Happy homecoming anniversary, Fernando!

(photos forthcoming)

A year ago, we had our fourth and last embryo transfer.  First transfer of two blastocysts on the 11th anniversary of daddy and I meeting, resulted in a week-long pregnancy followed by a chemical loss.  Second transfer of two blastocysts, about four months later, resulted in a "BFN" - big fat negative (pregnancy test). Third transfer of two blastocysts from a second batch resulted in our miracle 3 year old daughter, your genetic sister Maya. And our last transfer was also planned for two blastocysts, but only one survived the thaw.  That last little embryo was you Fernandito!

Just like with your sister three years earlier, daddy had to wait across the hall while I went in for transfer.  My bladder was bursting and I was certain that I would pee on the doctor, for which I wouldn't have felt bad since he made me drink twice the recommended amount of water and then had me wait on the transfer bed.  I walked on the wild side this time, and secretly took a photo of myself just before transfer.  (What'd you think I was going to say?  I videotaped the transfer?  I wish! Our first two transfers were videotaped, but alas that's irrelevant to you, I guess.)  Luckily this time I wasn't made to lay there for 30 minutes, so I was up and with daddy and Maya in no time.

We had made the whole trip into a family vacation.  We visited my brother and his family, Alex's grandpa and some cousins, aunts and uncles, and we managed a quick day trip to the beach the day before transfer.  I squeezed in an acupuncture session on the morning of the transfer, just in case it would help.  It certainly helped me relax and put me in the right frame of mind, if nothing else.

As we were leaving the hospital after transfer, we had someone take a lovely photo of us - first photo of us as a family of four!  I knew that no matter what, this was the last time I was undergoing any sort of fertility treatment, and all that was left was to find out what the good Lord had in mind for the future of our family.

I'm not sure what to think of the embryo that didn't get transferred.  All of the other embryos we "adopted" were in my body for however brief a moment in time.  I sort of thought of them as little angel companions for each other, especially for my Maya.  But Fernando, you were in there all alone.  So silly how the mind can weave crazy stories out of nothing.

Your batch of four embryos, I called the Franciscans, after the newly elected Pope Francis.  Maya's companion embryo I named Raquelita after my late best friend, Rachel.  We called Maya "Dee or Dino", alternating months during the pregnancy, since we weren't finding out her sex until after birth.  Your would-be companion embryo I named Francis.  We found out you were a boy in mid-pregnancy, at which point we started to think of names.  We had decided not to name you the boy names we had prepared three years earlier when expecting Maya. You were not some fantasy but a real boy, our son, and everything had to be reset.  Until then, you were a "Franciscan" ;)

I'm going to go ahead and put it out there, though I went back and forth about it.... I started to suspect right after your transfer that you may receive a calling to the priesthood.  (Since we're Catholic, this also meant that I suspected you were a boy!)  You see, after your sister was born and we moved to a new state, I became distant in my faith for a long time.  I had all but given up being able to recapture that sense of spirituality going into your embryo transfer.  Literally within days, I felt something spiritual.  I cannot explain what it was, because it wasn't anything concrete.  I just felt God's presence, I guess.  For the first time in years, I felt hope that I may one day truly "be Catholic" again.

I had a terrible first trimester as far as nausea and prenatal depression.  It was so bad that I had to request prescription medication, because the ginger root tea that finally helped when I was pregnant with Maya only made things worse this time!  I was thinking all sorts of nonesense about my lack of worth and I dreaded the idea of being responsible for two small children. I tried to sleep most of the time to avoid facing these thoughts.  But two Sundays in a row, before and after we moved into the house where you were born, the nausea and depression let up, to the point that I felt well enough to pack and move some of our stuff the first time it happened, and to unpack and put some things away the second time it happened.

Because these were Sundays, I again thought this was a sign of a possible religious vocation for you.  Whether or not the Lord calls you to the priesthood or not, He clearly called you to help bring me back to the faith!  I went on a spiritual retreat while pregnant with you, which helped tremendously in edging me in the right direction (namely, towards God).  As I write this, I am in my third week of spiritual direction, and I have started to call Jesus my friend.

