Family Building

How Embryo Adoption and Donation Works

For the Adopting family…

You are interested in having a child or children, and this seems like a great way to have a baby!  You are right, this is a wonderful way to add to your family even if you already have children. While many couples that seek us out are not able to have children, this option is available to families with a child or children that would like to have more. We will handle all your paperwork, ship the embryos to your doctor, and be the liaison between you and the donating family for life.

Here’s the basic process to adopt:

Application Form – We can send you all of the paperwork you need, by USPS or through Sharefile. Once we have your application the next phase is the home study, or home evaluation.

Home Study – You would have a home study, similar but streamlined, like adopting a born child. We have social workers that can visit you in any state you live in. If you have a completed home study we can accept that assuming it is current. If not, you can get it updated, and we can accept that.

Photo book – We would have you make a photo book about yourselves,and write a family letter to share with a prospective donating family. This is done on a first name basis only, at this point.

Matching – Once we have a match for you, and you approve of the donor family and the embryos, we would ship the embryos to your doctor’s clinic to be transferred to you through a FET or frozen embryo transfer. You would receive all the embryos that the donating family has, so all the siblings may have a chance to be born in one household, if at all possible. You are not responsible for any remaining embryos that may be still be remaining once you have the child or children you desire. The embryos would be returned to the donor family.

Contracts – We do the legal contracts for both families, and move the embryos once contracts are completed by both families.

For the Donating Family…

For the donor family, if you have remaining embryos stored in the freezer with your doctor, it can pose a dilemma. Perhaps you have your cherished child or children, and you have remaining embryos in the freezer. Right now, you have four options for your remaining embryos including:

  1. Continue to keep them stored for a later transfer and future family building.
  2. Discard the embryos.
  3. Donate the embryos for embryonic stem cell research, if they are eligible.
  4. Donate the embryos to another family anonymously, or make them available to a family for embryo adoption where the family could be known to you on some level of contact. Semi-open can work well, as you would know each other on a first name basis at that point.

The kind of contact between the families is decided by the donor family. Here are some basic types of contact through our program:

  1. Anonymous – We pick a family for you, and work with your clinic to move the embryos to the adopting family clinic.
  2. Closed adoption – You could know the first names of the family. You can still have a birth announcement.
  3. Semi-open adoption – You would know the adopting family by their first names only, and have communication facilitated through Embryo Adoption Services of Cedar Park. You could get birth announcement/photos etc., and updates periodically.
  4. Open adoption – You would get to know the adopting family on a first and last name basis and would be allowed contact with the family and their child on mutually agreed upon terms. Recommend starting with semi-open, and later move to “open” after birth if that is agreeable to everyone involved.

We would be happy to talk with you by phone or email. We can send you a complete Information Packet with application and everything else you need to get started on your journey to embryo adoption.

We look forward to hearing from you to answer your questions!