We are set to go with our protocol! It involves a lot of shots, pill popping and eating healthy and staying zen. I never question putting myself through this craziness....it's a part of the process now and I'm used to it. The embryo transfer date is MARCH 24. I will need lots of prayers, incantations, whatever you can do! Dan and my anniversary is March 28 so I somehow this the timing is poetic. It will be our 7th year of marriage and I can't help reflect on the people we were back then. We had no clue what we were doing and had no one to help us decide what to do. I swear, I should open a concierge service for couples starting out in this journey. There's so much to know and so many directions to go. We thought we were doing what was best for us at the time, but I now realize that creating relationships with doctors that truly care for you is so important. You get so much advice and opinions from everywhere and it can leave you so confused and all the while, you are digging a deeper pile of debt for yourself. It's worthless to look back and have regrets. I've resolved myself to being philosophical about it all....we are doing what we should be doing and we will have the child we are meant for. Pray that everything goes the way it should and that my body cooperates. And most of all, pray I don't run Dan out of the country with my mood swings!! xoxo

Embryos Chosen!

After a month of sifting through over 200 profiles, we finally chose 3 families, each with 2 embryos to adopt. The doctor wants us to have 6 total. There's a lot that factors in to this phase. We chose blastocysts, which are the most advanced, but they have a 70% success rate of unfreezing versus the younger, less advanced multicells or pro nuclei which have a 90-95% unfreeze success rate. Multicell and pro nuclei aren't as healthy and may not be viable when they unfreeze. To make a long story short, we are confident with the ones we chose. The embryologist will now look at each blastocyst after they unfreeze and decide which ones are the best to implant. We are scheduled to have the transfer the week of March 21. This part of the process has been a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. We would go through them all, pick the best ones and the clinic would call to say they had been adopted. Lots of people are in the same boat with Dan and me and they go fast. It took many rounds to find the right ones. And I think the ones we picked are great. Keep the prayers coming.

I haven't updated in a while because for a long time, we were in a holding pattern waiting for so many people to finalize paperwork on our behalf. Last Friday, I heard back from the patient coordinator and nurse at the same time that we have finally been medically cleared and our home study was approved!! YAY! I cannot believe we started this whole process in FEBRUARY and it's now mid December and we're finally getting the ball rolling. SOOOOO, I received 3 zip drives of files from the clinic. They each contain donor family profiles organized by embryo "grade". The earliest embryo that is frozen is know as 2PN (pro-nucleus), and if you don't remember these terms from high school embrology, this means it's the state of the cells after the sperm and egg have just joined. The next is called the multicell. When you do IVF, the embryologist looks at how your embryos are dividing on day 3 after fertilization. If they have divided in to 3-8 cells, they are charaterized as multicell and the doctor will transfer them to your uterus on Day 3. Day 3 embryo transfers are riskier, because the embryos aren't growing as fast or well as they could, but many, many IVF cycles have been successful with 3 day transfers. The last stage is called the blastocyst. These are transferred on Day 5 and are just before the embryo hatches. We have this huge pile of files to weed through now and narrow it down from about 225 to 10! Please pray that we have the patience and wisdom to navigate this portion of the process. It's very hard on us, mentally, physically and spiritually. But once we choose our 10 profiles, the doctors decide based on the overall health of the embryos and will transfer the best ones that give us the greatest chance for success. Stay tuned!

Home Study complete!

A quick post today - I got our home study evaluation today and it's on its way to the clinic! Hopefully now we can move forward and start getting embryo donor profiles! Stay tuned.....in the meantime, here's a snippet from the report;

Daniel and Carrie appear to be a very loving, happy couple. They are aware of the challenges of parenthood and undoubtedly have the patience, love and commitment which would encourage a child to thrive. Daniel and Carrie have put a great deal of thought, deliberation, and effort into making an informed decision on embryo adoption. They have the financial stability and resources to amply accommodate the future costs of raising a child. In addition, they have a strong network of family and friends, who offer enthusiastic and unconditional support to them as parents. I highly recommend the applicants, Daniel Zampich and Carrie Zampich for embryo adoption. As an Adoption Caseworker working with Adoption Resources & Counseling, Inc., a Georgia licensed child-placing agency, I am authorized by the State of Georgia to research and prepare home studies. A copy of the agency's license is attached to this home study.

