God is Sovereign!

As I write this, I am sitting here in my Elmo pajamas which I had to buy because Gracie absolutely adores Elmo. I slept in until 8:15am and then got up to a quiet house and sat down at the computer. No, Ken did not get up with the girls so I could sleep in and then write. They are just getting older and more independent and are perfectly happy to watch TV, a great electronic babysitter, until I tell them that they can come upstairs. Ahh, life is good and much easier than those by gone baby and toddler days when the girls depended on us for EVERYTHING. We have a good dynamic going here and we are hoping that that will change in 2010? That question has gone through my head several times, but the answer is yes!

So the last month has been a bit crazy with my health. About a month ago, I woke up and my jaw was swollen, a type of swelling called angioedema. Throughout the course of the day, it continued to swell and spread through my mouth. By the end of the day, it looked like I had stuffed a golf ball in my cheek. Apparently, it was some kind of allergic reaction. I was put on some steroids to calm everything down and didn’t think anything more of it. The next week we were in Puerto Vallarta (beautiful!) and I finished the steroid pack I was on. I woke up the next morning to a swollen lip and a swollen eye. What was going on? Taking some ibuprofen brought it down a bit and I didn’t think anything of it. The next morning I woke up to huge welts on my stomach. This is no joke. They were about a foot in diameter and puffed out at least a half inch. I also had smaller welts up and down my legs. I wish I had taken pictures of them. So to get them under control we went into town and got another steroid pack. That brought the swelling down over the course of the next few days. As I was tapering the steroids but not completely off them, the other side of my face started swelling! So after talking with the clinic, we ramped the steroids back up plus started Benadryl and a couple other antihistimines. This brought the swelling down, but now we really started to rack our brains of what may be causing this allergic reaction. I have never had ANY sort of allergy in my life. There have been no changes in diet, lotion, detergents, or anything. After researching the internet, I discovered a medicine I had been taking a few years now can cause angioedema in very rare cases. I felt great relief at finally finding the “cause”. I immediately stopped taking that medicine and finished the taper of steroids. Because I was so sure that this was it, I also stopped taking the antihistamines and Benadryl. The next day after finishing the steroids, I got a tingling in my lip and it always starts with a tingling. Oh great! Through the course of three hours, my cheeks and lips swelled. My lips looked like sausages and the bottom one actually cracked open in a few places! What was going on???? So I went to the doctor, they did a couple blood tests. An autoimmune disease was ruled out. I am back on the Benadryl and antihistamines for 6 weeks or so. Another blood test was drawn for food allergies and I am waiting for the results of that. I will be seeing an allergist next week. We still have no answers.

So this was the dilemma. I was supposed to start the medication in preparation for the embryo transfer, but do we wait until we figure out what is going on with my body of go ahead with it and see what happens. It would not be a big deal to wait a couple months. But the other factor for us is insurance. Because our deductible is so high, we would like to have everything done in 2010-transfer, pregnancy, birth-we really don’t want to spread this out over 2 years of deductibles. This leaves us with only the first couple months of the year to do the transfer. After weighing the costs, doing more research on angioedema, talking with the doctors, and prayer, we decided to go ahead with it at this point. It is not ideal conditions, but we feel comfortable with proceeding. So, I had a baseline ultrasound done (looked good) and started the medication yesterday. Assuming everything continues as planned, we are set for a January 21 transfer date! Over the course of the next 3 weeks, I will have a blood test and ultrasound to determine if my body is responding appropriately. Then, we will be going out to California for the transfer of hopefully 2 or 3 embryos. Then, we wait two very long weeks to see if any of them survive. Thankfully, we have a sovereign God that He has already ordained whatever is going to happen. We are resting and find peace in that!

A Link to the Sermon Ken Preached

Ken preached a sermon at our church on November 1 on adoption. He originally wrote the sermon earlier in the year as a tool for himself as he was studying the theology of adoption and what God had to say in His inerrant Word. Well, he ended up sharing it with our congregation and hopefully it affected others' hearts as it did ours in our understanding of God's adoption of us as sons and daughters. Okay, so I couldn't figure out how to link it to his sermon, but you can go to http://www.oasispeople.org/ and looks under the audio sermons for November 1, 2009. Soli Deo Gloria!

Tentative Date for the Transfer!

It all still seems surreal and that this is not really happening. But things are happening and we have the tentative date for our transfer! It will be around January 18. I get my "huge" box of medications, shots and all, at the end of December and will begin taking them at the beginning of January. I will be monitored with blood tests and ultrasounds and when my body is at the peak for accepting embryos, Ken and I will be flying out to California for the transfer. It will be a bit of a last minute thing, since it depends on how my body responds to the medications. If I haven't said why we are going out to California for the transfer, it is because of the logistics of getting embryos shipped across state lines. That can be very costly and time consuming (like several months), so it is easier for us to go to them. We will stay there for two days after the transfer as I will be on strict bedrest to let the little embies settle into their new home. :-) Then comes the VERY long two week wait to see if they survive. Thankfully, we can rest in God's sovereignty and He already knows the beginning to the end. If it results in adding to our family, He will be glorified. If it doesn't result in adding to our earthly family, He still will be glorified. Isn't He good?

