OUR MIRACLE PART TWO:)

I know that this whole miracle of the little one in my womb is not at all conventional... but truly I see the WHOLE story as a total God thing... and that is why I continue to share more of the story... I want him to receive all the glory... it is totally His work... we are just a part of it... and are absolutely thrilled to be...:)

I got a call today from our upstairs neighbor at the seminary... (man I miss you Maryann:) to congratulate us. She said she was amazed by our desire to do what we feel the Lord leading us to do even though the risk for big loss is there. I told her right away... that there was nothing to be amazed with on our part... but that we felt led by God to walk forward knowing His will would be done... and He would get us through that if it ends in a gloriously wonderful way with a baby in our arms or if it doesn't end the way we are hoping... He will carry us and sustain us through it all. If it doesn't got the way we are hoping will we be sad? Of course... but we know He will get us through that time too... we have seen Him to be faithful over and over again... and we know He will prove faithful no matter how this goes:)

OK, so I left off with us on the waiting list at the fertility clinic here in town... waiting for a match from a couple that had embryos they were willing to donate.

Here is where the crazy stuff starts happening... Not really crazy, but crazy to me in how God worked... unbelievable more like.

So later that same day, the day that we had our appointment at the fertility clinic I was checking a blog of a gal in Kansas... Jen. I always thought her blog was really neat... she was a mom to 7... six at the time adopted. Anyways.... I checked her blog that day and guess what she is announcing.... she is pregnant as a result of embryo adoption. In my head I was thinking... you have got to be kidding me... this is just too wild. So I was going to comment and congratulate her. When I clicked on the comments I read the other 11 before mine and was smiling as I read of everyone's joy for her.

Then I came across a comment from a gal saying that she was on the other side of the situation, looking for a loving Christian couple to adopt her embryos. Call me nosy... call it the Lord's leading...whatever it was, I clicked on her name and it led me to her profile for her blog. I went to her blog and started reading.

Immediately my heart went out to her... she was a young widow... only 30 years old. Her husband had died just 4 mos. before Samuel. Immediately I felt a connection to her... We were 2 women who had both experienced a loss. I can not imagine losing my husband at such a young age. Our losses were different, yet grief is similar in a lot of ways for those who are grieving and different in other ways. She had beautiful 3+year old twins. They were just precious. She had an amazing faith in the Lord that was plain to see all over her blog. My heart just broke for her as I read her story.

That was when the strangest thing happened. I felt this really strong urge to email her. I know this may sound odd to some, but I have found great comfort in words from other bloggers who have suffered a similar loss to me. I have made precious friends that are now my friends in real life.

It was wild, here is she a Christian young lady needing a family for her embryos. Here we had just been to the clinic talking about embryo donation. Here I had come across her on a blog post about a pregnancy as a result of embryo adoption. There were a lot of things going through my mind. Looking back I know that the nudging to email her was from the Holy Spirit... I ignored it for hours... but it was continuously heavy on my heart that night. I was up late, late, late, praying about it.

After many many hours of ignoring it, still feeling the strong nudging, praying about it... I just felt like it was God leading me to email her... I didn't want to ignore Him. The first thing I thought was that I did not want her to think that I was after her embryos. When I emailed her I first off expressed my sympathies to her on the loss of her husband and told her of our Samuel. Then I told her how I had come across her comment on the other blog and that I just felt a need to email her and tell her our situation. I totally told her to completely disregard my email if it seemed odd to her at all. And I gave her our blog address so she could read up on our family and the rest of our story.

It was crazy the next morning I had an email from here saying that she was a bit shocked but really pleasantly surprised by my email. She had read our blog and thought we should both pray about it, seek some Godly counsel, and email each other again in a week. (Later on after I had spoke with her and Jen on the phone I had heard that she emailed Jen right away asking if I was legit... or somewhat crazy. Jen had told her that she had read my blogand that I seemed like the real deal:) I totally understood her doing that)

About a week later we emailed again and decided to keep moving forward with the possibility of her donating her embryos to us. She emailed us a list of questions to get to know us better, hear more about our faith in our Savior Jesus, and to figure out more where were at morally with what we would do with her embryos. She had 7 embryos and she wanted to make sure we would give them ALL a chance at life. I assured her that was something that she didn't at all have to worry about with us... they would all get a chance.

I stayed up really late one night answering all of her questions ... it was actually really fun to tell her more about who we were. I wanted it to be the right thing and for her to have total peace about it if this was something we would really move forward with. I wanted her to really know more of who we honestly are.

I then sent her a some questions. It was really cool to hear more about her and what her husband was like. These embryos would be genetically theirs so it was neat to hear more about their likes/dislikes , hobbies etc. Our possible future children would look like them and probably act a lot like them so this was just fascinating to me.

We continued to email back and forth. Then on December 11th we brought sweet baby girl home. I emailed her at that point and said that having sweet baby girl here didn't change our feelings at all on adopting her embryos. But I think it was February when I emailed her and said we may need to put it on hold a bit. As sweet baby girls whole adoption situation got stickier and stickier and the costs associated seemed like they might go up significantly we weren't sure if we would have the funds to do the embryo adoption also. She totally understood and we agreed to just wait a bit and see how things played out.

Let me explain just a bit here on how the cost associated with embryo adoption stand up against regular adoption or even IVF for that matter.

IVF can cost anywhere from about 12,000- $19,000 depending on medications.

Regular domestic adoptions can cost anywhere from $8,000 at a strictly volunteer run organization to up to $28,000

And embryo adoption can range anywhere from around $3,000 to $20,000

I knew that our costs would definitely be on the lower end of that.

So that is where I will leave you today... this sweet precious gal and I still emailing... but the embryo adoption on hold...

Hopefully I can get the rest of the story posted next time... and then maybe just do some fun posts on the logistics of how this little one came to be... Thanks for hanging with us...