The Miracle of Embryo Adoption

This is a letter Pregnancy Care Center Development Director Teresa Russell and her husband Chad sent to their family and friends regarding their embryo adoption and subsequent pregnancy. They wanted to share their story with their PCC family to bring awareness to the miracle of embryo adoption.

Dear Friends:

We hope this letter finds you well. We’re sending this letter today to share a struggle we have been facing for the last five years. When we married on March 16, 2002, we had planned to start our family after about three years, once we had “mastered” so to speak how to be a good husband and a good wife. However, this wasn’t God’s plan for us.

After a couple years of trying on our own and running several different fertility tests, we learned we only had a 1% chance of conceiving on our own. We then began considering what our options were to start our family. There were many choices when it came to fertility treatments, adoption and foster parenting.

We are so excited to share with you what God has been doing in our lives regarding the choice we have prayed about and decided to pursue; embryo adoption.

We know this is a very new concept and you may have never even heard the term before. Let us explain. Many couples facing infertility choose to try in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to become pregnant. When a family has been successful in having a child through IVF, remaining embryos are often cryopreserved (frozen). If after a successful round of IVF (which often results in twins...or more!) many couples choose not to have any more children and then struggle with what to do with the remaining embryos. Some choose to destroy the embryos and others donate them for research—which also destroys the embryos. Embryo adoption resolves this difficult issue in a God-honoring, life affirming way.

The great thing about embryo adoption is that it can be an answer to prayer for everyone involved. For the couple who donates the embryos, it is a positive, pro-life way to resolve an ethical dilemma. For the adopting couple, it can be a beautiful opportunity to experience pregnancy and become parents. And for the embryos themselves, a way is provided for them to grow, enter this world, and live a full life. Currently, it is estimated that there are more than 500,000 frozen embryos in the United States. These are pre-born children waiting for a chance at a full life.

At times, our journey through infertility has been terribly painful, but God has done amazing things in our lives and marriage through it. Deciding to pursue embryo adoption has not been an easy decision, but after much prayer, we were confident this is the path God was leading us down.

Some of our best friends put us in contact with their good friends who had six embryos they wanted to place for adoption. In December, we went through a “Frozen Embryo Transfer” (two embryos were thawed and transferred into Teresa---see picture above of these little lives!).

We are beyond blessed to tell you that the transfer was successful and we are expecting the arrival of our first child (no worries, only ONE!) at the end of August. As you could guess, we couldn’t be more excited, and we can’t wait to celebrate this blessing with you soon. Please keep us in your prayers as we enter this new phase of life.

All our love,

Chad and Teresa

Update: We found out on Good Friday that we're having a little girl!

For more information about embryo adoption, visit Bethany Christian Services or Nightlife Christian Adoptions.