Secrets, secrets

I've been waiting for the right time to write this post, mostly because I'm not sure how some folks might react. But then I realized that we have a pretty amazing story to share and I shouldn't keep it quiet just because I might get some strange responses. First, though, here's the backstory.

December 1, 2001

I married R. Mike Conner, who would soon become my best friend. Within 6 months we decided to go ahead and try to start a family.

2002-2005

We had yet to conceive and underwent several infertility testing. Finally we received the news: it'd take a miracle for us to ever conceive a child without some kind of major medical intervention. This came as such a disappointment and we went through a grieving phase for at least a year. And to be honest, we also went through a stage of questioning God and His love.

spring 2004

We enlisted in our county's foster parent program with the hopes of getting a child we could eventually adopt. We received a toddler around March and were told prospects were good for us to eventually adopt. Unfortunately, this placing didn't work out and we "lost" our foster son in spring of 2005. There's much more to this story, but I'll sum it up by saying we were devastated. This threw us into a pit much worse than where we'd been before foster care, both emotionally and spiritually. It'd take us at least 2 years before we were willing to even think of trying adoption.

May 2008

We decided to meet with Bethany Christian Services to learn about their adoption program. During that meeting, the case worker asked if we had considered embryo adoption. Years ago I'd looked into it, but thought it was way too expensive. It was at this meeting that we learned about a fertility doctor in Knoxville, TN who had contracted with Bethany to offer embryo adoptions to couples who were cleared for adoption through Bethany. The best part: he viewed this as his ministry to save frozen embryos so he was offering to do up to 3 rounds of embryo transfers for a third of the cost that traditional fertility doctors charge.

So, here's the news. We met with the doctor in Tennessee this past week and have been cleared for their embryo transfer program. We also had our home study approved by Bethany the first of this month. Thus, we are now on track to have our first embryo transfer in 4 months. Yay!!!