In one of your sonograms, you resemble your sister Maya.  It is most uncanny, the lip and chin area in particular.  With Maya, I didn't think she looked anything like her sonos, but with you, wow!  I hope that you and Maya will be very close friends and are able to find comfort in each other's shared journey as donor conceived adoptees.  I have been working on locating your genetic family, in case you or Maya ever want more information about your genetic roots.  The Lord even put in my life a lady at our church who loves doing geneology and who has been working on your genetic family tree for many months.  I was also able to get a little more information from the clinic where your and Maya's embryos were stored, which has been a great joy to me, and I'm hoping it can help us locate your and Maya's three older genetic siblings, if not your donors as well.

So Fernando, thank you for showing me that just when I thought my heart couldn't possibly grow to accomodate loving another child as much as I love Maya, you proved me wrong!  My heart has been cloned, and each of you have their own mommy-heart in my chest.  I don't know how else to describe it.  I love you, and I'm so very happy that you're here and we're all together as a family now!

Belonging and Identity

My daughter was born to me.  I did not adopt her.  I have to get it out of my head that embryo donation is just an early prenatal adoption, the way I was taught to believe by my pro-life Christian online forum acquaintances.  This attitude helped me get over my desire to not go against any Catholic church teaching, which forbids donor conception but welcomes adoption, and which recognizes personhood from the moment of conception.  For my own sanity, I was able to pursue embryo donation and still feel completely aligned with my faith.  

But now that I no longer have a need to be in line with that - or any other - organized religion, I'm also free to look at the circumstances of our family formation without trying to spin it a certain way.

There was no legal adoption that took place.  My daughter never knew any other relatives, any other human beings, until she began to grow and develop in my womb.  Absolutely all of her experiences and memories have been shaped by me and Alex and the people we have introduced her to.  Her donors were in no way coerced to give her up, as is the case sadly in many adoptions.  Her conception was no accident.  It was very well planned and thoughtfully carried out.  She was dearly wanted from the beginning. (That is not to say that this doesn't apply to adoptees, only that the circumstances of their birth tend to have an element of bad timing.)

I look at artificial reproductive technology as a sort of pre-mixing of cake.  You get all the necessary ingredients together, and then if need be, you put the mix in the fridge until you are ready to put it in the oven.  And perhaps you premixed more than you could reasonably eat, maybe because you are concerned about messing up the recipe and having to dump one or two failed attempts, so you allow for a margin of error. So after one or two cakes have come out of the oven, you realize you still have the makings of another cake left that would be a shame to get rid of.  So you donate it, let someone else bake it in their oven and enjoy it as if they made it from scratch.  Obviously people are not cake, but I hope the metaphor makes sense.  

Now I know that any pro-lifers who agree with the Catholic stace of personhood beginning at conception won't be able to get past this comparison.  How can I talk about tiny little people as dispensable, experiments, donations?  That's where we differ.  I do not believe that Maya was already a person before her embryo implanted in my uterus.  I believe that all the ingredients for her physical body were there, but that she only became animated once implantation took place.  It was my blood, my flesh, the environment that I provided for her during pregnancy, that molded the raw ingredients provided by her donors into the unique individual that she became.  And she is not done becoming, either - none of us are!  We all continue to change and evolve according to the experiences of our lives, never arriving at who we think we are.  What we really are, deep down, is not limited to our physical incarnation, our earthly life.  But that's another story.

So, while I do think we have an obligation to honor her Filipino heritage, I do not think that we need to do this to the exclusion of her Polish and Salvadoran heritage.  These last two are the cultures that she was born into.  She wasn't born into a Filipino culture.  

Alex and I recently took a DNA test to see what our ethnic heritage is made up of.  Alex has a large portion of his heritage (about half) indigenous Central American.  In other words, he is half Native American, according to his genes.  He was not born into a Native American family or culture.  He was born into a Salvadoran culture.  Similarly with me.  I long suspected that I have some Roma heritage, and it seems that there is about an eight of my heritage that originates in South Asia, which likely means I was right.  But I was not born into a Romani family or culture.  I was born into a Polish culture.  

