born or...
Learning the Attachment “Dance”
Attachment is the secure bond that is created initially between an infant and their caregiver. This attachment process will begin in utero with a child’s birthmother and then be formed again with other caregivers, specifically their adoptive parents....
Spirit of Openness: How it Relates to Adoption
As an adoption agency, Nightlight Christian Adoptions deeply believes in the value of open adoption and the positive impact it has on all members of the adoption triad. One of the main questions that Nightlight social workers typically receive from...
50 Benefits of Snowflakes
Why work with the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program? People who are inquiring about placing or adopting embryos for achieving a pregnancy are often confused about using an embryo adoption agency or a fertility clinic. Is the Snowflakes program right for you?...
An International Embryo Adoption
I got all choked up as I watched the little pin-pricks of light on the monitor in the doctor’s office. The way they appeared was a miraculous sight I will never forget. Not for Emily, though. All she could focus on was how much she needed to go to the bathroom! But...
Top Three Reasons to Become a Dad Using Embryo Adoption
There’s a false notion in some circles of American culture that fatherhood is, well, unmanly. Changing diapers? Beneath us. Strapping on an infant in a Baby Bjorn? Emasculating (not to mention a little silly looking). Sadly, adopting a baby is another activity...
How to Manage and Complete Adoption Paperwork
When my wife and I meet new people, I love explaining what I do for work and the joy I get from helping guide families throughout their adoption process. I love sharing the adoption stories and testimonies of the families we work with, and how each have a...
Ellen and Tim Van Treuren: An Embryo Adoption Journey
One of the best ways to learn about the embryo adoption journey is to hear about the experiences of someone who has taken this approach to overcoming their infertility challenges. Ellen and Tim Van Treuren are one couple that decided embryo adoption was the right path...
What is Secondary Infertility?
Last Wednesday, social media was flooded with photos of siblings—it was National Siblings Day! Some of you may frequently remember your brothers and sisters with fondness and great memories. Others may be reflecting on the colossal efforts you have made...
If Your Embryos Could Talk: Embryo Donation
Hello, hello! Yes, it’s me, your little embryo. Do have a moment to chat? It’s been sometime since you created me, and while I am super happy you did, but I was wondering what your plans are for me. Are you planning to increase your family and bring me into the fold?...
God’s Greatest Gift
As we enter the Christmas season, there are so many things to be thankful for: the health of living in a bountiful nation, the happiness of having choices, and the hope of what tomorrow will bring. Yet as we ponder these things amongst our daily to do...
Creating a Life Book For Your Adoptive/Foster Child
Creating Lifebooks for our children is one of those things in life that some parents follow through better than others, like sending out Christmas cards. The desire is there, we’ve pictured the outcome, we understand the appreciation it will bring...
Embryo Quality: Does It Really Matter?
There are a variety of methods used by medical professionals to grade frozen human embryos, to project the likelihood of pregnancy success. This often includes Preimplantation Genetic Diagnostic (PGD) and Preimplantation Genetic Screening (PGS) testing. However,...
Why Do We Support Open Adoption?
I’ve been working in adoptions long enough to see the significant trend toward open adoptions over the past forty years. I recall sitting in meetings in the 70’ and 80’s with an Adoption Committee in the first agency where I worked doing the matching of...
Is Egg Freezing the Only Solution?
Egg freezing may be used to preserve future fertility for women. Mature oocytes (eggs) are harvested from a woman’s ovaries, flash-frozen (vitrified), stored, and are later thawed to create embryos using in vitro fertilization Recently, we came across a very...
What is an Open Adoption Plan?
Is contact with placing families important in an embryo adoption match? How do you establish an open adoption? The Hendersons and Gassmans are embryo placing and adopting families who were matched through the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program. Listen as the two...
Protecting Your Baby From Birth Defects Through Nutrition
Women who are interested in embryo adoption are clearly interested in becoming pregnant and carrying a healthy child to term. Did you know there is something you can begin NOW that will help protect your growing child in utero? Take folic acid. Jennifer Hofmeister, a...
Adopting Embryos Who Are a Different Ethnicity Than You
Our openness to adopting a child of a different ethnicity than our own really began years ago, when we knew God was putting Japan on our hearts. At the time, we didn’t realize that this growing interest in Japanese culture and love for Japanese people would have...
