Families grow with 'snowflake adoptions'

Angela Pease never expected to experience pregnancy. After being diagnosed with premature ovarian failure during her freshman year of college, she had given up hope of ever having children. She could carry a child, but infertility made conception impossible.

Still, Angela and her husband, Ricky, desperately wanted a family.

On a cold evening in March 2014, the Oak Creek couple went to a meeting on domestic adoption. “We were surprised to learn about some of the risk factors involved with domestic adoption as far as mental health issues and exposure to drugs and alcohol,” Ricky said. “It made us uneasy.”

“We were literally putting our coats on to leave the social worker’s office when she said: ‘What about embryo adoption?’ We had no idea what that was,” Angela said.

That conversation was the first step in the Peases' journey toward using an increasingly popular — but not widely known — method for infertile couples to have children. It also was their first step toward becoming doting parents to two baby boys.

Embryo adoption involves using frozen, leftover embryos donated by couples who have gone through in vitro fertilization. A recent census of U.S. fertility clinics estimated that over 600,000 frozen embryos are currently in storage.

This glut is primarily due to the way in which embryos are made in the in vitro process. A woman typically receives medication to stimulate superovulation, or the release of many eggs at once. These eggs are collected and fertilized in a lab. A few of the resulting embryos are then transferred back to the woman’s womb in the hopes that one will attach and begin to gestate.

But what happens to embryos that remain after a couple complete their family or give up trying?

At first, fertility clinics dealt with spare embryos by offering to discard them, donate them to research, or set up an anonymous donation. In the late 1990s, Nightlight Christian Adoptions started facilitating adoptions of donated, frozen embryos for what it dubbed “snowflake” babies. The name comes from the idea that, just like a snowflake, the embryos are "frozen, unique and a gift from heaven." The executive director is a former pastor and Biblical studies professor.

“We started thinking, what would happen if we applied the best practices of adoption to these leftover embryos,” said Alyssa Trammell MacDonald, Snowflakes team lead for the California office of Nightlight. “For a family that thought they could never undergo pregnancy and experience the bonding, joy and struggles that come with it, embryo adoption can be a really wonderful option.”

“As a woman, it was really exciting to think that I could have that baby bump, feel those little kicks, and go to ultrasounds,” Angela said. “We sought prayer and guidance and decided embryo adoption was the right choice for us.” The couple also were drawn to the idea that by carrying the baby themselves, they could control the safety of the pregnancy.

They considered several of the different programs available today and chose Nightlight. The current program covers matching, home study, legal, and embryo shipping services for a flat fee of $8,000. That’s considerably cheaper than either traditional adoption or in vitro fertilization.

According to Alta Charo, professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the idea of embryo adoption is morally acceptable to most people. Even those who consider in vitro fertilization objectionable often consider the leftover embryos as humans deserving dignity and life. The Catholic Church, for example, has been at the forefront condemning in vitro fertilization, but has no official position on embryonic adoption.

What does raise eyebrows is the word "adoption."?

“Embryos are not legally recognized as children, so it is not possible to adopt them in the traditional sense,” Charo said. “If it did, family law would apply, and it doesn’t.”

Instead, embryos are arbitrated similar to property, with rights generally granted based on existing contractual agreements.

Trammell MacDonald agreed that the term "adoption" can be contentious. “We know that this is legally a property transfer, but we want to emphasize that our program isn’t simply a donation. We apply all the parameters of adoption and allow families the opportunity to exchange information that wouldn’t be available with anonymous donation."

A good fit

In August 2014, Angela and Ricky filled out a Snowflakes profile where they were able to express a preference for number of embryos available (since adopting families are required to take the entire sibling set), ethnicity and amount of desired contact with the donor family.

Within a few weeks, the couple received two matches, but neither was a good fit.

In October, they got their third match with a couple donating six embryos. Angela said the couple just seemed genuinely interested in helping someone start a family.

They decided to accept.

When both parties agree to a match, Snowflakes draws up contracts releasing the rights to the embryos to the adoptive family.

The program then covers screening of the donor family for infectious diseases according to regulations from the Food and Drug Administration and arranges for shipping of the embryos to the adopting family’s fertility clinic.

Trying again

On May 26, 2015, three embryos were thawed, two of which survived and were transferred.

Then came the 10-day wait for the pregnancy test. Angela sat by the phone all morning before receiving a call with the results. The second she heard the nurse’s voice, she knew it wasn’t positive.

“I was crushed and heartbroken,” Angela said. “I was ready to give up and go back to a domestic adoption. I was tired of saying ‘if,’ not ‘when’ I was a mom. All I wanted was to be a mom.”

Their doctor encouraged them to continue with their remaining embryos.

Later that year, the couple tried again with two more embryos. This time, Angela followed a specific diet in preparation and underwent acupuncture to promote implantation.

On Aug. 13, 2015, the Peases announced they were pregnant. At their first ultrasound, the couple saw "two little heartbeats flutter on the screen" and learned they were having twins.

Thirty-six weeks later, Caleb and Isaac Pease became the 463rd and 464th Snowflake babies born through embryo adoption.

For the first five years, only pictures and letters will be exchanged between the Peases and the genetic family. After that, it’s up to both couples to decide how much contact to allow.

“If the boys want to meet their genetic siblings or parents, they can,” Angela said. “We want that to be their choice. Some families have full contact like one big extended family. But they’re just babies. We don’t want to make that decision for them.”

Caleb and Isaac are now 5 months old, and both Ricky and Angela expressed how blessed they are to have their family.

“All I can say to critics is this, I don’t know how, if these boys were our genetic children, we could love them any more," Angela said. "It’s impossible for me to imagine what that would feel like.”