Hello! Welcome to our blog! 

First of all, in case you missed the announcement... 

... and we are SO EXCITED! 

We would like to share our journey to adopt with you and hope this is a place where we can keep our family and friends up to date with the process. We hope to answer a lot through this blog, but never hesitate to reach out to us if you have questions! We hope to not only keep our family and friends informed through this blog, but also to be a resource to others in our lives who may be considering this path to starting or expanding their family.  

For our first post, we would like to give you a bit of an overview on how we came to the decision to adopt, and further, why we decided to adopt from Eastern Europe.

We decided awhile ago that we were ready to start our family. We aren't going to go into a lot of detail on this post, but after years of trying and more tests, medications and supplements than we can count, plus an unsuccessful journey through in vitro fertilization, we were told that our chances of conceiving a biological child were "one in a million." (If you're struggling with infertility or are interested in reading more about this part of our story, we will be writing our next blog post about that, going into a lot more detail.). We were told we could continue to wait and hope for a miracle, but that it would be in our best interest to look at other options for having a family. 

We had three real options that we were considering after we came to grips with the overwhelming news described above: embryo adoption, domestic adoption, and international adoption. All of these were very strong options for us and honestly, we were "sold" on each one at different points through our decision-making process. Let us also note that there are a few additional options for people at this point in their fertility journey, namely egg or sperm donation and adoption through foster care. We are not going to go into a lot of detail on these things, but to be brief: after considering those options as well, they were not right for us.  

We hadn't heard of embryo adoption before we were to this point in our journey... there is a lot to this option, but to be concise: this is a situation where we would adopt a fertilized egg that had been frozen (presumably from another couple who had undergone IVF, had extra fertilized eggs from their cycle and froze them, but had no plans to utilize them for their own family). We would adopt the frozen embryo(s), they would be implanted into Mary, and we would carry and deliver the child. We like to describe it as being our own surrogate... so we would deliver our child, but the child would not be genetically tied to either of us. This is a really neat option to experience pregnancy, be in charge of our own prenatal care, and have our child from birth. There are also definite risks to this option, as it does carry the same success rates as IVF (many embryos do not survive the thaw and implantation process). We gathered a lot of information from our fertility clinic and the National Center for Embryo Donation on this option. 

Domestic adoption is pretty well known. We would go through an adoption agency (or private attorney), put together a profile, be selected by a birth mom, and adopt a child from birth. We gathered information from three adoption agencies in Indianapolis and had also attended an information session earlier in the year with one of these agencies. 

International adoption is similar to domestic, except that we would be adopting from another country and adopting a child from an orphanage. We would be selected by an adoption governing body in that country rather than by a birth mom. We would likely bring the child home as a toddler due to the paperwork/processing times involved in international adoption. We did a lot of research on the agencies that do international adoption in Indianapolis and visited one for a one-on-one informational session to learn more. 

After many long walks and evenings where we talked and talked (and talked) about each of these options, we both came to the decision that we felt called to adopt internationally. We like the guarantee of a family (which embryo adoption did not provide) and we like that international adoption tends to be more adoptive parent driven than domestic adoption. These are reasons that we can put on paper, but after a lot of prayerful consideration for each of these options, we honestly just feel a peace and comfort from the Lord about international adoption and are confident this is the path for us. 

As far as "why Eastern Europe?" goes, we were drawn to this area of the world after our informational session with our agency. Out of the seven countries our agency supports, our desire to bring a child home as young as possible gave us three options. We heard about the specific need in each country, as well as the adoption process for each country, and we chose to move forward with Eastern Europe. (We know the specific country, but due to some agency guidelines, we cannot post it online). 

So, there you have it! To say we're excited is an understatement. We are so thankful to have this opportunity and we are ready to embark on this journey. 

In our next few posts, we'll be giving more detail on our fertility journey (for people who may be reading this and in the process themselves), and also explaining the overall process of adoption from Eastern Europe. 

We are so excited to share this journey with you and we appreciate your support more than words can say! 

Love, 

Mary and Scott DeArmond