Just Saved a Few Thousand Dollars!

God is so good to us! I have been talking with the nurse out in California in preparation for starting the mock cycle at the beginning of November. She gave me the protocol of medications, blood tests, US, procedures and it is quite involved. Once I got through that, if everything looked good, then we would repeat the same process all over again, but this time with the actual transfer. Well, I began wondering if it was really necessary to do a mock. Why couldn't we just do the transfer if everything looked good the first time? Then I started researching and found that not all doctors do a mock before the actual transfer. So I called a yesterday and asked if the doctor would be willing to do an actual transfer without doing a mock. When she got back to me, she said the doctor was okay with that as long as we were okay with it! I was so excited. That saves us at least $2000-$3000 in meds and tests AND I get to skip out on 6 weeks worth of extra shots! Okay, that is a lot of exclamation points in one paragraph, but I was so excited and God continues to orchestrate things in ways I couldn't even imagine.

So we are looking at starting the protocol either in December or January. We are leaving for Mexico on December 5, so it depends on how my body responds before then. That means we are looking at the actual transfer either early January or early February. We are only planning on doing one transfer, so that will be it. We will see what happens.

They are all ours!

The last bit of paperwork was signed and the four little snowflake babies are ours, storage fees and all! The anonymous donor sent a short email to Embryos Alive to forward on to us.

Hi Bonnie

We signed the releases yesterday so they are theirs. They can set up the transfer whenever they are ready. I guess they are traveling to LA to do it. :-) All future embryo storage bills effective with November billing will go to Ken/Becky.

Please keep us posted about the transfer and of course the results. Let them know we'll pray for them and hope all goes well with the transfer.

Thank you again for everything. We are so blessed!
R.

So...Now the next step is to schedule the mock transfer most likely in November or December which will be done locally. Then, God willing, we will be flying out to Los Angeles in January for the actual transfer.

Soli Deo Gloria!

It is official! We have adopted 4 embryos!

Hello again,

Time seems to run through my hands like water these days. Where does it go? As of September 23, on Hope's birthday actually, we did the final notarizing of papers and sent them back to the agency. We are the proud parents of 4 healthy bouncing baby....embryos!

They are ours, but there is actually one more step before we can begin the whole process of mock trial and transfer. We needed to pay for cryostorage of the embryos before the donor would release the clinic to transfer them to us. We have done that and now are just waiting for the donor to send that release to the clinic in California where the embryos are being stored. We are anticipating this will be completed by Friday (October 9). We are going to be doing the transfer there, so hopefully it will make the logistics and process much simpler. It will also be done by the same doctor that did the transfer for our donor which resulted in twins. I can't remember if I already said that.

Assuming there aren't any major glitches, we could possibly have the transfer done by the end of the year and celebrating in 2010 by watching my belly grow.

All for God's glory,

Becky

Today Ken and I Celebrate 15 years of Marriage

August 20, 1994 was a crossroad. It forever altered the course of our lives when we vowed before many people to spend our lives together. God has been gracious in keeping us and I love this man more than the day I married him. Never in a million years could I have guessed where the last 15 years would have taken us nor to the point that it has brought us. There have been some rough patches and I know that it was and is by God's grace alone that we made it through those times. I am so thankful for a husband that loves God above all else, leads his family, serves his family and has his priorities in the correct order. I often wish and hope that other wives feel the same about their husbands.

So today we made it official on our side. Both of the donor families have agreed to donate the 4 embryos to us and we signed and sent back notarized copies of the contract today. Once they sign their contract and relinquishment, the embryos will officially be ours. I have no idea how long that will take, but I have heard that it can take several months depending on if their paperwork is in order regarding blood tests, etc. After that, we will start coordinating between the clinics in Minnesota and California and go from there.

This seems so surreal. Even as I am typing this, I feel like I am making this all up. I still can't picture the very real possibility that we are not going to be a family of four for all that much longer. I still can't picture being pregnant again nor the possiblity of carrying twins. And I can't picture going back to the baby stage and being so immensely tired! But at the same time, it is exciting and we feel strongly that this is a path that God is leading us on. We don't know the end yet, but perhaps this is another crossroad that we will be looking back on and saying, "Never in a million years could we have guessed where these last 15 years have taken us." Soli deo gloria.

