Meant to be

Our profile was posted on Miracles Waiting for awhile, but we did not have many inquiries. I started getting more bold and would query donor ads as they were posted. I chatted with a few donor couples through email, but nothing worked out. We went ahead with IVF #2 with our own goods, adding ICSI to the mix, to see what really is the problem . . . eggs not fertilizing or just plain rotten eggs. I was put on the pill for 6 weeks to quiet my ovaries and recruit follies all of the same size, with the plan they would all grow together and all be mature at the same time. Uh, yeah. More on that later. While I was on BCPs, a donor ad appeared on MW that caught my eye. It had "matched" next to it for awhile, but this day, that wording was gone. I emailed. I waited. I got a reply! That was May 23rd, 2006.

The donor mom responded by saying they had been matched but the recipients changed their mind. This was actually the second match that didn't work out, so they were very cautious/reserved about even trying to find a match again. Of course, we are so thankful that they did! We emailed for about 2 weeks, and then made plans to meet the following month, in mid-July.

In the meantime, we went ahead with the IVF cycle, even though we had no hope in it, and wre so excited to blessed with embryos from such a wonderful family. The stimming part of the cycle went really slowly, as they were trying to push me longer to get more eggs to maturity. that did't work. They retrieved 20 eggs that cycle, 9 of which were mature, but 8 fertilized with ICSI. We had 8 embryos!! Hope returned . . . for about 36 hours, when we got a call the day before the scheduled 3-day transfer that the embryos "weren't doing as well as expected" and not to get our hopes up. We were cancelled the morning of transfer again. It hurt a bit, but not much, since I already had my heart attached to these frozen embryos and their family. Timing was good too, since we were cancelled at the end of June, and had our meeting with the donor family all set for 2 weeks later.

Our family of three spent the day with their family of 4 at the Mystic Aquarium on July 16th, and we all hit it off right away. It was so right. We were matched!