OK - I've been wanting to blog for quite a while. Even if no one still reads my blog - I love going back to read it later - and it helps me to process stuff. And there's a lot on my mind right now.
We've always dreamed of having several children. We initially thought we'd have our kids two years apart. It seemed like a good time frame. We also thought it would be great to have children in the Spring b/c - being a teacher - it enables me to spend more time at home with the baby before going back to work. Well - as we all know - man can plan his steps, but it's the Lord that determines his course.
When we began our journey into Embryo Adoption, we stopped caring about what time of year it was. We 'got' embryos in November, transferred them in January and little Leah Rae was born in September. It was not ideal for me to take leave from Sept to Jan - but I didn't care at the time. I was so happy to be pregnant and so thrilled to have my daughter. But it really was/is tough coming back to work in the middle of the year: both for me and the students. And now we can plan ahead more.
Aiming to have a baby in the spring means that Leah will either be 18mos or 2 1/2 years old when a new baby arrives. More and more, we were thinking 18 months. Our midwife recommends at least 18 months between births. I never thought that I would want my kids that close, but I'm starting to see the benefits. (And I'm not getting any younger...)That means we'd have to aim for an FET this summer - July or August - and wow, that seems really close.
So, we started looking. It was such a 'random' (or God-ordained) chance that we got the embryos that Leah Rae came from last year. God had orchestrated things so beautifully. I don't know why I didn't think God would do that again, but I doubted. I started looking for embryos on our own. We had an appt with a clinic in Philadelphia. We called a clinic in NY. We re-visited the 'embryos-alive' website. I knew that it could take a long time for us to find embryos - so that would determine when we would proceed with #2.
Randomly, I checked the website for our clinic. (They don't have a waiting list, they just post embryos on the website; whoever 'finds' them first gets them, basically.) Lo and behold, there were embryos available!! I called my DH who immediately called the clinic and 'claimed' them. Boom. That fast. We have embryos.
Paying for them was a different story. We are required to pay upfront for the transfer, monitoring and legal fees all at once before they put them in our name. Well, we didn't have that much money. But, just like last time, God worked it all out. The clinic agreed to give us more time and God miraculoulsy provided the funds in time. (We told 1 couple that we love and trust about the embryos - and they offered to give us the money they had set-aside for a new Porche if we needed it to bring these children into our family!!)
The fun thing about these embryos is that they are Asian Indian. We have known since we began our adoption journey that God was building a family in His image - different from other families. (I've felt called to adopt ever since I read "The Family that Nobody Wanted" when I was in 5th grade - great read, BTW.) We knew that we wanted to adopt internationally someday. Before we pursued EA, we were on the waiting list for bi-racial infants. We joked about having the "united nations" in our family. But yet, we did stuggle accepting these embryonic children at first. I thought it would be weird to deliver and nurse a little indian baby. Micah and I both had so many "what-if's?".
But we then realized that these children were 'available' because nobody wanted them. The clinic gave us all 6 embryos. (If there was a demand, they would have split them 3 and 3. If others wanted them, they might have given them to someone who could come up with the fees faster.) These really are 'orphans' - even in the EA world, they are practically abandoned; children that nobody wants. These are the children that God has destined for us. As I prayed to see things with God's eyes, it became very clear to me. These are our kids.
I seriously hope that means that we'll get to meet them and raise them. In other words, I hope they 'make it.' EA is such an uncertain thing. Just because we were successful on our first attempt doesn't mean we'll be successful the next time. (I also learned that their quality is lower than would be frozen these days. They are from 2009, but in 2012 they would have been discarded.) I hope this isn't all an exercise in trust and willingness and faith. We ARE willing and we ARE trusting and I pray that one or more of these little snowflakes grows up in our family.
Yeah - wow - I still can't quite believe that we're about to begin this whole journey all over again. Leah Rae is so little still, but she's growing and becoming more independent every day. If we transfer the Indian embryos this summer, she'll be a toddler when the baby arrives. Part of me worries about robbing her of mommy and daddy's attention. I have to remember that I'll being giving her the joy of a little brother or sister. I'm super excited about what may come, but I still sometimes wonder.... ....is it too soon?????