Getting Closer to Becoming Mommy and Daddy to 4 Frozen Embryos

Today we heard from a clinic in Woodbury that would be willing to do the mock transfer and all the monitoring services other than the actual transfer which will be done in California. So with a verbal consent from the physician in California and the clinic in Woodbury, we told Embryos Alive (EA) that we are ready to proceed with moving forward with the embryo adoption! This case is a little unique in that EA needs to get the final consent from two families: the biological mom and dad from whom the embryos were created in 2000 and then the current "owners" (for lack of a better word) who adopted the remaining embryos after the biological parents had completed their family. The adoptive family has completed their family and now are donating the 4 remaining embryos back. Which, God willing, they will be coming into our family in a relatively short amount of time. Is this all mind boggling? I am in awe of how all this is weaving together and seeing God's hand work in it all. Am I a bit nervous? Yep. Do I have mixed feelings about starting all over with the baby stage when our girls are getting into such a fun and easy stage? Yep. Do I believe this is the path that God is desiring us to go down? Yep. Maybe it will result in more children and maybe it won't, but one thing I know is that in it all, God will be glorified.

We Talked to the Doc in California

So we are getting closer to decision time. After a couple mix-ups, we spoke to the doctor in California who did the transfer of some of the embryos that were created at the same time from the same donors as those that we are hoping to adopt. He answered all of our questions that we could think of and he said that they would be willing to do the transfer for us! This would be awesome because this clinic already has access to these embryos and has all the necessary paperwork completed. This would save a huge headache as we have quickly found out that trying to navigate different clinics, shipping eymbryos, and getting the necessary workups done are not easy. There are so many rules and regulations to comply with. Every clinic has their own set of rules and it is proving difficult to get concrete answers. In addition, the doctor said we could do all our monitoring and pre-transfer procedures here in Minnesota and then only take one trip out to Minnesota. Great! So today I called a clinic in Minnesota we have been working with to begin scheduling the pre-transfer stuff only to find out they will provide these services only if they themselves do the transfer. Okay, more rules. We have a call into another clinic to see if they would be willing to coordinate with the California clinic for the appointments leading up to the transfer. We are waiting to hear from them (hopefully tomorrow). If they agree to take us on as patients, then hopefully we will have a decision by the end of the week. Still waiting for answers...

Will we be adopting embryos soon?

A couple weeks have passed and we are still waiting to see how this story unfolds. It seems like there is a lot of hurry up and wait. The embryos we submitted our application for were donated to someone else. At that time, however, there were 4 embryos that were coming up for adoption that we were interested in. From what we understand, there were 22 embryos originally created. The biological mom and dad had twins boy and girl set and then the remaining embryos were donated. The family they donated to went on to have a little girl. The adoptee family is now donating the remaining 4 embryos back to embryos alive. From the sounds of it, they are very intersted in having us adopt them. We are trying to do research to ensure all of our bases are covered so we will know these embryos are able to be transferred before we make the final decision on accepting them. Navigating this process is very difficult and time consuming. The FDA has so many regulations about embryos even to the point that it depends on if they were created before or after 2005. Clinics are also very picky about which embryos they will transfer because having good statistics for transfers that result in pregnancies is very important for the viability of their practice. At any rate, we have a phone consult with a doctor from California tomorrow. He just happens to be the doctor that did the transfer for the first adoptive family that resulted in a single birth. We are hoping that after our conversation with him tomorrow, our next step will be blaringly clear.

Taking a new direction

We let the whole embro adoption thing rest for a week or two...until we received an email notice from Embryos Alive (another embryo adoption place) about some embryos that came up for adoption. This was a place we looked at when we first decided to explore embryo adoption. It is basically a matching website between donors and adoptors. Adoptors can put their profiles on the site and their specifice criteria for adoptors. For example, they donors might only be willing to donate to families that have no children or are a specific religion. Email notices are then sent out to potential adoptors and if the potential adoptors are interested in those particular embryos, they can have their profile submitted to the donors for consideration. A fee is paid to Embryos Alive for the matching service when a match between donor and adoptor is made and then you basically have to navigate all the medical IVF stuff yourself. One of the main reasons we went with NEDC is because everything is taken care of from matching to pregnancy. The down side of that program is having to fly down to Tennessee for transfers and consultations. So, like I said, the door to NEDC was tightly closed, and this door through Embryos Alive may be opening.

We talked a few times with the woman who runs this matching service and she seems like a wonderful Christian lady. She is helpful, keeps us up to date on where things are at, and even asked Ken what she could specifically pray for for us! In talking with her, she said there was another couple who lives in Minnesota that adopted through Embryos Alive (EA) and they had a baby! I was able to speak with this lady about her experience with EA and after talking with her, it gave me great peace of mind. Not only was it a positive experience for her and her husband, but they have already navigated through the medical system in Minnesota and had the transfer done in a local Minneapolis fertility clinic. How great would that be, not to mention the cost savings, if we could do all the medical stuff right in our own backyard! It is going to be so amazing to look back and see how God wove this whole thing together...for our good and His glory.

