Our Story

I'm Liz, a 33 year old wife to my amazing husband, Kevin. We have a dog, Oscar. And two cats, Nadia and Chloe. We live in a suburb of Austin, TX.


Like most people, we dreamed our life would follow a certain path:

Step 1: Get married.
Step 2: Buy a big house.
Step 3: Have children.

We got married in 2009 and bought our home in 2010, however in 2011 we learned that Step 3 would be quite a bit harder than we ever imagined. I was diagnosed with severe Diminished Ovarian Reserve and learned it would be impossible for us to have genetic children of our own.

Read the story of my diagnosis here: The day I was diagnosed with DOR.

Our altered path has taken us to the darkest depths of pain I could never even imagine we'd be faced with. We went through both IUI and IVF treatments and failed. There is not a word in the English language to describe the level of devastation we felt.

Then we learned about embryo adoption. It was like a warm ray of sunshine was being shined upon us from heaven itself. It was incredible to learn that there was such an amazing (and affordable) option available for couples like us. I could actually experience pregnancy with an adopted child? It almost seemed too good to be true!

We started our search, and after a few false starts with other potential donors, we ended up adopting five frozen embryos in December 2012 from a woman named Vicky. She and her husband had received them as donor embryos themselves. I started blogging shortly after the adoption of our first five embryos was complete.

We had our first frozen embryo transfer in February 2013 and I learned I was pregnant for the first time in my life! But sometime around 8 weeks our baby stopped growing and at 9w1d she was born straight to heaven. And we were devastated because after all of that, we had only one remaining embryo because two died at thaw.

We began looking for new embryos again shortly after the loss of our baby, and were surprised and blessed to have found our second donor, Libby, within weeks of searching. Libby had four embryos to adopt and in June 2013 they officially became ours.

We had our second Frozen Embryo Transfer in September 2013 and I learned I was pregnant again five days later. But sadly, after a few poorly doubling betas, it also ended in an early miscarriage at 5w1d.

We did a unique third FET in November 2013 where we transferred an embryo from both Libby's and Vicky's batch. And I learned I was pregnant for the third time on November 23rd, 2013 at only 4dp6dt. The ultrasound a couple weeks later showed one perfect baby! And a few months later, we found out we were having a girl! We wondered the entire pregnancy if baby girl from Libby's batch or Vicky's.

Baby Sammy was born in July 204. After doing an elective DNA test shortly after birth, we learned she was from Libby's batch. Vicky's embryos are gone forever, but we will remain friends. We are beyond grateful to both families for their selflessness and generosity. Embryo adoption has forever changed our lives and we wouldn't have our beautiful baby girl if it wasn't for this incredible path. I have become an advocate for it and it's a topic I love to talk about.

We had some press about our story in November of 2014!

I refer to our frozen embryos as our snowflakes. Each frozen snowflake is precious, unique and beautiful.