What's more, we both changed dominant cultures when our parents brought us to the United States.  Now our dominant culture is American.  So too with Maya.  My Roma blood, Alex's Native American blood, and Maya's Filipino blood all contribute to our physical appearance.  I have the least amount of non-white genes, and so you really have to know what you're looking for to see it in me.  Only my very white relatives have ever noticed my light olive complexion, dark brown hair, and light brown eyes as being possibly of an origin other than Polish.  And while I feel intrigued by this link, and as much as Alex would like to claim his Native American heritage, what really defines us is our American culture.

Now I know that there are two points to consider here, and I've only talked about personal identity so far.  Based on my experience and Alex's, I am making the assumption that Maya will view her Filipino heritage similarly.  She may not, but then again, my parents never anticipated the difficulties I would have with my identity when we immigrated to the US.  

The other point to consider though is how mainstream society perceives us.  People assume I'm Anglo-American, or at least "just white" with solid roots in American genealogy.  They do not see a Polish immigrant.  Alex was once assigned the boxes of "white Hispanic" without being consulted. Are we treated differently?  It is really impossible to compare my experiences with those of Alex.  

First of all, I am female; he is male.  Second of all, we have very different personalities.  I've struggled with my identity while Alex hasn't.  If Maya takes after her dad, which we have reason to believe that she just might, she'll take on a carefree attitude as well.  If she takes after me, the brooding type, then no matter what we do, she will analyze every little thing to the detriment of much progress!  

Bottom line, I think I'd be doing her a disservice by fixating entirely on her Filipino heritage, to the exclusion of her Polish and Salvadoran heritage.  If identity is formed in large part through culture, and culture is passed down through language and experiences and values, then she has more claim to Polish and Salvadoran - and American - culture than she does to Filipino culture.  But identity is still determined to a degree based on genetics, and that's why we can't simply ignore her Filipino heritage. Only as she grows will she be able to reflect on her own identity and determine which aspect(s) of her background are the most salient for her.  

Does Alex have a claim to his Native American heritage even though he wasn't brought up in that culture?  I think so.  But I think so in large part because it's a significant part of his genetics, and it affects his physical features and thus how he is perceived by others.  Do I have a claim to my supposed Roma heritage?  I doubt it.  Probably because the percentage is something like 12% or less, and it doesn't have a significant affect on my physical features or how people perceive me.  

What I find interesting about Alex's heritage and identity is this.  As a Latino, he is by definition multiracial.  His ancestors include Native Americans and white Spaniards.  If he had been born in the United States, with North American Native American heritage rather than Central American, he would not be considered "Latino" even if his white ancestors were Spanish speaking Spaniards.  Yet because he has the added layer of immigrating to the United States, within the US, his multiracial identity is replaced with the label of "Latino".  

Similarly, had my family emigrated to a different European country instead of across the Atlantic, I wouldn't be considered "white" as my primary identity, but Polish.  Our differences - mine and those of the people of our host country - would be highlighted over our commonality, opposite to what happened to me in the US.

Maya, had she been born into her donor family, would be a multiracial American, just like she is after having been born into our family.  She would be perceived the same by society - multiracial.  People may guess as to her heritage - Latina?  Part-Chinese? Some other mysterious and exotic combination? And she may very well get these questions from Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike, because she is multiracial.  Granted, Filipinos as a whole are made up of various racial admixtures, some looking more white, others more Chinese, others somewhat Latino or indigenous.  

To treat her genetic heritage the same as if she had been adopted from, say, a Chinese family, or even a Chinese-white family, by two white American parents, is to ignore the additional layer of identity that is created by the facts of her donor conception and subsequent birth into a different yet still multiracial and multicultural (and multilingual) family.

In the end, the best thing I can do for Maya in helping her form a sound identity is to educate myself not so much on transracial adoption, which doesn't technically apply to us, but on parenting multiracial children as a whole. Her being born into our family isn't what makes her multiracial.  That was a given from the circumstances of her conception.  What being part of our family does is allows for a more nuanced consideration of what it means to belong, to a culture, race, ethnicity, nationality.  

