The Good, the Bad, and the Shocking and Quite Exciting!

In July we finalized our adoption of four embryos through Snowflakes.  In September we began our first frozen embryo transfer (FET) cycle.  In October we thawed and transferred two of our four embryos and ten days later found out that they didn't make it.  The day after our negative BETA (pregnancy blood test) our FET doctor called to debrief with us.  Our news was good, then bad, then shocking and quite exciting and it has led us to a slight change in plans.

The Good:  My body did everything it was supposed to do.  Embryos, even "good looking" ones like one of our two embryos, sometimes don't make it.  It is the nature of assisted reproduction.  Science has not found a way to force an embryo to implant.  It must do so on its own.

The Bad:  The doctor says that the two embryos we used in our October transfer were our best embryos.  He says the other two have an even lesser chance of surviving the thaw and implanting although he does say it is very possible (while not likely) that they can come to a pregnancy and be born. 

The Shocking and Quite Exciting: Our doctor said that he has a couple in his donor embryo program who has completed their family and is looking specifically for a family who is really struggling to donate their five remaining embryos to.  Our doctor felt that we were the perfect recipient family for this match and wanted to know if we would consider accepting these five embryos. 

The Slight Change in Plans:  We told Dr. K that we were committed to giving our Snowflake embryos a chance at life and discarding them was not an option.  We also told Dr. K that we would be honored to "adopt" the couple's five embryos (blasts created from a sperm and egg donor - created in Dr. K's office in 2009).  For the last five weeks we have very slowly been progressing through the proper legal procedure to make these five embies ours.  The donating family has agreed to the match verbally but have now had the release paperwork for three weeks and have not signed or sent it back.  We have put our next FET on hold until we negotiate the terms of our embryo donation contract.  Ideally we would like to move forward with our second FET with our Snowflakes embryos while the legal paperwork is being finished on our new donor clinic embryos BUT  as all of us know in the adoption world. . . we do not live in a world of ideals.   If we transfer our Snowflake embies and it results in a pregnancy (which would be amazing) it could jeopardize our adoption of the donor clinic embies.  The typical donor embryo contract gives the receiving family one year of uninterrupted "ownership" of the frozen embryos.  After that year the donor family can ask for any embryos that are still frozen to be returned to them.  So the plan most likely will be to transfer the donor clinic embryos first until we get pregnant and then use our remaining two Snowflake embies and any remaining donor clinic embies in future transfers for siblings.  (We negotiated a five year contract on our Snowflake embies.)

So. . . that is where we are right now.   Thoroughly blessed by this amazing twist in our adoption story, but stuck in the waiting pattern once again.