18 Year Old Embryo Becomes a “Snowflake Baby” for Colorado Couple
There are few things more difficult emotionally than the inability to conceive a child. For a couple in Parker, they had nearly given up hope of having a second baby after a reproductive health complication made it too difficult for them to conceive naturally. That...
A Moving Letter to Snowflakes Families from Dr. Dobson
In honor of Snowflake’s 20th Anniversary, Dr. James Dobson, Founder and President of “Family Talk” has written a compelling letter to the placing and adopting families of the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program. Read the letter...
Embryo Quality: Choosing Life
How important is embryo quality? There are a variety of methods used by medical professionals to grade frozen human embryos, projecting the likelihood of pregnancy success. However, many healthy children have been born from embryos given a poor quality rating by the...
Webinar: Embryo Adoption: Dispelling the Myths
Webinar: Embryo Adoption: Dispelling the Myths Couples who have been unsuccessful at IVF will also not have success if they try to adopt an embryo. True or False? Parents don’t need to tell their children that they came from a donor conception. Adoption agencies...
Webinar: The Affordable and Accessible Adoption Choice
Webinar: The Affordable and Accessible Adoption Choice Is it possible that embryo adoption will be the solution that brings a sweet baby into your loving arms? Are you frustrated by the high cost of in vitro fertilization? Heartbroken by your IVF treatment failures?...
Snowflakes Pages
Help Nightlight Christian Adoptions Win $20K!
Have you heard?! Nightlight has been chosen as one of 30 finalists in Comcast’s Innovations 4 Entrepreneurs contest! We need your help to be chosen as a one of six Grand Prize Winners that will win $20,000! We entered the contest to gain funding that can help make the...
Life is a Gift
Most people rarely consider our very life as a work of God. In fact, we rarely think about life at all (we’re born, grow up and die). Many folks sadly believe an unborn baby isn’t a human life. Atheist Richard Dawkins tweeted back in 2013 that an unborn baby is less...
Part 2: Salem Family Answers Common Embryo Adoption Questions
It’s January 2015, and for Adéye Salem, that means she’s less than a month away from the frozen embryo transfer that she and her husband have been preparing months for. Adéye recently braved the cold weather and made another video to answer your questions about embryo...
Part 1: Salem Family Answers Common Embryo Adoption Questions
Anthony and Adéye Salem are working on a series of videos to answer your questions about embryo adoption. In the first video, they answer questions about: • Age – Are they too old for embryo adoption? • Success Rate – Why did they choose embryos that have a 20-30%...
Three Different Journeys to Parenthood, No Greater Joy
Family keeps growing through embryo adoption Meet Adéye and Anthony Salem – an incredible couple from Northern Colorado. Are you thinking, “What’s special about Adéye and Anthony?” Through the years, they’ve built a beautiful family together – a family with nine...
How Embryo Donation Impacts the Donor’s Life
Couples who have pursued in vitro fertilization treatments (IVF) know that sometimes one embryo is not enough. Doctors will often transfer multiple embryos to increase the chances of a successful pregnancy. Any embryos that remain are frozen. If the couple has...
Freezing Eggs – Delaying Motherhood
This past Mother’s Day NBC Nightly News ran a short story about women delaying motherhood in America. The statics are startling: From 2000-2012 the percentage of women aged 40-44 having their first baby rose 35%. From 970-2012 the percentage of women over 35 having...
Faith through the ups and downs of Embryo Adoption
The following is written by a Snowflakes family. We are Ben and Steph, and we’ve had an amazing experience with embryo adoption. After dealing with infertility, we looked into EA. We liked the pro-life aspect – rescuing little lives that are frozen in time, waiting...
EAAC Premieres Must-See Videos on Successful Embryo Adoptions
You may be familiar with many of the services and programs Nightlight Christian Adoptions has to offer, from international adoption to domestic adoption to the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program. But did you know that Nightlight also operates a federal grant to...
Nightlight Christian Adoptions, Snowflakes mentioned in President Bush’s “Decision Points”
Many noteworthy things happened to Nightlight Christian Adoptions and its extended family during 2010, but one of the most exciting was being mentioned in Decision Points, the recently-released memoir of President George W. Bush. In the book, President Bush recalls...
HAIL Mighty Embryo
Thoughts on Embryo Adoption at T4A blog
Embryo Donation, Embryo Adoption: Do they contribute to the problem?
Nightlight Christian Adoptions has been a pioneer in the field of embryo donation and adoption through its Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program. Through this program, couples who have undergone IVF and have remaining embryos can chose embryo donation, whereby the frozen...