Featured Family of the Week: The Robison Family

Together over the past week, our Featured Family, the Caulks raised over $1,000 with the help of the give 1 community towards their adoption expenses! We have a new family we will be featuring from now until Christmas. In the meantime, if you would like to be one of Featured Families of the Week, please drop an email to Bonnie at onesweetworld67(at)gmail(dot)com for an application. We will be back after Christmas to feature some new families who need a little boost to bring their children home. In the meantime.....

Meet our new Featured Family of the Week....The Robison Family!

For the next two weeks, I'd like to introduce the Robison Family to you. This amazing family is hoping to complete a second embryo adoption. This is our first family we have featured that is in the process of completing an embryo adoption, so if you are confused about what exactly this is or why a family would choose this route to create their family.....check out Shannon Robison's info page here.

Rhea and Shannon Robison have been married for over twenty years and are parents to five children. The Robisons have known that adding children to their family through adoption was something they wanted to do. They first pursued domestic infant adoption and international adoption before moving to embryo adoption. Their daughter, Sarah, who was adopted through embryo adoption, was born in 2011. Now the Robison Family is hoping to add one more to their family through a second attempt at embryo adoption.

Like domestic and international adoption, embryo adoption requires a homestudy and background checks. It requires a "match" with birthparents. The journey to adopt an embryo requires much waiting, paperwork, and financing. At Give1, we'd like to help the Robison's move a little closer to the reality of adding their newest little one to their loving family by raising funds during the Christmas season.

Please take a minute to check out the Robison's amazing AMAZING video below that they put great work into. In their video they explain additionally why they have chose to advocate for those pursuing an embryo adoption.

"Well, a couple of months ago, our teenaged boys and their friends from church decided they wanted to produce a video as a gift to their family and to their future adopted brothers and sisters. They spent weeks planning and many hours filming, editing, composing, recording, eating not so healthy munchies, editing some more, and though they did not procrastinate, worked on the project until just hours before the deadline. Always smiling, even through sagging eyelids, these young men came with their Christmas offering. 

We pray that you are blessed by their efforts." ~ The Robison's

Robison Adoption Give 1 Save 1 from R&S Robison on Vimeo.

For the next two weeks we will be featuring The Robisons and we ask that our Give1 community donate $1 (or more) towards their adoption costs. You can donate to the Robison Adoption Fund by clicking the donate button below. Additionally, the Robison Family asks for prayer in this process as well as your social donation of sharing their message.

To find out more about the Robison Family and embryo adoption, you can check out their blog, Room for More Kiddos as well as their info page, What is EA?

Pumpkin Bread Fundraiser Follow-up :)

Several of our readers were curious how our current fundraising efforts were going.  I posted to our blog with all the details in THIS post. I encourage those of you who are thinking of adopting, but don't possibly see how you will EVER afford it, to focus on the Lord who will provide, focus on the child(ren) you are to adopt, and press on! I hope each of you are enjoying decorating and preparing to celebrate this CHRISTmas season!!

I am determined to include this centerpiece this year at our home I found the other day online. I love it! Well, I must get everyone in gear...We are off to do family photos today. ; )

  Shannon

Guest Post: Embryo Adoption

Today's guest post comes from Shannon. An area that we here at Give1 had not even considered when we began fundraising and advocating for adoption was the area of embryonic adoption. It is an amazing avenue for families to consider and Shannon shares more about this below. You can check out her family website at www.roomformorekiddos.com.


I am excited to be invited to post here on Give1Save1! I want to share with you about a domestic adoption avenue that many people do not even know exists. Some have heard of it, but are not sure what it is, what the process looks like or if it is an option that might be right for them or someone they know. I would like to share with you about Embryo Adoption (EA) and if there is interest, I would love to be a guest poster again and share with you more of the process and our journey.

Today though, let’s start with the basics. What is Embryo Adoption/Donation?

Since the 1980's infertile couples have sought the guidance and direction from fertility specialists, called Reproductive Endocrinologists (REs). These REs along with the assistance of specialists called, Embryologists, use modern medical advances to extract eggs from a woman's body to begin a fertility option called Invitro-Fertilization (IVF). After the embryologist harvests the eggs, he/she introduces the man's sperm with the eggs under a microscope. If the sperm fertilizes an egg, then the embryologist incubates the new life. This stage of life is called the embryonic stage and for this post I will refer to these little lives as embryos.

The embryologist along with the RE decide choose some of the created embryos to be transferred to the mother's womb in a procedure called a "fresh IVF cycle". The mother will have undergone hormone treatments to prepare her body to accept these little lives. The other embryos, if seen as good quality to the medical professionals, are then frozen for the couple for later transfers called, Frozen Embryo Transfers (FETs). The couple pays the clinic a yearly storage fee to continue to save the frozen embryos for these later transfers.

So, back to our question, what is Embryo Adoption/Donation?

Some use Embryo Adoption and Embryo Donation interchangeably, though similar in many ways there is a bit of a difference. Embryo Adoption is when one of these families who has undergone IVF procedures and who has frozen embryos decides to search for another family to adopt their embryos they have frozen at a clinic. The family has chosen not to "thaw and discard or donate to science" as many RE clinic contracts read. Instead, the genetic family understands that these embryos are living human lives and as difficult as the thought of another family raising their genetic children, they trust God and they seek out a family in which to place their tiny embryos. The placing family usually wants to know that the family has undergone a home study, been approved by an accredited adoption agency, and is prepared to adopt their embryos. Some Embryo Adoptions are private arrangements through an attorney. The placing parents may want open, closed, or semi-open arrangements with the adopting family.

In Embryo Donation, the placing family places their embryos with a clinic and trusts the clinic or agency to find the best match based on the criteria they put into writing. Embryo Donation can also be made through private avenues, but usually one associates Embryo Donation where the placing family has given their embryos to a clinic to place. In most of these cases, the arrangement is a closed and occasionally a semi open adoption arrangement. There are several agencies, many clinics, and websites that work to match families together and one does not have to be infertile to adopt children as embryos.

I know, you have a lot of thoughts and questions running through your mind. I know Rhea and I did when we first started this journey. We have learned so much about a situation in our country we never knew existed. When we started the EA journey in 2009, there was a reported 500,000 frozen embryos in our country. Quite recently, as I held our precious Sarah, I received an email with the latest numbers. Sadly, the numbers continue to rise. At this time, there are now over 600,000 reported frozen embryos in our country.

Of that number, Rhea and I, through God's great blessing adopted 6 tiny embryos. One survived to be born from my womb. Her name is Sarah Faith. Her story is a beautiful story of God's amazing hand and love. We are in the process of adopting again through Embryo Adoption. Please join us on our adoption journey at our family website www.roomformorekiddos.com where you will also find helpful links to help you learn more about EA.