We spent time focusing on Rodney’s health, which seemed connected to our fertility struggle. We also continued with some natural attempts at helping our fertility. We went to a chiropractor. Rodney saw an acupuncturist for a while. We did natural supplements and vitamins. All of these things we hoped would help our infertility and Rodney’s health. And yet nothing improved or changed.
In April of 2008, we were ready. We made an appointment with an urologist who specialized in infertility who came recommended by our Reproductive Endocrinologist. We discovered that Rodney had bilateral varicoceles, which can sometimes interfere with infertility. We made the difficult decision to have surgery to repair them. The surgery was in August 2008.
Three months later, we had follow up tests to see if anything had improved. Unfortunately, they hadn’t. It was quite a blow to us. The doctor asked us to wait another 3 months and have at least one more test done. He had already recommended in vitro fertilization (IVF) with intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to us, but we weren’t ready emotionally or financially to do that. So in February 2009, we had our last test done.
The results were devastating. Zero. The numbers showed zero sperm. Not a few, not just slow. But nothing. I don’t think there is anything that could have prepared us for that. We were shocked.
That closed the door on biological children for us. What now? What do we do? Rodney did not feel right about adoption at the time and I still desperately wanted to carry a baby and experience pregnancy. It seemed impossible.
As I pondered our situation, I remembered a radio program we had heard where they had discussed “Snowflake” babies – embryo adoption. I discussed it with some people from my support groups. I was unsure how to bring this up with Rodney and wasn’t sure if he would be open to it. After about a week of thinking of it myself, I decided I needed to mention it to Rodney.
He also remembered having heard about embryo adoption from the radio program, but wasn’t sure of how it all worked. I was thrilled to hear he was open to the idea! In fact, he told me that he thought this might be a great idea because he knew how badly I wanted to be pregnant and he wanted that for me, too. So we both thought about it for another week…and then we both decided to say YES to embryo adoption. And so there we were – we were going to adopt embryos!
Everything started to move so quickly! I called Nightlight and got the application information in March. I called a local adoption agency and we had our first homestudy meeting on April 1st, 2009. Our homestudy was complete in June, our profile was finished and sent to Nightlight in July and we were officially waiting!
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