What about our snowflakes

I look back and time has really flown. I seriously thought it was maybe last November that I last posted about my snow babies.  Nope it was November of 2010, yikes. Well a lot has happen since then.
The first half of the year was pretty uneventful. We did have the kids first birthday party (yet another later post) but really nothing besides catching our breathe from the holidays and birthdays.

   So about April we finally got everything caught up. It really feels like now with kids life doesn't slow down enough to catch a breath until after Easter.
After Easter we started looking at our finances, and that's when I noticed I still hadn't made a decision on what to do with our four snow flakes. For those of you who don't understand "fertility" terms snowflake is frozen embryos. And before I get to far I want you to know a little bit about Craig and I. I don't want to give the impression that Craig doesn't care about the snow babies but he is a guy and doesn't look at it has they are our kids because they aren't here. He agreed with our initial decision of finding a research facility but I am left to do the leg work, so when I said that wasn't an option he was ok with donating. We both were completely against the transferring at an inopportune time. Even though that didn't technically involve him he knew that was not an option. So it came down to donating. Now you already know it wasn't an easy decision. I was the one that had a hard time and of course looked at every aspect of it; cost, accessibility, control, etc. Craig on the other hand was fine with the decision and didn't have much of an opinion either way on if we knew the couple or not. He was good with how I wanted to proceed and knew I would be the one doing the leg work.

   I had explored the option of donation. I'm sure most don't think there are options but there are. We could donate to our clinic, strictly blind donation/adoption, or there are sites out there that are open, similar to putting a born child up for adoption, or sites in between.I encourage all of you who want to know more about this, or those who maybe faced with the decision to donate your snowflakes or want to adopt snowflakes check out Embryo Adoption Awareness Center. There is a ton of information on here, and its nice to know that others go through this.
Well, after drowning myself in information I decided that I wanted to have some control over who I donated to. So I looked into two main sites, Snowflake Embryo Adoption, and Miracles Waiting.  I again had to weigh all my options and what would be best for me, and I do say me because again Craig doesn't look at the details. I decided I would go with Miracles Waiting. I will say they are a little "old school" with their website and set up. Its slightly confusing, but once you get the hang of it, its pretty easy.  I wont bore you with the details, so basically I had to create our profile of us, a short version of what you fill out on your fertility paperwork, and then post. I was very shocked what happened next. I knew that I our situation was not common but I didn't know that I was one of few in the nation to do donate. Within days my email was flooded with potential parents. I have to admit it felt good, that our embryos were in high demand, but very overwhelming. What you don't think about it that you are going to have to turn people away. Also you realize that you get to be specific and for once feel like you get to be selective.
Because of the amount of people I held off on responding to majority of them, until I had a chance to look at the pool of potential people. The difference with this site is that there is not a middle person, unless you want to add a middle person. Its basically the donor talking with the recipient. Yes, very intense.
I was very "hardcore" for about a month, then it got to be too much.

I couldn't do anything with out thinking about it. so many questions filled my head;
*what if I make the wrong choice?   *what if they don't love my kids?   *what if they don't give them a good life?   *do we want a young couple?   *do we want an established couple?   *do we want to donate to an older woman who wants to be a single mom?   *same sex couples who this is their only chance of having a child? 
 Then went to questions like, *well maybe we don't want someone else having our kids, so should we pick an older couple that has had lots of trouble conceiving and the chances of it being successful highly unlikely, or do we want a couple that have a great chance to get pregnant?   *Why are people needing to do embryo adoption?   *what if they already have kids, and just want more?   *Do we want a couple that are close to our ethnicity?   *Have similar traits as us?  
Then you have questions like,   *if it does result in a child how much contact do we want?   *do we want contact?   *do we want to be close?   *how close, will the child want to know us, their siblings?   *will they be upset that we gave them away?   *will they want to know why?    *What if there is more than one kid? *can we keep track of all of them?   *will the couple try it once and if they get a child will they donate the remainder?

These are just a handful of the questions that went through my mind, so needless to say I had to stop and look deeper into my next step. This was something that I didn't expect. I didn't expect to be so concerned. For whatever reason I thought it would be easy, post the profile, have maybe two couples, and go with one. Never thought I would have over 50 inquiries in less than a month.

I apologize for those who are interested, I will have to continue another day, even just putting this to paper (to blog) its very emotional.
***Please, please, please I encourage any person who is experiencing fertility issues in any shape or form, does not mean you are the one going through the hurdles, that you feel free to contact me, or if you don't want to talk with me directly, I can give you great resources, forums, informative websites, etc. --I will make a reference post in the next week or so---***