Loved Even Now!
Rachel and Dan Marks
Easton, PA
It’s been 5 years now since we first became parents through adoption, and we have learned and experienced a lot over the years. Our journey to become a family is drastically different than most, and God has provided strength, wisdom, and increased faith in unique ways. A big component of adoption is brokenness - that a new family is formed out of the ashes of loss. We adopted our 2 sons from foster care in 2018, the same weekend that our biological baby was born = officially 3 boys in 14 hours!`
While we have seen the hard and bittersweet aspects of adoption, we cherish the beauty of how it pictures God bringing us into His own family. Although we didn’t foresee how it would specifically plan out for us, we have always felt called to adopt and talked about this even while we were dating. One of our pastors has a friend who affirmed that adoption can completely change the trajectory of someone’s life. A good friend of ours encouraged us by saying that God has hand picked our family.
Now after 10 years of marriage and 5 years as a family, we still feel led to adoption and that its door is open again for us. We feel strongly that our family is not yet complete, and the doors with Snowflake Embryo Adoption have opened surprisingly wide; we even found out that a partner clinic is literally down the street from our house! We would love to have one more child to complete our family (although Rachel would love twins since she’s a twin herself!) Having a girl would help to round out our family, but we will be happy however God chooses to bless us. We are very comfortable with communication in open adoption and working together to do what is best for our baby. We firmly believe that life begins at conception, that God knows and loves everyone from their first moment of existence, and that all children deserve a safe, loving home with a family who truly cares about them.
We can't wait to see what God has in store for our family!
6 Family Updates
Donors
Jordan Worley
Diandra Brunstetter
Carol Barry
Praying for you and your family ♥️
Thank you so much for praying for Rachel's procedure on Wed Aug 17! Everything went well, and there were no problems with recovery, praise the Lord! We were also able to enjoy a much-needed time away at the beach the following weekend with friends from church at Ocean Grove NJ!
Last week was a very big week for our adoption: Our home study (Snowflakes Family Evaluation) was completed on August 29! We had a pre-matching phone call with Snowflakes on September 1 to discuss our preferences for a match. And after our payment is processed after the holiday weekend, we will officially be in the matching stage! Our profile will be shown to donor families so they can see our pictures and read our family story. Once we are chosen, we will receive a copy of their profile with pictures and information, including medical history for 3 generations.
And after our family and the genetic family agrees on the match, we'll sign a legal contract, our embryos will be shipped by FedEx to our clinic, Rachel will undergo a medicated cycle, and then the embryos will be thawed and transferred one at a time, and Lord willing, we will have a baby!
Well, 4.5 hours later, we finished our home visit/interview today, Sat Aug 13! This means that we are now done with our home study!!!! The caseworker who met with us this afternoon just needs to wrap up the paperwork involved, and then we can move on to the matching stage! We've been waiting for this part of the process to be completed for a few weeks, especially after finishing our part of the training and paperwork a little while ago.
Unfortunately we've also experienced a few hiccups in the adoption process lately. Right before Rachel needed to schedule 3 different tests at our clinic, we found out that the Bethlehem location near our house was recently closed. This meant that Rachel needed to travel to the office in Langhorne for 3 tests (which was 1.5 hours each way).
At Rachel's follow up telehealth appointment last week, the doctor said she needs to have a minor procedure (hysteroscopy) for uterine polyps. We tried really hard to schedule the procedure locally, but long story short, we'd have to wait quite some time for a pre-op consult and procedure. Rachel was able to schedule the procedure with the surgical office with Sincera (near Fort Washington) for this coming Wednesday, Aug 17 (much sooner than expected...and only 2 days before we go to the beach). Please pray for no complications, quick recovery, travel mercies, healing, and rest before a busy weekend away.
Today we officially received a $2,000 grant from Snowflake Doodle Grant! We are so excited to find out that it was more than the breeder originally anticipated!...Dan said maybe our next dog should be a Saint Berdoodle! 🙂
http://www.snowflakedoodles.com/
We also found out this week that our home visit will be on Saturday August 13! This is the last step to complete our Snowflakes Family Evaluation!
Our weekend was full of TWO blessings for our adoption! On Friday, July 8, we finished all of the training and paperwork for our Snowflakes Family Evaluation! And it only took us about 2.5 weeks 🙂 We've now been assigned a SFE provider who will travel and visit our home, probably in early August. Then we will move to the matching phase!
We also found out this past Saturday that we were given a Snowflakes Doodle Grant, which is funded through the sale of 3 puppies!
Great news! After just 2.5 weeks of working on all kinds of paperwork & training, we are finished our part of our Snowflakes Family Evaluation (SFE), their equivalent of a home study! Now we just need to have our home visit scheduled with our SFE provider before we can move into the matching phase!
Rachel has already been busy talking to our clinic and preparing to schedule a "pre-conception visit" with Maternal Fetal Medicine. She'll need some blood work and initial testing (saline sonogram). After that, we just need to be matched with a genetic/donor family who chooses us - and wait. Our embryo will be shipped from the storage facility via FedEx to our local clinic, where he/she will be "thawed;" meanwhile, Rachel will begin a medicated cycle to prepare for the Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET).
For anyone wondering about the financial side of embryo adoption:
Snowflakes has a very reasonable fee schedule; the cost is much less than domestic or international adoption, which involve higher agency fees, birth parent expenses, legal/attorney fees, and travel expenses. Our health insurance, however, considers frozen embryo adoption to be a part of IVF, which is not covered in our plan. There are also storage fees involved, plus costs per transfer (since not every embryo survives the thawing and transfer stages).
Any funds donated here through Adoption Bridge will go directly to Snowflakes Embryo Adoption to help with our agency fees!
We began this process in May 2022, and God has clearly been opening doors for us to adopt again! We are well into our Snowflakes Family Evaluation (SFE) process (equivalent of a domestic infant home study), and we only have a little bit to finish before we will have a home visit. After that, we'll move into the matching process, where a genetic family will choose us to give birth to our adopted baby! Our baby will be shipped by Fed Ex to our local clinic, where we will begin the Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET). If the thawing and transfer process go well, Lord willing, we will have a new little baby in 9 months!