We both grew up in families of three sibships with large extended families. Grandparents attended all of {husband's} ski and golf meets and all holidays held strong tradition with {wife's} family. Prior to getting married, we discussed the importance of having children. At 14, my {wife's} dad was diagnosed with a terminal illness, ALS also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. To the surprise of the family, when I {wife} was 19, my mom died from cancer. When we met, within months we knew we wanted to marry one another. I {Husband} was part of the family when her {wife's} dad died when she was 23. These losses gave an urgency and immense desire to build our own family. We married the following year and within weeks were trying to conceive.

 

We were lucky. We tracked {wife’s} cycle and were pregnant within a month. We were ecstatic. We decided to wait until the baby was born to learn the gender. We would be happy either way, but I {wife} couldn’t hide that persistent voice in the back of my mind of how badly I wanted a daughter. We were blessed with a healthy son. Two years later we decided to grow our family and again were lucky to conceive quickly. This time we couldn’t wait and went to our 20-week ultrasound eager to find out the gender. We learned of a healthy baby boy. While we know how fortunate we are with two healthy sons, our hearts broke a bit knowing we’d never have a daughter: a daughter to walk down the aisle, to share that special mother-daughter bond (and supporting her during those confusing teen years); and a little sister to balance out our family.

 

Around the time we would have tried for a third, the pandemic of 2020 hit. As everyone knows, it was a weird time in the world. Just prior to the “shut down” we sold our house and decided to build our dream home. Two full time jobs, two toddlers and building a house during a global pandemic was trying. We considered a vasectomy but changed our mind. Then another year later decided to move forward with a vasectomy. We felt we were done building our family.

 

Fast forward another year and life is stable. Our boys are happy and healthy; we frequently receive compliments of how kind and helpful they are. They are funny and social and have healthy attachment. We are settled into our home and we both have over a decade into our careers. What started as a little whisper reminding us that we still didn’t have a daughter, turned into an in-depth exploration of fostering and adopting. After many conversations with professionals and acquaintances that went through both, we decided those options just weren’t for our family. The chance of having to return a baby after weeks or years to their birth family was too much potential loss to handle.

 

We decided to explore IVF with the goal of creating a female embryo. We knew we had good chances at a healthy embryo and pregnancy based on our previous experience of conceiving. We identified what we were able to spend and got started. The consultation with our IVF doctor, the blood tests, shots and frequent appointments were "easy" necessities to complete our family. My {wife's} body did what it needed to give us eggs to work with and the TESA performed on {husband} resulted in healthy sperm for fertilization. The time to learn about the number of blastocysts we had to work with felt like weeks instead of days. The time for our PGT test results felt like years. Receiving the call that we did not have any viable female embryos felt like hearing someone died. We had experienced enough loss in our lives to know the feeling of grief and it was heavy. We knew we didn’t have unlimited funds to keep trying and trying. It was like learning our dream of having a daughter, and a sister for our boys, was too far out of reach. Soon thereafter we learned of embryo adoption and felt hopeful again.

 

We have a lot of love to give. We have a beautiful life. A house that is plenty big for another child. 10 acres of wooded land to explore that overlooks the most beautiful view of a natural, freshwater lake. We love family time, whether it is hiking, boating, time at the beach, fishing, skiing, sledding or snuggling in forts on the floor for movie night. We have started our own family traditions of gathering with what we call our fr-amily for Easter dinner and egg hunt, spending the 4th of July on our boat, picking pumpkins fresh from a local patch, and cutting down our own Christmas tree from the tree farm down the road. We both have jobs we love that are fulfilling and provide us with stable income to meet our basic needs and extra discretionary income to play. Our jobs give us flexibility to work from home or work outside of normal business hours to be available to the kids as needed. We frequently volunteer at the school and chaperone field trips. We have the flexibility to take kids to doctor’s appointments or be home with sick kids when necessary. We live in a wonderful, albeit small, community with dozens of members of our village.

 

We know we are lucky and are so grateful for the beautiful life we have. Despite all of that, our hearts feel a little empty where a daughter should be. We hope another family that has decided their family is complete will give us the opportunity to finish ours.