Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Legacy of an Adopted Embryo

My amazing Donor Mom sent me this poem today.  It was shared in a Facebook group that she is in for Donors. I think its beautiful and plan to keep it forever. It made me tear up and feel so blessed to be on this path to motherhood.



Positive Appointment

I finally had a really positive monitoring appointment... no maybes, no questioning, just a "You're doing great, in fact excellent. See you next week". I have waited a long time to hear that! He also said to keep doing what I have been doing, so the relaxing and giving myself some self-care seems to be doing great things for me.  I am sure it also helps that I feel really positive and like I am finally on my path to be a Momma.

I wanted to share a little more about my personal experience of receiving these embabies. I have shared a lot of the facts, but not the personal story.  The connection that this donor family (I will keep their identity protected) and I have is amazing.  Honestly, its more about the donor mom and myself, we have done all of the communicating, although we both share it with our husbands. We have been connected since we first started communicating, we just "hit it off".  It's not something I could really explain, but I just had this great feeling and such a strong connection to her. We seemed to have so much in common in the right ways, our values seem to be similar, and on some level we both just felt like this was the right choice for both of us.

We have shared many emails, Facebook chats and text messages over the past few months. Some about our desires, fears and hopes for the future, some about specific details about the future, some about our families and some about nothing, just regular everyday friend talk. It's amazing, I have gained a friend who will always be family to us. She has honestly become one of my biggest cheerleaders, I share all my infertility ups and downs with her and she is nothing but supportive and positive that we are all making the right choice. It honestly gives me the goosebumps whenever I talk about our experience so far with anyone, this is how I know we are on our path to be parents, it all just finally feels right!

She always tries to explain to me that I am not the only one receiving a gift, she is as well, she now gets to know that her embryos will get a chance at life and when they become sweet little boys, she feels at peace knowing that Chris and I will be loving them every moment of everyday.  It's statements like this that tell me our future relationship with these amazing, generous people will be easy and natural.

We have not met in person, but are already more connected than most people are. She already has 2 boys, so our boys will be having 2 brothers and I honestly can't wait to watch them all grow up. Which is also something I want to share.  We 100% plan to tell our children their story from birth.  Of course the version of the story and details will evolve as it is developmentally appropriate, but they will always know that Mommy and Daddy needed some help from these amazing people to have them. I have done hours of research on this, and it is agreed on by many professionals as well as families that have personally experienced adoption, that it is always better to be honest from the beginning.  Let the child own their story, be proud of it and know how much they were loved.  I have even asked the donor family to make a book about their family so the boys can see it and we can read it to them.

For anyone that is going through infertility, I strongly encourage you to look into and research embryo donation/adoption, because it has completed my life. Even if, God forbid our transfers are not successful, I would still 100% recommend this path to someone who is struggling to conceive. DNA is only one small part of being a parent, the fact that I will get to carry a baby, bond with him from the beginning is such a blessing.

Here are some messages that I have received from the donor mom... just so you can get an idea of our connection, and how beautiful this process can be.