Who decides on the labels used? Who decides what percentage of one's heritage is sufficient to lay claims to that identity?  Who decides which type of heritage - genetic or cultural - is paramount? Who else if not the individual herself?

We Should Be Coming Out of the EA Closet Soon

I've been struggling with the discussion of embryo donation/adoption lately.  Before our daughter was born, I was very open about our journey and what avenues we were considering in our pursuit to parenthood.  But now that she's here, it's her story too, and I'm afraid of giving too much away without her consent.

I know too many ignorant people who do not censor their thoughts before they speak.  Case in point.  Last night we were getting our check at a restaurant when the waitress, looking at Maya, asked, "Who does she look like?"  Awkward pause... "She doesn't look like either of you!"

Hmm, I chickened out and took the chance to focus on my daughter not spilling her drink so that I wouldn't have to address the waitress.  Alex, luckily, responded with a vague truth that seemed to satisfy our rude inquirer, "She's got a little mix in her."

Apparently, as Maya gets older, she is growing more into her Filipino looks.  To be honest, we both assumed that we could bank on her being mistaken for Hispanic and therefore, since Alex is Latino, not have to face these sort of questions.  We've been getting comments about her beauty since the beginning, and I've had two different men ask me - when Alex wasn't with us - if she were "mine".  Alex generally sailed by on their daddy-and-me escapades, until just this month.

Apparently, he recently got his first comment questioning where Maya gets her looks from.  There was a guess that I - his wife - may be Chinese.  He got the exact same comment from someone else just the day before the restaurant situation.  So if even he's getting these comments now, we have to be proactively prepared to respond in a way that lets our daughter know 1) that she absolutely belongs in our family regardless of resemblance, and 2) what an appropriate response to such a nosy question would be if she ever gets asked something like this directly.

The other piece of the puzzle is that we do want to celebrate her British and Filipino ancestry.  We want her to be proud of it, though to be honest, I don't know what that means.  What does it mean to be proud of a group that you belong to?  To be proud of the accomplishments of those who share your DNA?  Your ethnicity?  Your cultural history?  Why is that something to be proud of?  I'm not saying it's not, I'm just wondering what makes this phenomenon relevant in a person's life.

Regardless, we can no longer ignore that Maya's ethnicity is not Polish-Latina.  Don't get me wrong - she absolutely still is Polish, by virtue of having a Polish mother who speaks Polish to her, and she absolutely still is Latina, by virtue of having a Latino father who speaks Spanish to her.  Furthermore, she is American - that which unites the three of us.  But to think that this last identity would take precedence over race, ethnicity, or culture is a bit naive.

Several months ago, Alex and I agreed that if the topic of conversation naturally presented an opportunity to share Maya's unique beginnings, we would matter-of-factly share.  I had the chance to do just that with a new friend whose husband is Filipino.  It made more sense for me to share this information with her than to go out of my way to hide it, since I was asking all sorts of questions about Filipino culture!

But there are other friends, both old and new, who don't yet know.  Not because we're hiding it, but because we don't think of how she came to be in our family anymore. I don't want anyone to ever question how "real" our relationships to each other are.  I don't know what I would do if someone said something like "does she know her 'real' parents".  Would I cry?  Would I curse?  Would I start yelling or even lash out with a backhanded slap to the back of the accuser's head?  I honestly don't think I could just calmly correct the person.

Quick aside.  I was recently asked if I "just stay home" with my daughter.  I tried to make light of the phrasing.  As in, yeah, I don't really do anything much.  But it didn't catch on and the person asked if I did anything before having Maya.  I took the bait and responded that I taught ESL, and the moment was gone after that.  But the implication was heavy and is still with me, though I don't think what I do is easy at all (hence the word "just").

Based on my lack of a witty yet polite reaction to the "just staying home" conversation, or the "she doesn't look like either of you" exchange, I can't say that I would know what the best way to respond would be to a "real parent/own child" interaction.

I think the best defense is offense, as counter intuitive as that may sound.  I should probably test the waters one person at a time, until I am very comfortable sharing just enough but not too much information, so that I am prepared for the inevitable stranger comments and questions.