No status

We are still on hold right now because we had a few references we had to get to the case worker. She confirmed today that she had everything she needed and would be drafting our home study over the next few days. I pray that she likes us and will give us a good recommendation. Once that's in, the clinic will hopefully approve it and start us with the profile matching process. Once all this happens (god willing) I will post more about that process. In the meantime, I wanted to put something out in to the universe that helps explain my daily state of mind. My sisters have pointed out a few times that I'm too negative and have a pessimistic view on life. I took these observations in and started to really think about my attitude. Most of the time, I'm putting on a brave face and always, always trying to make others laugh. To my core, I love to laugh and I LOVE funny people and have so many funny friends. So, to hear that I project negativity, I feel the need to explain how this whole process has changed me. First and foremost, all the hormones you take...the estrogen, the progesterone, the lupron, the egg stimulating drugs, the steroids....while they benefit the IVF process, they do heinous things to your body and your mind. I've gained over 40 pounds over 6 years. I constantly sweat (even when the room is freezing cold), my blood pressure fluctuates from feeling like I'm going to faint to feeling like I ran a marathon. I can easily go from laughing to crying and will bite your head off if you look at me sideways. For example, I was in the Target parking lot the other day and got in a fight with another driver who tried to call me out on my bad driving, so I screamed at him like a psychopath. I'm not writing these things to make people feel sorry for me, I'm writing them to try and explain that this process has not made me bitter, it has made me more compassionate towards others. The bitch you see in line at the airline counter yelling at the agent, or the "facebragger" that constantly tries to portray a perfect life.....they are going through SOMETHING, something that makes them project either negativity or phoniness. You just never know. As for my negativity, I ask you to bear with me. It's hard facing the day sometimes when you want something so badly and have no control over how to get it. It's hard to console a husband that gets so angry sometimes he can't be around others. Frankly, it's hard for us sometimes to be in a world full of children that belong to someone else. I have such a strong pull inside me to be a mom.....that will never go away. I'll leave you with this.....I babysat one night for a 5 year old and we were drawing and he said to me, "how do you spell 'I love Carrie'"? It's like the best and HARDEST thing to hear. It's like your heart starts hurting from so much happiness, then it feels like it will burst into a million pieces because you feel so broken that this isn't your child. Blah, ok, that's all. BE COMPASSIONATE. BE HUMBLE. BE KIND. Much love to you all.

NEDC Visit #1

First of all, THANK YOU for all the well wishes. This is such a scary, overwhelming process at times and it means a lot to have people cheering for you. It's like being in a marathon on Groundhog Day. You are tired, drained and in pain approaching the finish line, and when you get there, you are right back at the start of the race. Dan and I had our first appointment with the team at the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville yesterday. Why Knoxville? Because Georgia does not currently have a clinic that offers the whole process in one place and there are very few clinics in the U.S. that do. There are several embryo adoption registries out there where people can submit their application and wait for a donor to choose them, then have the embryos flown to their clinic of choice. Regardless, the law needs to catch up with technology! The NEDC is led by Dr. Jeffrey Keenan and a small staff of nurses, finance, patient coordinators and embryologist. We met with everyone in great length and talked about our history, treatments and all the ups and downs of our journey. He listened well and had tons of questions for us. Dan and I were kind of pathetic because we kept mixing up all the dates and procedures we've had done so we looked like morons. So much so that I put together a timeline today and sent it to him to try and redeem myself (see photo). He immediately expressed concerned about the fact that I have done so many IVF's and only gotten pregnant once. He is afraid I have an issue with implantation. There's not really any treatment if that's the case, so I am absolutely terrified that they won't medically clear us. The clinic has to keep their success rates up and don't want to take on cases they feel aren't achievable for them or their patients. We left that conversation with the Doctor vowing to study our embryology reports and deciding if it's something he can tackle. We moved on to the testing of my uterus. I had to come in with a full bladder because it's easier to study my uterus lining so I was so uncomfortable and in pain as they pressed the ultrasound wand on my stomach and studied the monitor. After that, they let me pee and the truly painful testing started. They insert a catheter into my uterus and squirt saline in there to check for polyps, lesions, cysts, etc. It hurts SO bad...like having a knife twisting in your body while suffering the worst menstrual cramps of your life. This test took about 10 minutes but everything looked great and the doctor was happy with my results. After that, they discussed the whole process of reviewing family profiles, embryo qualities and the selection process. They have over 150 profiles for us to choose from and we have to narrow it down to 10! From there, they select 5-6 of the best quality from that list and we decide to put either 2-3 embryos in on transfer day. We would have leftover embryos too in the event that the procedure doesn't work, we could try again or if we want a sibling later on. The embryos transfers are done at the clinic every other month so we could have done ours in November, but they are already full! So it looks like January will be our time, barring anything going wrong. They were handing us form after form and I think my eyes started to glaze over because I was getting so overwhelmed. This is A LOT to take on. We also found out about some hidden costs so that adds extra stress! But overall, I felt great about the clinic. It's small, and the staff is incredibly warm and really make you feel special and not just another patient number. So now I've been told to continue the hormones and monitor my cycle and we will activate my protocol in December. I'm hopeful because this clinic does things a little differently in terms of the meds and after care. I like the idea of not repeating the same protocol over and over and expecting a different outcome! So, that's it for now. It's all happening. PRAY the doctor won't give up on us. I am terrified by his concern over my implantation issues.....pray he finds the wisdom and knows how to tackle this and not send us away. Love to you all, Carrie

