Hopefully Growing The Theurer Family
Natalie and Brian
Smithfield, North Carolina
Hi family and friends!
If you don't already know our story, here it is:
We began trying for a family in spring of 2016, naïvely thinking we would be parents in no time. About a year and a half into trying to conceive, we began to undergo testing, which revealed male factor infertility for Brian. He underwent a procedure and our doctor encouraged us to keep trying. Unfortunately, the procedure did not help as much as the doctor had hoped, leaving us to consider IVF as the only realistic fertility treatment option for us. We went through 1 cycle of IVF in November/December of 2018, and were hopeful that from the 12 eggs retrieved, we would have many chances at becoming parents. By day 5, we were left with 2 little embryos, which were both transferred, but did not lead to a successful pregnancy.
In May 2019, we were very surprised to find out that we were pregnant, naturally! It was the week of Mother’s Day and we were so excited and hopeful. Unfortunately, around 6 weeks pregnant, Natalie began to experience a miscarriage. After recovering from that mentally and emotionally, we had discussed options going forward. We decided to continue to try for a baby on our own for at least 6 months before pursuing other options. In October of 2019, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that we were once again pregnant! We were cautiously excited that we would finally get to meet one of our children, but unfortunately, it ended in another heartbreaking miscarriage at 8 weeks. After discussing the ”why” and next steps with our doctor, he believed that the reason for all of our loss, was because of poor egg quality.
Despite how difficult this road has been, we are excited to grow our family in such a unique way. We feel that God has given us peace for choosing embryo adoption and trust that He will equip us to be the not perfect, but the right parents for whichever children may join our family.
With love,
Brian and Natalie
P.S. Please check out the "Updates" tab for news on how much we have raised through our fundraiers, in combination with the fertility grant that we received in June of this year.
Video
4 Family Updates
Donors
Brianna Hursey
I know it's not much, but I also know how- in situations like this- every little bit counts.
Jonathan Porter
Torey and Elizabeth Teer
Many blessings on your adoption! Thank you for sharing your story and allowing us to participate in your adoption journey.
Christine Brust
You are always in my thoughts and prayers
Ross Allen
Brian Miss you man. We are thinking of you both during these times.
Maria Suter
Adoption is a beautiful thing. Hoping this little gift is a blessing to you during this time.
Adria Baebler
Sorry it's taken so long to make a donation! Praying for a smooth process as you start your family!
Bob James
Anna Loney
George Langdon
Alice Miley
Wishing you the best!
Hi Dear Friends and Family!
We want to thank you all so much for your prayers, thoughts, encouragement, and donations that we have received since beginning our embryo adoption. You are all so generous and will forever be a part of our story.
If you haven't heard by now, our adoption is complete and our embryos are safe and sound at our clinic here in North Carolina! What a praise!
We have gone back and forth about how to share these next steps with you all. As you know, this has been a long, painful, winding road to this point. At different points in our journey we have shared things in real time with everyone, shared with small groups of people, etc. At each point, we shared and did what we felt was best for us in that moment.
Moving forward, we have decided that we are going to keep the date of our transfer and the transfer process to ourselves for now. This means we will most certainly document this phase, but not share it in real time onto social media. We have come to this decision for several reasons.
Infertility is exhausting. It is an emotionally charged rollercoaster, 100% of the time. I find myself feeling more and more anxious as we move closer and closer to transferring one or two of these precious embryos. In the past three years we have endured a failed transfer and 2 miscarriages that have left us with some infertility PTSD, wondering, "Will this work?", "If it works, will I have another miscarriage?". Treatment is expensive, embryo transfers are expensive. The thought of another potential loss is painful. On the flip side, the thought that we could become parents to a baby earthside is super exciting, but because of our history with losses, I know that I will be cautiously walking through a pregnancy until that baby is safe and sound with us.
As you can see there is a lot running through our minds right now, and in order to best protect ourselves and our hearts, we need to continue to process this next phase, together.
I know many of you are excited for us and will continue to want to support us during this time. The best way that you can do that is through prayer. If you find something encouraging that you would like to share, please do so! We find it comforting when our family and friends provide encouragement as we continue on. One thing we kindly request, is that questions such as "When will your embryo transfer be?", or "How are the embryos?", "when will you know if it worked?", etc. are refrained from being asked. We promise we will share information as we feel ready to.
We hope you all can understand and we are sincerely grateful for the kindness you have shown to us this far!
We have 3 days left of this fundraiser here on Adoption Bridge, and are continuing to sell t-shirts if you haven't gotten yours yet! $2,796 to go and we will have reached our goal of funding our adoption, in order to focus paying off the loan we took out several years ago for our IVF cycle. Just amazing! God always provides.
Grace and Peace,
Brian and Natalie
M A T C H A C C E P T E D ❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️ ❄️ ❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️
Our clinic gave word to our adoption agency that they will accept the eleven beautiful embryos that we are adopting!This means we can now officially move into the contract phase of making everything legal and our embryos will then be sent to our clinic! Such an answer to prayers and has us filled with excitement 🤗🎉💕
In the meantime we have an appointment with our RE tomorrow to map out any tests or labs that need to be done prior to our embryo transfer. I’m advocating for all i’s to be dotted and t’s to be crossed before we transfer these sweet babes. With our history of infertility and miscarriage, anxieties run high the closer it gets to transfer time. But, I think right now our excitement is outweighing those fears!
As far as fundraising goes, we are getting so so close to our goal! We have have raised $12,073.66 in combination with the grant we received earlier this year. That leaves us with $3,246 left to cover the rest of our adoption and first frozen embryo transfer! How amazing! We thank you all for your support!
WE • HAVE • A • MATCH
We got an exciting email from our adoption agency yesterday that a placing family accepted our profile and asked if we would want to adopt their ELEVEN remaining embryos. Yep. ELEVEN 😭❄️🥰
Eleven beautiful chances at life.
We have not yet said “yes”, as we are waiting for our clinic to review the embryology report and make sure they are willing to accept the embryos based on how they were cryopreserved and stored. So we’re not there quite yet, but please be praying for us as we continue to process and wait to hear from our embryologist.
We have been incredibly humbled and blessed by family and friends who have provided through donations and participated in our t-shirt and coffee fundraisers this summer. With the donation/fundraiser money, in combination with the fertility grant that we received in June, we are happy to say we have raised $10,305.24 out of the $15,320 that we need to cover the adoption, storage of our snowflake babies, and first embryo transfer. God is so, so good. You all have helped to bring us hope and have shown incredible love to us and our future children.