Something to Remember

I got this from someone's signature in a forum that I frequent.  Love it and it says it all:

Natural Child: Any child who is not artificial.

Real Parent: Any parent who is not imaginary.

Your Own Child: Any child who is not someone else's child.

Adopted Child: A natural child, with a real parent, who is all my own.

- Rita Laws, PhD - 

Balanced Translocation and Meeting

So....just heard back from the RE about our karyotyping results. Apparently both DH and I are freak shows! Not only do I have my own blood clotting disorders and embryonic toxic factor, but DH is a balanced translocation carrier of chromosomes 12 and 16. A balanced translocation can cause miscarriages, infertility, and/or birth defects of a baby.

We already knew this, but our daughter is an ABSOLUTE MIRACLE. Thank you, Lord God, for our miracle child. She is such a blessing.

I feel relieved that there is an answer to all of this heartache. There is a reason why all of it was happening to us. The RE wants us to speak to a genetic counselor at Maternal Fetal Medicine. I am very interested in this because I want to find out if our daughter is a carrier, as well, and if she will have reproductive problems in the future. I hope with all my heart that she is spared.

This diagnosis makes us even more confident in our decision to adopt. I felt as if God was telling me it was okay to start this journey on Thursday when I spoke to R, who is adopting through the same agency. Now, I feel like this is an actual sign that we are to move forward in the adoption process.

We met with the agency yesterday to ask more questions one-on-one and to get the process started. However, we are waiting because to be fair, they want some of the adoptive families that have been waiting for a while to be matched before they put us in the pool. She said we could get started on our profile and we could take educational classes through the agency as they come up, but we will have to wait a few months to begin the actual home study process. Disappointing, yes, but I am glad they are looking out for all parties involved, though. It shows me they are really thinking about the families.

We are excited to moving forward in this journey.

Consult and Beginning Adoption Process

We had our consult appointment with Dr. Robin on February 21 to go over what happened and why and to see if she could pull anymore tricks out of her hat for us on the testing and TTC front. She is thinking the latest cause for our recent m/c is either chromosomal or unexplained. We know it's not a blood clotting thing or because of low progesterone because I was covered in both of those areas. I told her I had a hard time believing it was chromosomal after so many m/c that we've had.

She explained to us about a French couple that had come to her after not getting pregnant and then when they did get pregnant (finally) they would always m/c. Sounds kind of familiar to us...I'm listening. They finally did a parental karyotyping test, which is a simple blood test, on them and found out that (in simple terms) their chromosomes were not matching up. Their chromosomes were fine on their own, but when they went to make a baby, 9 times out of ten, it wouldn't "match up correctly". They do have a correction for this, which would be an IVF and they would take out a cell from each embryo and test it to see if it is normal or abnormal. One cell in the embryo tells them about the other cells in the embryo. They would then only take the normal celled embryos to place back for the embryo transfer. This test is the cost of a regular IVF plus about $4000 more for the cell testing.

Anyway, this may be a possibility for us. I don't think the IVF and cell testing is a possibility because of the ginormous cost, but we already did the parental karyotyping blood test just to see if we have this problem. If we do, that would be one more problem added on to the problems we already have, so we would probably just stop TTC. Unless, of course, we won the lottery or something and came across some money to afford this procedure. We are going to wait for the results before deciding anything, though.

Meanwhile, we have an appointment tomorrow with our agency to ask more questions and get started with the application process for the adoption. We are excited about this new adventure, but a little nervous, too. I have my list of questions ready.

Today at school one of the maintenance guys came in that I recognized from working at another school. I had always seen him at another school and we had always had this connection because he got married to his wife shortly after DH and I got married. He and his wife honeymooned at the same place DH and I honeymooned. In talking with him today, he asked if I had any kids and I told him I had a two year old and asked about him. He said he and his wife are adopting! They are adopting using the same agency we are going to tomorrow! I shared with him that we are considering adoption, too, and he gave me his email in case I wanted to talk to his wife about anything. I felt like this was God's way of telling me everything is going to be okay. Thank you, Lord.