Written by Heather Traveski
Edited by the Embryo Adoption Awareness Center
Part 1- A heart breaking discovery
My husband and I were married in January of 2005. We both were really excited to start a family, and we were really surprised when I wasn't getting pregnant. We met and worked in a 3rd world country where there weren’t many medical options, so we were never really sure why I wasn't able to get pregnant. About three years ago I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome and started on medication for that, but still I wasn't getting pregnant! Finally we met a doctor who had both my husband and I tested and discovered that we were not able to have children.
On the way home from the hospital I sat on the back of our motorcycle, driving past rice fields, and I was devastated. I had a steady stream of tears running down my cheeks.
As soon as we got home I started pursuing the idea of adoption through researching online. I talked to adoption specialists and even people who help people like us raise money for adoption. But the answer from everybody was very startling and similar. It was just going to be really hard for us to qualify while living in a 3rd world country. I was seriously confused- we were where we knew we were called to be, we had such a desire to become parents, yet the two things seemed to conflict. I was also really grieving the fact that I'd never carry a baby. I'd never feel a baby moving around inside of me. I'd never give birth to a baby. I'd never nurse a baby. This was really hard for me to deal with, yet I was accepting it.
Then I had a conversation on the phone with a good friend in the U.S. who has a sister-in-law who is a doctor. My friend had heard from her sister-in-law about embryo adoption. She had no idea if she should mention it to me or not, but thought, "Well it won't hurt!"
I had never heard of such a thing. I could feel my heart pounding even at the thought that maybe I would be able to have a baby. I wrote to a woman who had been writing to me about adoption and told her that I had heard about embryo adoption. She responded that it was a wonderful idea and gave me the email address of a friend who had just given birth to a child that she had adopted as an embryo.
After corresponding with new embryo adoptive parent, I contacted the doctor that handled the embryo transfer procedure. The doctor emailed me, asked me questions, and then talked to me on the phone for about an hour. Over the next few months they found suitable embryos for us (my husband and I are not of the same ethnicity and we weren't too concerned about the ethnicity of the embryos), we went through the legal process, and at the beginning of April 2011 we flew to Los Angeles. We spent a month there having all of the pre-transfer exams and blood tests, and then the day of the transfer arrived.
Don't miss the heart warming conclusion in next weeks Testimonial Friday Blog.
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