By the way, here's what I've come up with regarding any future comments about our family's resemblance to each other:

1. Yeah, I don't look like my mom either.
2. Really?  You don't think?  Everyone else says she's a spitting image of her dad!
3. No, she looks like herself.
4. I know, aren't genetics a fascinating phenomenon?
5.Well, she's all ours!  I gave birth to her myself, naturally at home, even.
6. Why do you ask?  What makes you say that?

Adoption, Donor Conception, Both, or Neither? (Part 3)

In summary, here is how our daughter's embryo donation conception differs and is similar to both traditional adoption and gamete donation conception.

How our daughter's embryo donation conception differs from gamete donation conception: 
1. The embryo donor conceived offspring does not share genes with either of her/his parents.
2. The nature of the embryo donor conceived offspring's conception is not marred by material gain or purposeful creation into a subpar situation.
3. The embryo donor conceived offspring has one group of genetic relatives - both donors and siblings - that if found, are found in one fell swoop.

How our daughter's embryo donation conception differs from traditional adoption:

1. There was no legal proceeding to form a familial bond between us and our daughter.  Likewise, there is no involvement of social services judging us worthy - or not - or suggesting how we ought to parent.

2. Our daughter has never bonded with any of her genetic relatives.  She was born to the woman who carried her and who is parenting her.  There was never any separation or loss of current relationship. 

3. Due to my current spiritual views, my daughter didn't come into existence until her pre-embryo implanted in my uterus.  It was my body that nourished her into life; she is quite literally made of my own flesh and blood.

That said, there are also similarities with both.

How our daughter's embryo donation conception is similar to traditional adoption:

1. She does not share DNA with us.

2. She was conceived in love by a married couple who agonized over their decision to place their remaining pre-embryos with a different family.  (Yes, I realize many birth/first parents are not married and some adoptees were sadly not conceived in love.)

3. She has a limited, manageable number of genetic relatives which she may or may not be able to locate and develop a relationship with.

How our daughter's embryo donation conception is similar to gamete donation conception:

1. She has genetic relatives "out there" that she may or may not be able to find and develop a relationship with.

2. She was born into our family.  She can easily keep her donor conception private if she so chooses because I was pregnant with her and still nurse her.  She also resembles my husband physically.  

3. She was conceived with the help of artificial reproductive technology.

Why does it matter if I consider our daughter's situation that of adoption or donor conception?  Going into embryo donation, the distinction was important to me because the Catholic church taught against any form of artificial reproductive technology and embryo donation was a sort of loop hole that I was able to accept while maintaining my religiosity.  

Now that I am no longer religious, both options are neutral to me.  So the main thing is just figuring out whose voices I need to be listening to in order to understand what my daughter needs from me regarding this unique aspect of her identity.  After looking over these comparison points, I see that it is not as simple as simply "choosing a camp" - adoption or donor conception.  Our daughter has things in common with people from both camps.  And until there is a sizable enough group of adult embryo donation conceived individuals, this is as good as it's going to get.

Adoption, Donor Conception, Both, or Neither? (Part 2)

In part one of this two-part series, I talked about how our daughter's conception via donor embryo is not quite like adoption, the way I had originally believed when first pursuing this alternative to parenthood.  Here, I cover how it's not exactly the same as sperm- or ova-donation conception either.

The first and most obvious difference is that most donor conceived individuals still share half of their genetics with one of their parents.  (Except, of course, for those families who were built via "double donor", meaning sperm donor and egg donor, neither of whom know each other or the intended recipient parents (at least not in anonymous donation). But that actually presents a still further complication when it comes to ethics, so I'll leave it alone here.)  In embryo donation, the child born to the parents shares neither of their genetics.  This is precisely why the first part of this mini-series dealt with a comparison with adoption.  Adopted individuals likewise don't share either of their adoptive parents' genetics (again, except for step-parent or kinship adoption... seems like there's always an exception to everything, isn't there?)

This lack of any genetic linkage can be good or bad, depending on ones' perspective.  From the intended parent's perspective, I couldn't imagine mixing my own DNA with that of any man other than my husband.  On some level, it felt as though I would've had a child "with" this other man, putting my husband in a sort of step-parent role.  I know not everyone sees it that way, but I do, and that's why we didn't pursue single-gamete (sperm) donation.

