It's always fun when...

It's always fun when I meet someone in real life who has had experience with embryo adoption. It rarely happens since it's such a rare and unknown thing to most people.

Yesterday I was at the nail salon getting a pedicure with a dear friend of mine who had spent the last week house hunting in Oklahoma. (She's moving away, wahhhh.....) We spent the time in our pedicure chairs catching up and inevitably we started talking about Sammy and my pregnancy. I was telling her about the 3d ultrasound we had just had earlier in the day (which I'll get to in a moment) and somehow ended up on the topic about how I had read a frustrating, ignorant anti-embryo adoption article a couple days prior. As I mentioned the article to my friend, a nice woman sitting next to my friend spoke up and said "don't let anyone tell you anything negative about your baby!" She went on to explain her very close friend had struggled with infertility and found success with embryo adoption.  Her friends friend had remaining embryos which she didn't want destroyed and gave them to her friend. She adopted them and had beautiful miracle twin boys. She even showed me a photo of her friend's miracle boys!

I could tell that while although this stranger at the nail salon perhaps had not endured the pain of infertility herself, she had been touched by the struggle of her close friend and had become an advocate for embryo adoption herself. It was such an exciting thing to talk to someone who knew of it, thought fondly of it, and lived right in the same town as me. I gave her my information and hope she and her friend contact me. Our embryo adoption community continues to grow!

Even without having someone overhear me talk about embryo adoption, I have my elevator speech about embryo adoption ready whenever I feel it's appropriate to share. Usually, someone will ask me a question about my pregnancy or due date. And quickly as the conversation progresses (provided we have enough time) I'll slip in something like "We waited a very long time for her. She was actually adopted as an embryo!" Usually that peaks curiosity and I'm able to answer questions about it for whoever I am talking to. Everyone has seemed interested to hear more and I love talking about our journey. I hope that they keep it in the back of their minds to share, and perhaps someone who has remaining embryos to donate will consider donation, or a couple struggling might consider pursuing this path just because I got the word out. I really hope I'm making a difference, even for one person as cliche as that sounds.

Last, I'll share with you our ultrasound from yesterday. Sammy hasn't cooperated too well for the 3d ultrasounds so far so they sent us back for one final try. We figured if she didn't cooperate yesterday, we'd just give up and wait for her arrival in just a few short weeks.

While it was hard to get a really clear shot at her due to her face being so close to the uterine wall, we were able to get this picture which gave us a glimpse at her gigantic lips! I don't care what she looks like, but it's so much fun to get these puzzle pieces for what she will be like and imagine them all together.

These lips are for lots of kisses!

That's it for today. I'm 35w3d and my MFM says that if she were to come now, he wouldn't be worried at all. In fact, she probably wouldn't even need NICU time. I still can't believe I'm a mama to this beautiful girl. I can't believe a real life human being is growing in my tummy, from a snowflake that was frozen for so long. It's just amazing.