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Embryo Adoption: My FET Protocol Medication

January 9, 2020 By: Jessicomment

Part of preparing for a successful frozen embryo cycle means being on a lot of medications, supplements, and hormones. When people get pregnant naturally, everything aligns perfectly in their bodies for that pregnancy to happen. For those of us who struggle with diseases that cause infertility and miscarriage, we have to medically force our bodies into submission.

One thing I have learned about infertility treatment is that everyone has a different protocol and a different journey. So please know that what I’ve been prescribed for my FET protocol may look very different from what you’ll be prescribed. This journey comes with a lot of trial and error and adjustments along the way. I want to share what my FET protocol looks like because I’ve found it super helpful to see what others’ journeys look like! It helped me understand possible scenarios to expect so I want to do the same.

This is my FET protocol medication list from the clinic:

[Read more…]
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Embryo Adoption: How I Am Preparing My Body For The Frozen Embryo Transfer

January 3, 2020 By: Jessicomment

For years, I’ve written about preparing my body for various fertility treatments, for natural cycles, and natural ways to control my PCOS. Never in a million years would I have guessed that I’d get to write about preparing for a frozen embryo transfer via embryo adoption. But here I am!

Today I’m going to share some of the natural ways that I’m preparing my body to be more receptive to this frozen embryo transfer. In 2015, I shared natural ways that I was encouraging my body to (hopefully) receive an embryo following an IUI, and while I have picked up those same principles, a lot more is involved this time! I’m going to break it down by phase.

And believe me, I know that doing these things aren’t guaranteed to make the embryo stick or survive. We can’t 100% control whether this frozen embryo transfer is successful. There are so many factors outside of my control. All I can do is be a good steward of the body God gave me and that’s my plan.

Before Transfer

Anti-Inflammatory Diet. Oh, this one is so hard. Going gluten-free wasn’t that hard, but going dairy-free is. I love cheese, ya’ll. Like, LOVE IT. It’s a very common snack for me when I work from home so cutting it out is difficult, but it’s worth it to lower inflammation in my body. I’m basically on a low-carb (similar to Keto), no gluten/dairy/sugar diet right now. Healthy fats, good meats, veggies, berries, etc.

[Read more…]
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Embryo Adoption: Our FET Schedule

December 30, 2019 By: Jessicomment

I finally have our schedule for our FET (Frozen Embryo Transfer)! I feel like this was taking forever to happen considering we first started this process in June and had our first consultation in September, but here we are. I want to document as much of this process as possible, knowing this FET schedule is loose and will adjust as ultrasound results and blood work comes back. For now, here is the schedule from the clinic!

  • Birth Control Pills: December 27 – January 4
  • Baseline Ultrasound: January 7 or 8
  • Labs: Week of January 13
  • Uterine Lining Check & Labs: Week of January 20 (this can change everything about the actual the transfer date)
  • Transfer: Week of January 27

As far as a pregnancy test, I don’t know yet. I haven’t decided if I will test at home at all, or just wait for the official blood test. It’s going to take a lot of will power to wait but part of me wants to cherish being “PUPO” (Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise) as long as possible.

I also don’t want to go through the stress of comparing lines and whether they are getting darker like I did with my last miscarriage. We’ll see. My husband’s 36th birthday is February 8 so I feel like it would be such an amazing way to celebrate, but at the same time, I don’t know if we want to risk bad timing and potentially ruining a special day. It depends on how I feel. We’ve had negative pregnancy tests for both of our birthdays in the past due to failed infertility treatments. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to test before then, but we’ll see how the dates line up.

So that’s the tentative FET schedule! As it moves along, I’ll share details on Instagram primarily, but some Facebook, too. Follow over there for more frequent updates!

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Embryo Adoption: Required Third-Party Counseling

November 5, 2019 By: Jessicomment

Part of the embryo adoption process (which I shared in our checklist post!) includes required third-party counseling. Without releasing too many personal details, I wanted to share what this looked like for us in case it helps others going through embryo adoption. The counselor we chose was recommended by another local embryo adoption family, so we were able to do this close to home instead of at the clinic, thus saving another 6-hour round trip! All three sessions were completed back-to-back on the same day, which also made life easier. Glenn and I took half vacation days from work to make this happen, and we scheduled it at a time that the embryos’ biological mom was off work so it wouldn’t affect her normal schedule.

SESSION 1: Our Session: We met with the counselor for 90 minutes. The purpose of the session was not to identify our ability to parent children who are not biologically ours. She was not trying to identify how well we parent our current child either. She helped us walk through potential issues we could come up against, she encouraged us with best practices for handling such issues, and talked through different resources that would be beneficial for us. A lot of the conversation was “how would you handle this if it came up?” And we talked through whatever that thing was. I felt like we walked out of there better prepared for what lies ahead. I would say we were very encouraged!

[Read more…]
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Embryo Adoption: Our Step-by-Step Checklist

October 23, 2019 By: Jessicomment

I wanted to share our step-by-step checklist for our embryo adoption because I think there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes that people don’t even realize. Plus, this might help others going through this same process. That said, it will be different for you if you don’t know the biological family like we do. If you’re going through a clinic’s donor program or an agency, you’ll have some different steps, such as a homestudy, which was not required for us. Agency embryo adoptions do require a homestudy. Since our situation is private and not through an agency, a homestudy is not required. But if this was a private adoption of a living infant, it would be required. The laws are inconsistent and it really comes down to when the government believes life begins and what they consider to be an actual adoption.