From the child's perspective, I did consider that it may be better to at least grow up with half of your genetic relatives rather than with none.  Yet the gulf that the resulting implication (discussed above) would have left in my husband's and my relationship would've surely had a negative impact on our child.  Furthermore, the difference of knowing some genetic relatives versus none at all may have had an unbalanced effect on the child's relationship with the genetic versus non-genetic parent.  By utilizing embryo donation, the playing field was balanced out.

Another difference between embryo donation and gamete donation - at least the kind we utilized - is that my daughter was not specifically conceived with the intent of growing up not knowing some of her genetic relatives.  She was not conceived specifically so that she would grow up in a "less than ideal" situation.  These are perspectives I'm reading from donor-conceived adults, which is how I know these are things they think about.  This process of being created on-demand, as it were, makes them feel manufactured, like a commodity.  It affects the entire sense of self worth for some.  And while there are "embryo donation" programs that are essentially double donor programs that are started before the intended parents come onto the scene, the "traditional" embryo donation is a lot more straightforward.

Our daughter's donors are a married couple who faced secondary infertility.  They turned to IVF and surrogacy to complete their family.  After three years, they decided they weren't going to transfer the remaining embryos created with their family-completion IVF in mind.  It took three years for them to place the embryos into the embryo donation program, which tells me that they must have agonized over the decision.  They didn't choose to destroy them or donate them to science, which tells me they either believed the human life present in their pre-embryos deserved a chance to fulfill their potential, or they wanted to give another family struggling with infertility a chance to grow their family, or both.  This is very different from a gamete donor providing their DNA in exchange for money.  This sort of information gets internalized by the donor conceived offspring.  How their donors came to the decision to donate effects how the offspring feel about their conception, and by extension, their self-worth.

Finally, most donor conceived offspring have many, many genetic half-siblings "out there", which creates a need for a lifetime of searching (for those curious about their genetic relatives and whose donors were anonymous).  The real risk of inadvertently meeting and marrying a genetic half-sibling grows with the more "popular" donors and/or less regulated/ethical sperm banks.  (Due to the nature of egg donation, there generally can't be more than a handful of genetic half-siblings due to egg donation.)  In embryo donation, on the one hand, all siblings are full genetic siblings, but on the other hand, there are only a very limited number of them.  If the donors had a large number of pre-embryos they donated, these may have gone to several different recipient families.  Otherwise, all pre-embryos were donated to the same recipient family, and the only genetic siblings the donor-conceived offspring has "out there" are the children of their own donors.  If they find one of them they find them both.

To sum up, embryo donation - where "left over" pre-embryos from the donor family's own IVF treatment go to a recipient family - differs from gamete (sperm or egg) donation in these three ways:

1. The embryo donor conceived offspring does not share genes with either of her/his parents.
2. The nature of the embryo donor conceived offspring's conception is not marred by material gain or purposeful creation into a subpar situation.
3. The embryo donor conceived offspring has one group of genetic relatives - both donors and siblings - that if found, are found in one fell swoop.

From what I read, donor conceived offspring's most common concerns are the ethics surrounding their creation and the sheer volume of possible genetic half-siblings, neither of which applies to my daughter.  The first difference - that she doesn't share genetics with either of us - is why I considered if her situation was more like traditional adoption.  Yet based on my reading of concerns adult adoptees often have, I don't expect her to share a lot of those concerns.

So where does that leave us?  Only she can decide for herself as she matures with which group(s) she chooses to identify, if either.  Until then, I will need to continue to listen to both adult adoptees and donor conceived adults and take to heart the issues they describe and consider if and to what degree they may affect my daughter.

Adoption, Donor Conception, Both, or Neither? (Part 1)

When we first got our infertility diagnosis, we proceeded straight to trying to adopt.  We pursued private domestic infant adoption, international adoption, adoption from foster care.... all with false starts and dashed dreams and money down the drain, but also with valuable lessons learned.  Five years after first learning of our fertility challenge, our daughter entered our lives.

