It has always been our opinion that life begins at conception. It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with an extreme case of endometriosis that we wondered if we could have the family we felt we were meant to have and not violate our morals.
When my husband and I ran into fertility struggles, like many others, we had to start to think ‘outside of the box’ regarding how to start a family. We have friends who decided against IVF over 20 years ago because they were against the idea of their embryos (children) being discarded or remaining frozen indefinitely. I had learned about embryo adoption after seeing something in the media, and so I began to research this unique form of adoption.
We intended to make sure that each life we created was respected and had a chance to become the precious individual they were created to be. One important part of our decision to create embryos was to figure out how to protect them in the event something happened to both my husband and myself. Who would care for our unborn children?
Nightlight Christian Adoptions helped us to make this type of plan, even before we had completed our family with the embryos we created. We were able to specify in our final life documents that we wanted our embryos to be placed with an adopting family through the Nightlight Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program.
With great joy, our twin boys were born in April 2008. My endometriosis precluded me from pursuing a second pregnancy, and we determined to work with Snowflakes to place our embryos for adoption. We believed they understood and agreed with our desire to give our embryos the respect and opportunity to be born.
The team began to help us choose a family to adopt our remaining embryos. The match was a clear hit-it-out-of-the-park home run for us! We immediately said, “Yes, we want our children to be born to this faith-filled couple.” Unfortunately, the family did not achieve a pregnancy and had no embryos remaining.
We have never felt we made the wrong decision. We are so grateful that this agency provided a way for us to honor our remaining embryos by allowing us to choose a recipient family. We hope another family with remaining embryos also chose this wonderful adoptive family and that they eventually had the family they desired.
Embryo adoption is a blessing to both those who have remaining embryos and to those desiring to experience pregnancy, childbirth, and family!