The Stevens Family

Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began. Psalm‬ ‭139‬:‭16‬ ‭

In October 2024, we announced on social media that we were adopting frozen embryos. But that journey began long before we shared it publicly.

Perry and I were married in 2016. I was on the pill for several years, because I thought that’s what it meant to be responsible. (That’s another post for another day.) By 2020, we realized that there may have been something keeping us from having children. I went through months of testing before we were referred to a male fertility specialist. We soon received the diagnosis of unexplained male factor infertility. The doctor laughed in my face when I asked if we could try to find the root cause or explore any remedies like diet or exercise.

We pursued some additional testing but knew that we did not want Perry to undergo a risky surgery when there was no guarantee that would lead to answers.

We stepped back to pray and seek the Lord’s will for how to proceed. By 2021, I was working as a child advocate attorney, and while I loved that work and have a special place in my heart for foster and adoptive families, I did not feel called to traditional adoption.

The Lord placed in me a deep passion for advocating for the unborn as a pre-teen. As I researched assisted reproduction, including IUI, IVF, ICSI, etc. I became more and more convinced that ethically I could not participate in that. I also knew that if our child would not be genetically related to both of us, they wouldn’t be genetically related to either of us. A sperm donor wasn’t an option.

I think it took Perry a little longer to let go of the idea of having children who were genetically related to us. Because of the love he has for me, he longed for us to create life together and to give me a child that was connected to me in that way.

However, God gave me a supernatural peace about it, and there was very little grief involved in letting go of that natural desire to have children who shared our genetics. As I began researching alternatives, I remembered the couple from East Tennessee who adopted embryos that were created before they were born. I had seen them on the news, and it always stuck with me that someone could carry and give birth to their adopted child.

When I learned that the National Embryo Donation Center is located right in our hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, I might’ve shed a tear. My heart was instantly drawn to this form of adoption. One where I could carry and give birth to our adopted child. I would bond with them in a unique way. I would be in control of their prenatal nutrition and care. I would experience pregnancy and could have the birth I wanted. There would be no government overreach or parental visits or custody hearings.

In August 2022, we met with the NEDC and placed our initial deposit. On September 17, 2022, we partnered with Nightlight Christian Adoptions for their Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Home Study and made our first payment to them. On September 19, 2022, our world was turned upside down when Perry suffered a massive stroke while home alone.

Naturally, this put all of our plans — and our life in general — on hold. We didn’t know if he would ever speak or walk or use the right side of his body again. The blood clot killed much of the left side of his brain. He was hospitalized for a month and was then in intense therapy for months.

As he started to recover and regain abilities, I began to gently bring up embryo adoption again. He was quite closed off to the idea at this point, because he was adamant that we not intentionally bring life into the world when he couldn’t support himself, much less a family. I respected that, but I grieved the loss of babies I felt were mine but knew nothing about yet.

I tried not to bring it up often, but in May 2024, we had a long conversation about embryo adoption. I wanted him to tell me if I needed to let go of that dream or if he ever saw us being ready to pursue it again. To my surprise, he was open to the idea. He had been working an entry level job for a few months and was still hesitant but more comfortable with the thought of having kids.

After bugging him about it for a week or two to make absolutely certain he was okay with me reaching out, I contacted the NEDC and Nightlight to let them know we were ready to continue. Little did we know, we’d face another bump in the road with the NEDC having all appointments on hold, but we proceeded with Nightlight’s background check and home study, and then we got access to the NEDC embryo database.

I could write a whole post on what it was like to finally see profiles of what could be our babies, so I’ll save that for another day. We adopted a sibling group of seven embryos, frozen in 1999.

Once the NEDC started taking appointments again, everything moved quite quickly. In October, I was told to go ahead and start following the medication protocol because I was on the “wait list” for November. Soon, we got confirmation that November 21, 2024 was our transfer date!

When we arrived at the NEDC, Dr. Keenan told us that sadly, 4/7 of our embryo babies didn’t survive the thaw but that we had 2 thawed that were good quality and ready to be transferred. I had been prescribed valium and albuterol, so my mind was a bit cloudy, but I was overwhelmed with both sadness and joy — grief over the loss of those four and thankful for the two that would soon be transferred to my womb.

Everything went smoothly (other than the progesterone shots — if you know, you know). At one week post-transfer, I took a pregnancy test and was shocked that it was positive so early. I had a sneaking suspicion that might mean I was carrying twins, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I was absolutely miserable from the progesterone in ethyl oleate (turns out I was allergic to the carrier oil), but I was overjoyed to be carrying life for the first time. Just a few days before Christmas, we confirmed by ultrasound that there were two tiny babies!

From there, everything continued to go smoothly. I had ultrasounds at 7 and 10 weeks and was then released from the fertility doctor to the provider of my choice. I found wonderful midwives who share our faith, are experienced with twins, agree that God made women’s bodies to give birth, and who I fully trust. At 16 weeks, we had an elective ultrasound to find out gender (I know, not very crunchy of me). Perry had been right from day one, but I was shocked! Baby A is a boy and Baby B is a girl! I couldn’t believe we were having one of each; for some reason, that was so difficult for me to fathom.

My midwives asked if we would like to have an anatomy scan, and we agreed that we would, particularly with twins, to ensure there were no placenta issues or other problems we might need to be aware of at birth. That 21-week anatomy scan on March 31, 2025 is another date that would rock our world. Read about the scan and Walt’s diagnosis here.