Ken feels very strongly about wanting to adopt embryos and he was interested in 3 particular embryos. So we submitted our profile to the donors. We haven't heard final word yet, but we believe they chose someone else to donate their embryos to. Those donors are making the final decision this week. As it should turn out though, there have been several notices regarding new donors and we are submitting our profile to another family if this one is turned down. So as of yet, how this story unfolds, is still unknown.

Another Path?

Well it seems that one door closed and perhaps another one is opening? In June we received a call from NEDC saying that they canceled our mock trial and were going to put us to the back of the list which is currently 20 or more couples long and growing. They said they did not know how it slipped through the cracks the fact that we already had two children. Because of that anyone who had no children or one child would be put ahead of us in line. So we basically would never get to the front of the line. They apologized for the mix up and agreed to return our application fee. My reaction? I guess it was a mixture of disappointment and relief, with relief being the more dominant emotion. I felt disappointment because I think this is a very cool way to adopt. When I first learned of adopting embyros, my first thoughts were "How could this be?" and "God is too wonderful." He in is perfect sovereignness is way beyond what our minds could even think up. This frozen life that was created up to 10 or 15 years ago will get a chance to live on this earth, but not only that, I would get to experience the pregnancy and growth of this child growing in me when biologically, it is not even mine. This is surreal to think about. On the other hand, I honestly felt a bit relieved. Maybe it is selfish. I love the stage that our two girls are at and it is getting easier to take care of them on a daily basis because of their growing independence. I love being able to just pick up and go with them and not having to lug diaper bags, formula, and everything else baby and at the same time adhering to a strict schedule around naps. I like that life is easier in that respect. But at the same time, I know God is sovereign and if embryo adoption is in His plan for us, He will work things out for our good and His glory.

We Have a Mock Trial Date!

We talked to NEDC a couple weeks ago and they said they were going to be scheduling mock trial dates for September and October. What this means is they do the whole process of embryo transfer without the actual embryos and see how my body reacts. Last week we talked to them and are scheduled for the mock trial on October 15! This still seems surreal to me. Are we actually going through with this? Will I actually be able to get pregnant? Will we really be adding a child or children to our family by the end of next year? I am still trying to get my mind around this real possibility. But for now we take it one step at a time and trust God because He is sovereign and already knows the beginning, middle, and end.

Our County Homestudy Is Accepted!

I talked with Bethany Services today and they accepted our homestudy that was completed through the county! Isn't God good?! That just saved us $3000! I am so excited to see how God weaves this whole thing together from beginning to end.

Our Application is Accepted!

We received a call this month telling us that our application was accepted! Everyone we have talked with at NEDC has been so nice. When we made the decision to go through with this process in January, husband hopped right to it and started getting the application together. The most time consuming thing was waiting for the home study to be completed. A home study costs around $3000 and takes about 3 months to complete. Since we are licensed for child and adult foster care, we have walked through two home studies through the county. We asked our licensor in Scott County if we could get a copy of our homestudy regarding children and submit it with the hopes that NEDC will accept it. Our licensor said she would get us a copy, but it would take a little while to get it together. So we waited and waited some more. In the meantime, I talked to someone at Bethany Services about this possibility of using our foster care homestudy and she said that we will probably need to have another homestudy done through them since foster care and embryo adoption are different. This didn't make much sense to me because our care of children regardless of where they come from would be the same. Read between the lines: this will cost us an additional $3000. I am glad God is sovereign.

When we received the homestudy from the county, we promptly sent the WHOLE packet (many pages) on to NEDC. They called us a couple days later saying we had been accepted into the program and were now on the waiting list. They also said we were the fastest people they have had to date to start application and get accepted. We were accepted inside of 2 months of husband coming home and talking about something I initially thought was a joke. God is amazing. Kathy, the patient coordinator, said she forwarded the homestudy on to Bethany Services for review and they will call us in a couple days to let us know if the homestudy was accepted or if we needed to do an independent one. So we wait again.

The Beginning

Okay, so husband came home yesterday after work and asked me a question. He said, "Have you ever heard of a snowflake baby"? Thinking this was some sort of joke as he enjoys telling jokes and trying to make people laugh, I said no and waited for the punch line. Husband said they were frozen embryos that are donated to another couple instead of being destroyed. Then he asked what I thought about adopting a snowflake baby. I believe my response was, "Why, do you have someone who wants to donate an embryo to us"? My first thought was that yes, if someone approached us about donating an embryo, then absolutely I would consider it. But to actively pursue? I don't know. So was the beginning of our journey.