Update #14897468934765

I have been really bad about updating this blog and some people have been asking about where we are in this journey so I figured I should fill everyone in on this crazy roller coaster we're on! Back in February/March, I told you about our plans to pursue embryo adoption. We held an online "silent auction" and thanks to some amazing, generous, SAINTS ON EARTH, we were able to raise enough to move forward! The first step was contacting the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville to register and soon after, we received a packet full of paperwork to complete. We were also told we needed to set up a home study because legally, this is considered a "transfer of property" and the state of Georgia has different laws than other states so we have lots of hoops to jump through. I reached out to a fabulous case worker and she referred me to the website where I could download what felt like thousands of forms to complete. I'm telling you, they have to know EVERYTHING about you. You have to get local and federal criminal background checks, including being fingerprinted, pull 911 records of the last 5 addresses you've lived at, get cleared by the local parolee and sex offender websites, get blood tests for everything under the sun, including TB skin testing, get a physical (as well as get your husband that hates going to any doctor to actually go), compile financial docs, employment and salary verification, get reference letters from friends and family, complete gun safety and pool safety forms, complete online adoption education courses, send copies of our marriage license, home lease agreement, drivers license, proof of car and medical insurance, rabies vaccination reports for the dogs, make a copy of our sewage and water bills, send pics of household members and pictures of the house, an address list of residences for the last ten years and complete the most detailed autobiography I've ever seen in my life. Seriously, it asks you EVERYTHING. I'm listing this all out because I want people to know why the adoption process takes so long....it's not just because you have to wait for a baby or embryo, it's due to all this crazy paperwork, getting doctor approval, legalities, etc. It's NOT for the faint of heart or non committal. This is no joke. We got most of it all done and sent to the case worker and last week, she came to our house to meet Dan and me. It was very easy and natural and she really just wanted to see our house and find out what we've been through thus far in our quest to become parents. We left on a great note with promise to complete the final steps of paperwork we need for our files. This enabled us to be able to set up our first doctor's appointment with the Reproductive Endocrinologist on September 14th! At this appointment, they will introduce us to the clinic, the process and finally do an exam on me to make sure everything with my uterus and health in general is on point. According to the women in my Facebook support groups, once this appointment is over and has presumably gone well, you can start reviewing family profiles and select your embryos. I'm not sure how many we will be able to choose from....and there's a lot of medical "grading" and jargon I won't bore you with on how we go about choosing. But I trust the doctors will lead us through the right path and I'm confident we will end up with what we're meant to have. If all this goes well, we're thinking the procedure will take place in November. That's if all the stars align with all this paperwork and medical clearance that needs to go through. So, that's it - in a really poorly long written nutshell. I have to be transparent with all this because it's a relatively new technology and I really think it's important to get the word out to families that have lost hope or maybe didn't know this was an option. Dan and I have been through so much, and we are so grateful for all the medical advances we've witnessed throughout this journey. A long time ago, the doctor said that we would be parents someday and the baby that was meant for us, would find a way to us. Please pray that this is the answer for us and that we will finally get our miracle. It certainly has been a rough road and we are so ready for some GOOD news! I'll keep you posted on our progress. Love and blessings, Carrie