We had slowly made our way from open adoption to closed adoption back to open adoption with our first donor embryo match.  Two transfers and four embryos later, we were still childless, and I was ready to embrace anonymity once again.  Coming from a strong, Catholic-inspired pro-life stance, I fully believed that the tiny embryos awaiting "adoption" were already humans.  This belief helped me reason why it was morally acceptable for me to "adopt" them even though my then-strong Catholic faith taught that anything related to artificial reproductive technologies was wrong.  I even posted here about how our EA FETs were not IVF.  So desperately I tried to fit into my faith community while still pursuing our dream of parenting a child. 

But then I got pregnant with our daughter.  And then I gave birth to her, at home.  And since then I've nursed her at my breast for over a year and a half now. Recently, I joined a transracial adoption group to try to continue my education in the area of raising a confident, well-adjusted child whose ethnicity I didn't share.  In the process, I've come to see that I actually didn't adopt my daughter.  

There was no legal adoption proceeding, no homestudy, no social worker visits, no one granting us permission to take her into our home and hearts.  No one told us where she must sleep, what she should be fed, or who is allowed to care for her when Alex or I are unavailable.  These are all issues that adoptive parents face as they are entrusted with someone else's child, and often social workers follow arbitrary guidelines as to what is appropriate and safe for a child.  

I wouldn't have been able to cosleep with my daughter had she been adopted.  Not openly, anyway.  I may not have been allowed to breastfeed her either, even if I had been able to induce lactation. Perhaps after finalization of the adoption, I would've been allowed to finally choose who can babysit her, and I'm sure homeschooling wouldn't have been an issue by the time she was old enough to start academics.  But had she been older coming to us, or had her adoption gotten delayed for some reason, these are not decisions I would've been able to make based on my mother instinct of what's good for her.  Rather, I'd constantly be second guessing myself, wondering if this or that decision could be used against me to have my daughter removed from my home.

Another reason I no longer believe that our daughter was adopted is that she simply doesn't share the same often deeply painful losses that many adoptees have.  The woman who carried her for 8 months, with whom she bonded, whose heartbeat and voice she was intimately familiar with by the time she was born - that woman was none other than me!  She was never separated from someone who was once her entire world.  She never has to deal with being rejected by her genetic family.  Her name was never changed.  Her birth certificate was never falsified or sealed. And there was probably little chance of a genetic relative being taking it upon herself to keep any resulting children in the original family by transferring the pre-embryos herself. She does still have the loss of that genetic family, to be sure.  But it is not compounded by implications of rejection. 

  

A third reason I now don't believe I am an adoptive mom is based on an evolution of my spiritual beliefs.  In pursuing embryo donation and undergoing three frozen embryo transfers, I was deeply interested in the early development of human beings, starting from fertilization onward.  And through this research, I concluded that while human "life" begins at fertilization, human "personhood" doesn't start until implantation. Here's why.

A blastocyst, which is what an egg fertilized 5-6 days earlier is called as its cells divide, is capable of two fascinating feats prior to implantation.  The first is that it can split into two separate blastocysts which then implant separately, growing and being born as identical twins.  One embryo --> two human beings.  Likewise, two ova that are both fertilized at about the same time can proceed to divide and develop into two blastocysts who somehow merge together into a single blastocyst just prior to implantation.  The result is a singleton baby born with two sets of DNA, also known as a chimera.  So two embryos --> one human being.  (Note that we are not talking about two embryos where one simply stops growing, or twins where one simply dies and the other continues towards birth.  We're talking about the physical, genetic merging of two sets of DNA into a single human body.)  

Because of these two phenomenon that occur in nature, I was forced to conclude that human personhood does not begin immediately upon conception, but rather once these two phenomenon have had a chance to take place.  Therefore, once a blastocyst is implanted in the uterine wall, it becomes known as an embryo, and only then does it become a unique human being, one that only needs time and a continuous supply of a healthy environment of the womb in order to grow into a fetus and then a newborn, toddler, preschooler, etc.  The same cannot be said of a zygote or morula or blastocyst (earlier stages of human development).  (See here for my post mentioning how problematic it is to use the term "embryo" for earlier stages of development."

