Real Stories of Embryo Donation

Sam & BRie

My story is my passion for this organization: At 40, I finally decided that I couldn’t wait any longer - I needed to be a parent without a partner.  I thought it would be easy.  I am fit, healthy, and have a lot of eggs.  It wasn’t.  I suffered through the crazy, devastating, opaque infertility process with no visible solution for 4 years.  Hands down the worst years of my life: doctors telling me to try again without a diagnosis, and even telling me that maybe kids aren’t worth it.  I found more high walls with traditional adoption, because I was over 40 and single.  I didn’t give up hope.  After depleting my savings on IVF and adoption efforts, and a lot of soul searching, I discovered private embryo donation.  I asked my social media network to give me a miracle, to find me an embryo.  Sam is my miracle: a donated embryo from a woman in Chicago.  I got calls from people I didn’t know with embryos as far as Bangkok, to share their remaining batches.  Even then, I was a pioneer at my fertility clinic, working with them to accept their first donated embryos, and working through legal and logistics to make them mine.  Fast forward, Sam is 2 and his full little sister Brie is 6 months, and I can’t think of anything more important to do – to allow other people suffering through infertility to be able to have children to love.

Hear my story on 9News with Kyle Clark

A Beautiful Stori

In 2016, my husband and I finally decided, after only 18 years together and 10 years married, that it was time to add a baby to our lives. In April of that same year, we received the exciting news that I was pregnant after only one attempt. All natural, nice and easy. At the first ultrasound, the doctor said, “There’s the baby” as I saw the precious little dot on the screen. Then she said, “Oh, there’s another” then I felt the room getting smaller. Whoa, twins!? But then she stopped what she was doing, froze for what felt like an hour, and said “There’s three!” That was the most life changing moment I’d experienced yet. Spontaneous triplets!

But four months later, I was in the hospital for 40 days due to pregnancy related problems.  My water broke at 25 weeks - two of the triplets lived only two days, one lived a week. We were both completely devastated. Through faith and support from family and friends, we survived this tragedy.

After a year of physical and mental healing, we decided it was time to try for another baby. We spent the following two years with multiple failed attempts at getting pregnant, filled with heartache and frustration. We met regularly with our fertility doctor to review our options. It was at one of these meetings when we first heard of embryo donation. We soon decided this would be our next step. We were given Embryo Connections information and quickly began the matching process. Within a few months we were matched up with a family.  After exams, treatments, and testing, our embryo transfer date was set for June 26, 2019. After many tears, heartache and  almost giving up, we are so excited that our precious miracle baby was born February 13, 2020.  Finding a wonderful fertility doctor and Embryo Connections has been a blessing beyond words. We wouldn’t have our beautiful daughter without either and now have quite the story to share with our sweet Stori.