Our journey to embryo adoption started years before it became a reality in our lives. Five years into marriage, we were able to get pregnant but soon lost this baby to a miscarriage. We assumed another pregnancy would quickly follow, but months turned into years of waiting and wishing. After going to a fertility specialist, we realized that pregnancy on our own was nearly impossible. We
took time to grieve the loss of what we thought our journey would look like.
Not long after this news, we were introduced to embryo adoption. It quickly became real that this was an option for us. After deciding to pursue this route, the process moved fairly quickly. We were matched with an amazing family and never looked back. Within a few months, we found out we were pregnant! Fast forward many years, and our Snowflake baby is now eight years old. Our
beautiful blonde hair, blue eyed girl is one of God’s biggest gifts in our life.
Our other is our son who was welcomed through traditional adoption five years ago. When we started the embryo adoption process, we knew that we wanted to stay in touch with the genetic family; we just had no idea how this would play out. What started as communicating through the agency, turned into emailing and following each other on social media. We have always been very open with our daughter about her story, and she had mentioned meeting several times. We knew it was not an “if”, but “when.” Just this past summer, we had a feeling it was time!
Our daughter’s genetic family was so excited to hear the news. We wasted no time, and our little foursome boarded a plane to California to meet this family we had only known on “paper.” (But somehow felt like we already knew). It was everything we hoped and more! Our daughter and her genetic siblings bonded quickly and became instant friends. It was pure delight watching them laugh and play together. My husband and I also stepped into an immediate friendship with the genetic parents. It was very surreal to all be together, and we stood in awe of how God brought our two families together so many years ago.
What started as a journey of heartache and sadness for two couples was replaced with complete joy and thankfulness. After spending two days together, we said our goodbyes, but I think we were all confident this was just the beginning of our next chapter together.
Looking back almost twenty years ago when we were married, we had no idea the crazy, bumpy, up and down journey God would take us on to one day have a family. Now that we see the plan more clearly, we would walk it all over again. We are so blessed to have our amazing children and so thankful to our daughter’s genetic family for saying “yes” to the call to adoption. I’m sure that
they never thought this would be their path either, but I’m so grateful it led us both to this point. We are very excited to see what God does next in our daughter’s story; in faith we know and believe it will continue to be beyond anything we could have imagined.