I mentioned that my understanding of human personhood was based on a spiritual outlook.  So far I've only established the science leading up to my point.  Once an embryo is implanted, it is then that I believe God begins to work on that specific individual, forming her or him in their mother's womb. (I'm going to ignore surrogacy here for simplicity's sake, as it comes with its own set of complex considerations.)

The Biblical verses I used to refer to when thinking about how "life begins at conception" are actually more nuanced now.  Psalm 139:13, for instance, states: "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb."  Until I learned about chimeras and was reminded of identical twins, I took it for granted that God's job began immediately, with sperm in one divine hand and ovum in the other.  But now I see that while I don't deny God's ongoing role in all of creation at all of its stages, it does not mean that the moment God put his hands together with the necessary gametes, a new person was created.  Rather, it is a process, much like baking, if you will.  And there is a preparation phase that, if interrupted, does not result in a fully baked cake, no matter how much time you give it and even if all the necessary ingredients were there.  You still have to mix, measure, pour, and finally put in a functioning oven.  Then and only then does the timer begin and you can say that you have a cake baking in the oven.

At any rate, adoption is nothing like this process.  Adoption takes place once a fully formed human being is born into a family that for one reason or another does not end up raising that baby.  Adoption leaves nothing to the imagination - a baby is born in one family, but another family takes the child home with them.  It is an artificial way to build a family (by which I don't mean "negative", just that it's not what was intended originally).  Which brings me to another perspective I see often missing from potential adoptive parent discourse.  

Adoption is often framed as a "loving option" or a way to "start" or "grow" your family.  The audience for this discourse is of course the potentially adoptive parent.  It's their family that is being grown through adoption.  The child's family is actually being taken away first, before being replaced by the adoptive family.  The child's first mother's family is likewise being taken away - period - and not being replaced with anything. The goal of pro-adoption terminology is to normalize adoption so that infertile parents can feel comfortable in their role as a "real" parent.  

I remember the discussion of "real" versus some other qualifier before the words "parent" and "child".  Mostly it's adoptive parents who are defensive about having someone imply that they are not a "real" parent.  Many don't like the idea of saying "adopted child" or "adoptive parent" because they feel it takes away from the parent-child relationship.  I was one of these potential adoptive parents.  Yet these same people often don't have a problem demoting the first mother to "birth mother", "bmom", or worst of all, the acronym "BM" (which if it isn't clear is also an acronym for "bowel movement", something most awful to associate any human being with, much less the woman who gave birth to one's adopted child!)

The adoption industry is biased in favor of where the money is.  Sorry, but that's the truth, a truth I already started to realize even as I still hoped to benefit from it.  It is the adopting parents - not the first parents or children - who fund the adoption industry's profit, and so it shouldn't come as a surprise that what potential adoptive parents hear from adoption agencies is precisely meant to be music to their ears, anything to help them feel good about the idea of adopting. 

You may question that potential adoptive parents actually need encouragement in this decision. Perhaps you associate adoptive parents with infertile couples whose only hope of a family is through adoption.  I was often also ignorant of the fact that there is a whole other family-building industry out there that provides an alternative to adoption and is often preferable to adopting: artificial reproductive technology, including donor conception and surrogacy.

To sum up, embryo donation differs from traditional adoption in these ways:
1. There was no legal proceeding to form a familial bond between us and our daughter.  Likewise, there is no involvement of social services judging us worthy - or not - or suggesting how we ought to parent.
2. Our daughter has never bonded with any of her genetic relatives.  She was born to the woman who carried her and who is parenting her.  There was never any separation or loss of current relationship. 
3. Due to my current spiritual views, my daughter didn't come into existence until her pre-embryo implanted in my uterus.  It was my body that nourished her into life; she is quite literally made of my own flesh and blood.  

It may sound as though I am implying through this post's discussion of adoption that I consider my daughter to have been "donor-conceived".  However, it is actually not as simple as that, either.  In my next post, I'll discuss how embryo donation carries different considerations from sperm- or egg-donation.