Fertility treatments, ethical dilemmas and frozen embryos

Disclaimer - This tends to be a very controversial topic, one where people have vastly different views and opinions on the matter. The post below describes how WE, as a couple, decided that fertility treatments were the right path for US to take as a family. It might not be right for you, and that is ok. Please keep that in mind as you read. Thank you! 

There are many views out there regarding fertility treatments, especially from those who believe in a God who is in control of essentially everything, and that His perfect will, will always prevail. Some believers question if fertility treatments are "playing God" so to speak, and feel that undergoing treatment is showing a lack of faith in God's will/plan for their life. I have heard these opinions from others all while going through treatment myself.

Makes for a very interesting discussion indeed.

I am a Christian and have full confidence in His plan for my life. Yet, I also was not able to get pregnant without assistance from IVF. If you are new to our journey click here, but in a nutshell a woman cannot get pregnant without growing and releasing an egg/eggs each month (duh) and well my body wasn't doing either of those things. When I did get on injectable medicine to help with egg production/release my body freaked out and produced, I don't know, about a million eggs. In an effort to avoid our own reality show on TLC, IVF was the safest and really, only, option.

Obviously we were comfortable with fertility treatments in general or else we would have not moved forward and would have just called it quits and/or looked into adoption. So how did we become comfortable some ask?

Here's the only logical way I can break it down for those who question how we "came to terms" with undergoing IVF. . .

I made a bad choice. Remember. . . anorexia messes with fertility. Please don't ever forget this minor major detail, especially for any of you who are reading and might be struggling with your eating, or lack of eating, habits.

Sometimes bad choices reap negative consequences. Sometimes these consequences are short term while other times they are life long. For me? Only time will tell. But that is not the point. The point is that while God tells us we might endure a consequence for our actions, I do not believe that means we must remain stuck in the consequence itself. I imagined God saying to me "Brittnie, because of your defiance and selfishness, becoming a mom is going to be a little a lot harder than you planned, but if you lean on me, I will walk with you through this next phase of life." And we translated that "next phase of life" to be each and every month we would undergo treatment. Does that make sense?

We felt confident that said treatments were another phase of our story and ultimately I could use it for good, to continue His work. What a privilege to share my experience with others, and encourage others who might be faced with the same scenario.

We also believe that God blesses our society today with amazingly smart doctors and technology for a reason. To use them when medically necessary! Praise God for IVF and the brains behind the entire process. We needed help forming our little embryo(s), and feel that God hand picked our doctor to help make it happen. I could go on and on about this train of thought in general but I think you get the idea.

Ok, so now you might be wondering. . . what about those seven little embryos that matured and are now frozen at the clinic? Well duh, we always dreamed of having eight kids so that's an easy decision.

Kidding.

In all seriousness, should we struggle to get pregnant again in the future several of these embryos will be used to do another frozen embryo transfer (FET). And if that attempt is unsuccessful, or say it is successful yet then I miscarry, then we have more to work with as time goes on. But if we don't ever use them or get pregnant imediately after another FET then what?

There are three choices given when deciding the fate of embryos (should Brandon and I die suddenly or should we never need the embryos, a consent has to be in place to tell the clinic what to do).

1 - destroy

2 - donate to science/research

3 - donate to another couple

We chose option #3.

This might seem like an obvious choice given that we are Christians and are 100% team pro life, but there is more to the puzzle and more we had to think through. How do we know that the embryos will be donated to a Christian family, whose ultimate goal is to teach their children about Jesus and eventually meet us in heaven?

Well. . . we don't. And we didn't get to negotiate the specifics.

We only got three choices.

So then, how did we wrap our minds around this specific ethical dilemma?

We had to let go of our need for control and just TRUST. Seriously. If we believe that God's hand was/is all over the IVF process then we must continue to trust that His faithfulness won't stop with us. His faithfulness will continue on and on and on. Our little embryos were hand picked, created by God, and He will oversee which families are blessed and when. We had to LET IT GO and let FAITH take over. And honestly, I am 100% relieved that He is in charge of the decision making and not me.

After all, His track record is pretty perfect.

Have you ever thought about fertility treatments and ethical dilemmas? If you have gone through fertility treatments, were the ideas presented even an issue for you? Please (lovingly) share in the comments!