So all that to say, this is our checklist of steps required to complete our embryo adoption. As the recipient, I pay for everything. The biological family does not pay for any of the items required of them. The family is already giving us the greatest gift, so this is a no brainer and NO problem! All of the below for both phases is costing approximately $9,800.

Phase 1

Before the clinic will even start you on medications for a transfer, these are required:

[Read more…]
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Embryo Adoption: The Saline Ultrasound

October 17, 2019 By: Jessicomment

Part of the process of pursuing this embryo adoption is making sure I can safely carry a pregnancy. Whether we transfer two embryos at the same time or just one at a time, safety is the priority. I went through a ton of blood tests and shared about those, so today I’m going to share about the next test I had: the saline ultrasound.

I’ve had two HSGs in my fertility journey already (2009 and 2014), which is when dye is injected into the uterus and through the tubes to check for blockages. This test is done in a radiology department at a hospital. I’ve never had any blockages, thank goodness, but in the case of embryo adoption, tubal blockages aren’t even important. I could do this whole thing without any tubes! What I need is a clean uterus, so that’s where the saline ultrasound comes in.

[Read more…]
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Embryo Adoption: Our Consultation Lab Results

October 12, 2019 By: Jessi4 Comments

When I shared about the embryo adoption consultation, I mentioned that it would take 2-2.5 weeks for the RE’s office to get all of the results in, and then, of course, the doctor would have to review them before I could see them. Some of these tests are extremely extensive and go way over my head. This is going to be short and sweet because it’s all good news!

[Read more…]
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More Embryo Adoption Fundraisers!

October 2, 2019 By: Jessicomment

We’ve been in fundraising mode like crazy lately! It’s a lot of work but it will be worth it to bring home these sweet babies. The last time I shared about our embryo adoption fundraisers, we only had three that were active. You can read about those here: Our Embryo Adoption Fundraisers. Since then, we’ve added SEVEN more, and today I’m going to share them! If anything, this should help give others ideas on how to raise money for adoption, no matter what kind of adoption they’re pursuing.

Between those three fundraisers, plus the first one I’m about to share, plus the amount we are setting aside off each paycheck we receive, we will officially have half what we need by October 15! HALF! I’m so hopeful that between the remaining fundraisers and what we set aside will help us raise the second half by transfer time!

Before I share these, let me preface this by saying that we have the BEST tribe of supporters. You honestly never realize how many people are cheering you on until you start being transparent and humbly ask for help. We’ve had people come forward and offer to host fundraisers on our behalf, and not all are going to be the biggest moneymakers, but they all matter. Not only the funds raised, but the heart behind them matter so much to us! I don’t care if it’s $20 raised… that’s $20 we didn’t have that covers some part of this embryo adoption process. We are so thankful for every dollar, every prayer, every word of encouragement we receive.

Also, I have to give a shoutout to my sweet friend Blair who sent me the most generous Erin Condren gift card [use that link to get $10 off your first order!] so I was able to pick out an amazing 15-month planner to help me keep all of these fundraisers and appointments organized from October 2019 to December 2020! I hope and pray that this planner will be the one to keep forever that chronicles how we got these babies and my hopeful pregnancy! So not only have our friends and family been generous with our fundraising, but they have helped fill other needs like this! It’s been so humbling.

Okay, so I’m done rambling. 🙂 Here are our newest fundraisers for our embryo adoption:

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Our Embryo Adoption Fundraisers

September 20, 2019 By: Jessi2 Comments

Now that we are officially in full “embryo adoption” mode, we currently have three active embryo adoption fundraisers that I wanted to share today!

T-Shirt

I can’t even begin to explain how many times I’ve edited this shirt design before I finally had to say “enough is enough” and launch it! That’s the enneagram 1 in me, I’m telling you. But it’s finally here and I’m so happy with it! It was important to me that this shirt honored many different avenues of adoption, not just ours. I wanted this to be a shirt for all adoptive families. I even had an adoptee on Instagram message me and tell me she loved the shirt! That made my heart melt! This shirt design is available to print on 5 different garments, and each garment has a variety of color options. Here is a little peek!

Bonfire doesn’t have the exact same colors for every garment type they offer, which makes sense, but I wanted to make sure people understood that if they’re looking for the same color for the whole family. It can be a bit tricky. If you order a shirt, please tag me on social media! I want to see it!

Order: ADOPTION is a BEAUTIFUL Adventure

[Read more…]
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Embryo Adoption: Our First Reproductive Endocrinologist Appointment

September 18, 2019 By: Jessicomment

We had our very first appointment with our new Reproductive Endocrinologist to start embryo adoption! The point of this appointment was to get established as a new patient and to identify a process for finding out if I can carry the two embryos we are adopting. While we know nothing is ever a sure thing (the embryos could not survive the thaw or the transfer), this appointment gave us so much hope.

What I particularly loved about this appointment was how supportive this doctor was. He didn’t try to convince us to do IVF with our own eggs and sperm, he didn’t push an agenda that benefits him and his clinic, he listened to us, encouraged us, and it was very clear that he supports us 100%. He personally knows the individual who has chosen us for this embryo adoption and thinks the world of her (all the staff there does!) so it was blatantly obvious that we were in the right place for this whole process.

[Read more…]
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