Jeopardy

We had our first official Christmas party of the year last night! We absolutely love the holiday season – seeing all our families is just such a blessing! On the way home we had the chance to talk deeply about “it all” again. Really in our house, the possibility of having kids and gestational carrier are words constantly used. Even though we talk about it all the time, we do realize that many who know us, are also wondering what is going on too. Dan and I were saying we have to make sure we keep people updated because God is just doing so much. So, even though sometimes there isn’t much going on (such as appointments), there are definitely lots of conversations happening. As you have probably realized there is a LOT to think about, so we hope that we can also educate everyone else on what this process all entails. Even though some may think this is all very personal info, and yeah it may be, but choosing to have a gestational carrier, automatically makes it a more public event. That is why we are quite open about this all – and for the biggest reason – we want God’s providence to shine through and all glory to be given to Him – we do not want to keep silent what He is doing!

On that note, we have been wrestling with some questions. The reason I titled this post “Jeopardy” is because I feel we have been given the facts/answers, like in Jeopardy – now we have to come up with the questions surrounding the facts. We were given statistics – 5% rate of having a take home baby with vitrification (freezing eggs) and a 1 year waiting list for embryos. Now we have found there are just so many questions surrounding those stats. Our minds have run wild with them.

If we went with freezing eggs, we thought we wouldn’t have to worry about retrieving eggs again and we wouldn’t have to talk about how many eggs to fertilize. But we learned that they need 6 GOOD eggs to even freeze them. If they don’t have 6, they don’t do it. Well, what if I don’t even have 6 good ones? Then we can’t even go that route. And 5%? How often are we willing to try? We almost see 5% as zero, though we realize that is a pessimistic way of looking at it. Though when you hear the others stats of using frozen embryos, it’s hard to want to freeze the eggs. I believe using frozen embryos, it’s a 40-60% success rate, depending on a couple of factors. I remember them saying that we are at a GREAT age to be doing IVF because our egg and sperm quality is typically good at this age (as far as we know). So when you compare 5 to 40 percent, it makes ya think!

What if we fertilize 8 eggs, and we just can’t afford or can’t physically try more than 3 times (using 2 embryos each time)? We would have two embryos left. We obviously don’t believe in discarding them (nor does the fertility center), and at this point, I will never be able carry my own. So it’s not like we could just save them for me later. And if when I was older, I could all of a sudden carry, we would want to try to conceive on our own, not do IVF. But that is not an option right now, so we don’t want to save them just for the possibility. What if this process didn’t work? It would be SO HARD to donate our extra embryos and know there are lil Sterks on this earth and we don’t even have our own child. That is the issue we are running into.

But then we think, what an incredible way to “pay it forward!” Our hearts break for those who cannot have their own child naturally. Our hearts break for those who have to involve others in order to have a child (such a using an egg and/or sperm donor, or use a gestational carrier). We know what that feels like – it’s not something you necessarily “wish” for. Yet for us, we know that God has had this planned for us since the beginning of time. Here we sit with the opportunity to have someone else carry our child FOR US. Why not give the gift of being able to assist others in having their own by donating our embryos? We NEVER would have imagined having to think about all this, but we are realizing that in this whole situation, God’s grand scheme is so much bigger than ours. We have no clue how this will all end up – God may call us to do some things that completely take us out of our comfort zone. But we have to trust that His steps are perfect.

We know God has answers to all the questions we have. Maybe being told 5% and 1 year waiting list is a closed door, yet God opened another one – embryo donation. We don’t know. We know whatever route it is, it’ll be perfect and for God’s greater purpose.

I was just reminded of a book that we carry at the bookstore called “Misconception.” It’s a book about an embryo mixup, where a family was implanted with the wrong embryo, gave birth to the child, and gave the child back to the biological parents. I know it’ll be a good read, considering our current situation.

Hope you all had a good weekend!